The curve on that chart is so high I can fit a pic of Vito under it!
(Chart from Federal Reserve paper on demographic shifts in wealth [pdf])

Your moron State Assemblyman and local political boss Vito Lopez has a bill currently rotting in Albany that would extend rent stabilization from buildings with a minimum of six units to those with three, but just for tenants over 62. It has no co-sponsors, of course, because the other Assemblypeople aren’t retarded and/or don’t have any interest in helping Vito cement in his constituency of poor people that he can whip into a hysteria and then lead to the voting booths.

Here’s the, um, eloquent “justification” of the bill:

“Senior citizens need to be protected from landlords who increase their rent to proportions beyond their financial means. The elderly should not be penalized for living in dwellings, which consist of six units, or less. Presently, the law stipulates that rent stabilization may be granted to senior citizens residing in dwellings containing more than six units. Most senior citizens are presently sustaining themselves on a fixed income. This bill would prevent excessive rent increases and harassment about eviction from landlords because the tax rebate acts as an incentive.”

Vito. Did you plagiarize this from someone’s ninth-grade civics class paper? That’s not nice.

But seriously, it’s 2008 and the government is still pitting the various (somewhat arbitrarily defined) classes against each other? I understand divide and conquer, I just think it’s vulgar and out of place in a liberal democracy.

Some facts:

*When prices rise, it is not a punishment. In fact, it is a mechanism by which scarce resources are more efficiently allocated. I’d be interested to find out whose moral compass is used to determine “excessive” rises in rent.

*More senior citizens may have a fixed income, but that does not mean it’s a low one or that they are not wealthy. In fact, senior citizens are the wealthiest segment of society. It would be rather perverse to transfer yet more wealth from a less-wealthy demographic to a wealthier one.

Why is an overly complicated regime involving tax breaks and more regulation being proposed when the government could just subsidize the rent of the seniors instead of — oh wait, I forgot to put on my scheming power-hungry politician thinking cap on. More employees to run more bureaucracy means more voters and political machine cogs for Vito!

You got it all squared away, huh, Boss?

Normally graffiti wouldn’t call much of my attention, but this is no ordinary doodle. In case you can’t see it well, it says “PARE EL DESPLAZAMIENTO” — Stop the Displacement. I don’t know what kind of spray paint can-wielding defacers you come across, but in my experience, there are few who tend to think about heavy subjects like urban demographic trends. What struck me even more was the idea that, even if they knew the word “displacement,” that they know how to spell it. Call me doubly surprised when they spell it flawlessly in Spanish. Now I’m having trouble believing this is a random youth tagging a building. This person is educated. This person is an activist.

This is a ridiculous attempt to sheath ivory tower ideas about what causes and constitutes gentrification in a veneer of organic, ground-up dissent. To me it’s offensive in its characterization — mockery, really — of the grass-roots in Bushwick as property-destroying rabble.

The choice of target is just as unbelievable: these mediocre two-families aren’t displacing anyone but the rats who lived on the empty lot. And they’re not exactly luxury homes, despite what the developer claims. Ultimately, they mitigate displacement by providing more housing. So now we just have an activist displaying his ignorance of basic housing economics. Embarrassing.

So the question remains: who, or what organization, is behind this?

Getting some air, by for the love of BROOKLYN

The Bushwick Housing Independence Project — another brainchild of Father Powis, former chief of St. Barbara’s Catholic Church — is an organization that helps people fight eviction from, and get repairs made to, their rent-regulated Bushwick apartments. NYT’s David Gonzalez makes much sap of a serendipitously (for the reporter) placed portrait of MLK in a particularly stinky building being targeted by Bushwick Housing Independence: “Bushwick Tenants’ Dreams Are Mired in the Stench.” The landlord has offered buyouts to the tenants: two years of rent and help finding another regulated apartment somewhere else. It seems to me if Bushwick Housing Independence cared even about the near-term well-being of its clients, it would tell them to take the money and run. Are we to believe that existing another 30 years in a crummy railroad is what passes for “dreams” in Bushwick?

What mostly bothers me is BHIP’s Orwellian name: nothing about an organization that demands landlords become the de facto guardians of their customers evokes “independence.” Being independent means taking responsibility for one’s own life. Demanding that your rental apartment be considered, for all intents and purposes, your property with NONE of the duties ownership generally entails is the opposite of taking responsibility. It’s to demand to be taken care of like a child and simultaneously be allowed all the freedoms that come with adulthood. Unfortunately for the “children” this situation is unsustainable long-term and when it ends, they find themselves with few skills for coping with life as the adults they are. This then somehow is the fault of everyone else in the world who didn’t save them from their own personal failings.

