Folks in New York City stay fighting over real estate. It’s the old new racism + classism = supremacism. The reason being that most people don’t come up on property without playing at least one of those cards. I’m not saying that everybody that owns some dirt in NYC got it through carpetbagging or some such technique, but a lot of property was acquired that way.
While every borough in the city has their battlegrounds, none have as many as Manhattan. There are folks protesting the new zoning regulations in the lower east side, while in the newly minted triangle below canal (TriBeCa) the nouveau riche are opposed to the nightclubs and the people they attract. All these arguments pale in comparison to the upheaval that Harlem faces as the longtime residents (read: poor people) are being rapidly displaced.
Columbia University is attacking from the south side of Harlem via Morningside Heights as well as from the north side of Harlem using the footprint of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Some people want to slow Columbia’s roll because they feel like the longtime residents deserve a decision in the future of their neighborhood, while other people want to stop Columbia because they recognize that land is power and Columbia University is about to become a wealthy slumlord.
I’m ashamed to admit this but the people that live in Harlem have no title to the area’s development if they don’t own any property. That is just how the shit breaks down. Poor people are relegated to their skyward reservations. This is what I call high rise housing projects. Instead of sticking folks on vast, undeveloped acres like they did the native americans, they stacked acrea on top of acres until you had twenty-five floors. The arrangement is much easier to secure with police as well.
I found myself in Harlem on 125th Street the other evening and I almost didn’t recognize my surroundings. I imagine that this will be the same transformation I see on Fulton Street in another few years. I don’t mind upscale retail at all, just as long as I can find a spot to cop a pair of Dunks for $40 or less.
What really made me upset was how all these “invaders” were trying to get the drummers out of Marcus Garvey Park because they didn’t like the “noise”. White folks seem to always be bent on changing up your surroundings to match theirs.
Reminds me of this white kids I knew in my high school days that used to always try to change my radio station when they got in my whip.
@P-Matik: That must have been before Rush Hour and Chris Tucker informed the world “Don’t ever touch a black man’s radio!”
Yale is doing the same thing in New Haven. They’re like the Mafia in this town, no joke. While they sit on the edge of the hood, they’re trying to buy up that fringe land and push it back even further, expanding their empire. Yale=Manifest Destiny’s Child. Of course, once they read this (and they will) I shouldn’t be surprised when I don’t get accepted. Hahahaha.
Not sure if it was reading about more gentrification, but while reading this post I got the crucialest pain in my ribs, right under my left titty. Like it was trying to get my heart but since my heart is pretty much an ice cube it couldnt find it and it tried to get out. Through my lung and out my ribs.
I don’t know whether to be pissed at the class system and economics or to call the doctor lol.
DP dot com…the truth hurts.
I believe NYU and Columbia are among the biggest landlords of Manhattan. I know for sure that Columbia’s expansion was in effect since the late 90’s.
D, some times you can own your property but eminent domain will kick your behind out, especially when it is in the interest of the greater community.
P-Matik, there are signs throughout NYC Parks that states “No Drumming.”
It used to be that the Archdiocese held Manhattan real estate on some feudal lord type shit until all those under the headlines radar molestation settlements forced the Catholic church to divest from their land.
Now it is NYU downtown (a bit of me cries when I see the Palladium now) and Columbia on the northern tip.
Eminent domain can be thwarted by an politically active community. In all honesty though, the people that live right outside of the eminent domain footprint stand to gain tremendously from the spike in their land values so community activists end up fighting with the developers and the developers neighborhood association.
Word to imminent domain my job is in the middle of this right now. As the community organization that serves the low end, but we are being pressured by the high end new cats who will organize with a quickness, own property and have connects. We trying to get people jobs an education…they want us to deport the drug dealers to mexico and make sure the street never has any trash on it…all the while buying more property.
Real Estate is the crack game of the new century, every one is trying to get in on it and the ones that suffer are the ones buying in for their own use…..