Real Estate History Repeats Itself, Again and Again
I found this old article about gentrification in the New York Times archive. Check out this excerpt, then click the link to see when it’s from and where it’s about. It all just sounds so eerily familiar. (I scrubbed the text a bit to keep the mystery alive):
“When Susan Kelley looks out her window she sees a beginning. ”There are so many young professionals sitting on the stoops, ties undone, just talking,” said the 24-year-old Wall Street real-estate broker as she surveyed her street, where she has lived for two years. ”There’s a feeling of togetherness, of movement. A feeling that things are different every day.”
When Barbara Shaum looks out her window she sees an end. ”I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, ‘There goes the neighborhood,’ ” said the leathercrafts maker who has lived in a loft behind her studio for 21 years. ”Why are all these people coming here, where they’re so riotously out of place? I don’t want my neighborhood to change.”
How you see the neighborhood seems to depend on where you stand. It is one of contrasts and contradictions. The chrome and glass facade of a newly renovated co-op is a block away from a corner known for prostitution. There is a sushi bar across the street from an abandoned warehouse and a neoned art gallery stands across from a restaurant closed by spiraling rents after 32 years. On the top floor of a weather-worn walkup is a white-walled, slate-floored loft. Some windows frame ”For Sale” signs, others hold posters warning ”Speculators, Hands Off.”
There are perhaps as many reactions to the changes as there are people who call the area home. Some of the disputes are over the physical - such as the mayor’s plan to sell city-owned abandoned buildings to private developers for a mixture of low-income and market-rate housing.
”It’s called ‘cross-subsidy,’ ” said Joseph Shuldiner, deputy commissioner of the city’s Office of Property Management, ”because we are selling some things to generate money for other projects.”
”We’ve named it ‘double-cross subsidy,’ ” said Frances Goldin, vice chairman of the CS Development Committee, which is fighting gentrification. ”I think the Mayor, more than anything, wants to turn the neighborhood over to the developers.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E7DA1038F931A3575AC0A962948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