Priorities are truly skewed in this city. Even if the situation were sustainable, even if it were just, it is not in any way “independence.”

I think I have developed a fool-proof method of judging the degree of “shadow” gentrification in a neighborhood. By “shadow,” I mean all the rental apartments being newly occupied by people considered by most to be “gentrifiers.” They’re not as obviously present as the residents of shiny new condos or those populating the loft districts, but they are the majority. That’s why it’s only now that those of us who live in regular residential Bushwick proper are starting to get more restaurant — and likely soon retail — options, while those in the loft areas have had amenities for a couple years.

Yes, I hypothesize that by merely glancing at the milk cooler in grocery establishments in any neighborhood, one can make an educated guess as to the level of gentrification. I declare Bushwick to be in the “2%” phase. That means when I visit local grocery stores, I find the organic milk selection to be advanced up to the level of 2% milk at the Associated and a couple bodegas I have been in. Exceptions exist: Mr. Kiwi’s now offers organic whole milk. Why are food markets the place to look? Because they respond to demand almost instantly when people request items. They are the perfect barometer for measuring population trends.

Why organic milk? People who demand organic food are health conscious. Health conscious people tend to prefer lower-fat items. So until critical mass exists for those who like to put half and half in their coffee and don’t want Polysorbate-80 in it, too, the organic milk selection will trend toward lower fat.

I propose entrepreneurs trying to gauge demand in a neighborhood for certain services look at what kind of milk is available. As Bushwick approaches the “whole” phase, I look forward to being able to wander into any corner store and get a pint of organic cream for my coffee. Until then, I’m off to Brooklyn’s Natural.

Residents finally moved into the gut-renovated Bushwick Initiative buildings across the street from me this weekend, four months after they were completed. Oh, the Bushwick Initiative? That’s where the City uses your tax money to fix up someone else’s private property for them, with a guarantee that all the people who lived there before can move back in afterward — with the same rent, of course. Where these families have been warehoused for the past two years, I can’t imagine, I mean — what are they, cattle? Don’t they have plans and dreams? They just live wherever the City plops them? What is the point of this?

Well, whatever, it seems like a great deal for everyone involved: the landlord gets his building overhauled for cheap and doesn’t even have to hire his own contractors; the tenants get fancy new apartments for the same rent which they can somehow — isn’t the point of regulated rent to help the poor? — then afford to fill with a truckfull of new furniture (see photo above); and the political bosses get to keep their subjects in Bushwick, while appearing far-sighted and magnanimous. Who am I missing? Oh yeah, the taxpayers who fund all of this, especially the losers who were unsavvy enough use their own damn money to invest in this neighborhood only to be spit in the face by this whole crooked, corrupt “Urban Renewal, Fourth Time’s a Charm!”

Is it even necessary to mention that Bushwick is exactly as rundown as its proportion of rent-regulated apartments would suggest? The Bushwick Initiative is just the City putting a sad little band-aid on the giant ax wound it created in New York’s housing situation.

The bright side is that ultimately, none of this matters. The desperate fight against the natural order of the market, though backed by practically unlimited pools of cash looted from middle class pockets, is failing on the most important front: the big picture. For all the City and “private” organization RBSCC’s idiotic talk of “revitalizing commercial corridors” though this or that program, it’s happening without them as entrepreneurs take their own initiative. So they renovated a handful of crappy apartments here and there in an arbitrary bit of Bushwick? Well, sorry, no medal for them — developers and landlords have rehabbed and built thousands of units in Bushwick in the same time. Bureaucracy is so dumb and lumbering it doesn’t even realize its much-touted grand efforts are but a drop in the bucket compared to what ordinary people, working mostly in their own interest and of their own direction, have done for Bushwick.

That’s initiative.

Money wasted on this map could have been used to buy produce.

Just when you thought the people of this city had endured quite enough paternalism, our benevolent overseers have now found it fit to tell us we don’t eat the way they say we should. Bushwick is, as usual, alarmingly red on the map of areas in the city which rate poorly. Lower Manhattanites, along with people in some other areas in the outer boroughs, apparently eat a bureaucrat-endorsed amount of veggies daily. Less-obedient people in other neighborhoods apparently do not eat “enough,” with up to 26% of people having responded to the one-day survey that on the previous day, they had eaten no fresh fruits or vegetables. That’s “400% less than Manhattanites!” I can see the stats-mongers screaming.

To remedy this, the city wants to recruit people to run fruit stands in these “underserved” neighborhoods, so that the people there will buy and eat the approved amount of fresh foods and thereby have lower rates of everything bad. They are calling it the Green Carts program. A few problems I will note:

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Oh noos: the po-lice and associated eggheads can’t figure out why Northeast Brooklyn murders — that includes Bushwick — have gone up. Now, “up” is of course a relative notion: 212 in a borough of 2.5 million people. This New York Magazine article does little to dispel my assumption that probably 97% of the victims are also perps of some form. The remainder are their unfortunate neighbors. It’s why, when choosing a new neighborhood, it’s pointless to pay attention to the murder part of the crime stats — unless you’re planning on moving into a “Crips” floor at the Bushwick Houses.

Those whose agenda it serves of course have their own view of the problem: gentrification is to blame. The article mentions, as if to back up a comment about people pushed out of Bed-Stuy and into Bushwick, that in 2006, “Bushwick’s population jumped by more than 8,000.” I’m sure that’s true. But these people weren’t gentrified out of Bed-Stuy — they were gentrified out of the East Village and Williamsburg. Or they came from Mexico to work. Bushwick is not a catch basin for the poverty-mired of Brooklyn, it’s a magnet for the upwardly mobile who still have a long way to go.

The academics and cops of course mention the drug trade as the fuel for this murderous fire, but stops short of what makes selling drugs such a violent endeavor: it’s the drug war, stupid. From the 70s, throughout the crack epidemic, to now, the government has not changed its policy on dictating to Americans what they can put in their bodies. Since prohibition hardly dents demand, and no state anywhere, ever has yet found a way to crush the market signals for demand, there are people dedicated to making a living supplying that demand. Since the government has made punishment of the non-crime of drug selling so outrageously severe, the only people ballsy and reckless enough to sell drugs are those who have nearly nothing to lose, and rather impaired senses of the value of human life in general. You end up with the most violent elements having most of the money and weapons. Not a recipe for peace.

Drug prohibition created the problem of rampant crime in the United States. Drug prohibition helped keep New York a shithole for decades. Hell, drug prohibition has destroyed entire Central American countries and empowered vicious militias in Mexico and Colombia. It’s responsible for millions of deaths, holocaustian proportions.

End drug prohibition, and you will nearly end what little violence is left in New York. There will still be residual knuckleheads around because of the cultures incubated during the last 40 years, but that will eventually peter out with no drug industry to support it. Until then, stay clear of the projects and you won’t get shot. Not that anyone who doesn’t actually live there usually does.

The net effect of making a big deal of consensual and peaceful but illegal business transactions is that such transactions are made more difficult to carry out and even those perfectly content to have entered into them are prevented from doing so in the future.

It’s my first thought when I see that, yet again, Make the Road by Walking has organized a march down Knickerbocker to “shame” and point out businesses who do not pay at least minimum wage to all employees, or overtime pay. They pay special attention to the Associated supermarket on Knickerbocker and Starr, where, to quote the Brooklyn Eagle, “some employees are not paid any wages at all.”

Think about that last bit. Why would anyone work for free? How could a business compel people to do something that seems so unprofitable at face value? They can’t, but no questioning or critical thinking from the likes of our local media — they just repeat whatever a random activist type tells them. According to a friend who is a very close neighbor of the Associated, as he understands it, undocumented immigrants ask to bag groceries for tips. Baggers are not a job for which the store would otherwise hire — the cashiers do it. Obviously, an undocumented person cannot be on the books. So they are allowed to take their own initiative and bag groceries for customers who may or may not tip them. This is not exploitation — it’s practically charity.

In a neighborhood full of immigrant families (I don’t mean immigrants from Iowa), goods have to be cheap, which means cutting costs. If that means paying below minimum wage to keep your store running and profitable, then if the risks of punishment are low, that’s what you do. If the authorities catch wind, the risk goes up, as well as prices. Opportunities for immigrant workers lessen. When you pay $7.15/hr for a job that used to cost $3.50, you are eliminating a job — and of course, the guy making twice as much will now have to do as much as two people. The person who loses their job — the undocumented one, if the management is going to choose — starves.

I hardly see a gain, here, except to another major sponsor of the Despierta, Bushwick! campaign: the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, whose competition is eviscerated if the campaign has its desired effect.

Congratulations, Make the Road, in removing opportunities for Bushwick’s struggling undocumented families.

New York City Councilman Tony Avella hearts parking lots.

New Yorkers never fail to set my eyes rolling. Their reverse-provincial, insulated expectations of what life is and more importantly, what the government should do for them, just keeps on amusing. Take this Queens Ledger (or is it the Brooklyn Downtown Star?) article about Graham Avenue business owners complaining that the City is getting rid of a public parking lot so that affordable housing can be built on it. Mind you, there will still be parking, there will just be less of it and it won’t be damn near free.

Ahmed Khan, owner of Sneaker Spot, said customers will not come if they have to park ten blocks away. “If you don’t give [them] parking in front of [or] behind the store, nobody shops.”

The Sneaker Spot? We’re quickly disabused of the idea that this might be a strip of bafflingly expensive vintage clothing boutiques and raw vegan restaurants. Graham Avenue isn’t luxurious, it’s a dump — so it’s not the wealthy driving these cars. No, in North Brooklyn, it’s the so-called poor who drive. Consider that they are the ones who will (supposedly) benefit from this affordable housing development, and this starts to become a real head-scratcher. Just a thought, but, maybe if these families got rid of their 2 or 3 cars per household, they could afford market rent like the rest of us. Ever taken a walk or a bike ride through the projects? The parking lots and side streets are full of shiny new cars. For the record, the very few “hipster” “trustfunders” (derogatory terms for stylish, employed young white people) I know who have cars drive shitbox beaters. But I digress.

Apparently, affordable housing isn’t enough, this city now needs affordable parking for the minority of residents who drive. And allegedly, these doubtlessly fat, lazy ass people who won’t walk a few blocks are who keep the merchants of Graham Avenue in business.

[City] councilman [Tony Avella] remarked that if a commercial area becomes blighted, it affects the rest of the neighborhood. “If stores can’t make it and you start to close, residential areas are affected because now there’s no place to shop.”

His argument is that Graham Avenue will, uh, become blighted, and presumably that this will make the surrounding, uh, pristine residential areas less desireable. Hey Councilman, you ever heard of gentrification? There aren’t exactly a lot of downward pressures on Brooklyn real estate these days. Remember the affordable housing scheme that was the excuse for you coming to East Williamsburg to pander to voters and make it look like you’re doing something valuable? After all, it’s the only reason you care about — and likely even know the existence of — some scrap of city-owned asphalt. Get your head out of the 1970s. What’s next, tax breaks for fried chicken joints and stores that sell $8 pairs of jeans on the sidewalk?

Every other thriving retail strip in Brooklyn, no matter what economic segment it serves, does just fine without city-owned parking lots, and in some cases without any parking at all. What’s so special about Graham Avenue?

New York Daily News, 1977, from the Up From Flames exhibit

Last week’s Village Voice doom-and-gloom piece on gentrification and heavy-handed landlords in Bushwick was not the tour de force I thought it would be, and that the interviewer on the accompanying audio clip made it out to be. It has some interesting anecdotes, but that’s really all it turns out to be: just a series of scary stories, probably a selection of the most shocking ones.

The piece begins ridiculing the admittedly lame tactics of the real estate agents: they’re all stuck on “East Williamsburg” when the zeitgeist has moved on to “West Bushwick.” They’re too stupid to realize Bushwick is considered cool. Fair enough. It goes on to lionize a few scrappy old timers who stay on defiantly while their buildings fall to shit around them. Why do they stay? Author Tom Robbins’ student contributors don’t care to find out, or maybe they’re just poor journalists so early in their school careers.

I can’t imagine there are many people who would want to live in apartments where, for example, they’re in danger of getting their balls crushed as they fall through rotten floor boards. But then again, I have been inside homes where literally everything is falling apart, every wall has holes, every stair is cracked, every floor board is warped, toys are covered in grime, mold grows unchecked in every corner — neglectful landlords are a shameful phenomenon, but isn’t it more shameful to never ever pick up a mop to clean your own floor, or a sponge to clean your own bath tub? This is a two-way street, and I can tell you right now that dirty, slimy, rat-gnawed dishes do not build up in sinks full of moldy water because the landlord didn’t fix the wobbly banister.

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