EXCLUSIVE: NYCHA residents see little benefit from gentrification in their neighborhoods, report shows
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, October 12, 2015, 2:30 AM
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ANDREW SAVULICH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSNYCHA residents often end up feeling like outsiders in their own neighborhoods because of gentrification, the report shows.
Do you speak "public housing?"
The city hired five NYCHA residents to work as urban “interpreters” who gathered information for a $250,000 report that reached a conclusion most New Yorkers already accept as true: gentrification doesn't help the poor.
The study, "The Effects of Neighborhood Change on NYCHA Residents," written by the consulting firm Abt Associates with help from New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate, found that NYCHA tenants often wind up feeling like aliens in their own neighborhoods, surrounded by newcomers who claimed they'd just "discovered" the neighborhood.
“NYCHA residents could be priced out of new private amenities and new, higher-income neighbors may not contribute to accessible community resources,” the report reads.
The document was finished in May — the same month Mayor de Blasio announced his version of a controversial plan to build hundreds of market-rate apartments on "underutilized" NYCHA property.
NYCHA spokeswoman Aja Worthy-Davis defended the plan.
“By building both affordable and mixed-income housing, we will protect NYCHA housing, expand affordable housing options for everyday New Yorkers, and bring small businesses and services like supermarkets and restaurants closer to NYCHA developments,” she said. “We will in turn use this growth to connect NYCHA residents to new employment opportunities.”
But the pricey report by the Maryland-based firm concluded NYCHA residents felt they’d seen little benefit from gentrification so far.
"The study confirms what those in public housing have seen with their own eyes: gentrification offers a lavish living to a privileged few while leaving NYCHA residents behind with nothing more than a remnant of their former purchasing power," said Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), who chairs the public housing committee.
JEFF BACHNER/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSNYCHA tenants shares their views at a town hall meeting on the NextGen Neighborhoods Development Program.
He scoffed at the pricetag that came with such conclusions.
"Did we really need a six-figure study to tell us that gentrification imposes a crushing cost on NYCHA families? We could have learned that by speaking directly to the residents themselves," he said.
The study was prepared by Abt staffers with the help of the five “community ethnographers” whose "insights also improved how the Abt team members understood and interpreted interactions in the neighborhood, alerting us, for example, to subtle cues and language on issues from banking to drug traffic," according to the report.
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Abt acknowledged the tenants "did not have prior experience with this particular kind of research," but said they "brought their personal histories and an understanding of the neighborhood."
They examined three developments in economically diverse neighborhoods: Sedgwick Houses in stubbornly poor Morris Heights in the Bronx, Queensbridge Houses in the rapidly gentrifying Long Island City, and Elliott-Chelsea Houses in Chelsea, which long ago transformed from a working class area into a playground of the rich.
The team of researchers and locals did walking tours of each neighborhood and reported 42 instances of "public space observation and on-the-spot interviews," conversations with 23 NYCHA families and six focus groups with NYCHA residents and community members.
Their conclusions are as depressing as they are obvious.
The study found that in the past, NYCHA developments used to be mostly located in areas with persistent poverty. Due to real estate trends most now sit in either "increasing income” or “high income” neighborhoods. Those are neighborhoods where the average income is greater than the city's median income of $51,865.
ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGESIn May, Mayor de Blasio introduced a plan to build hundreds of market-rate apartments on "underutilized" NYCHA property.
Tenants at the three developments made clear that in general, NYCHA tenants usually don't get the jobs at the new upscale stores that spring up around them.
To make things worse, they find the mom-and-pop restaurants, retailers and Laundromats they'd patronized for years are soon replaced by upscale versions they can't afford.
The study noted there was also no guarantee that the upscale gentrifiers would send their kids to the often lousy public schools in the area NYCHA residents' children attend or even buy milk at the local bodega.
Newcomers "may opt to send their children to private schools and support new grocery stores that may include only expensive fare, out of the financial reach of NYCHA residents," the report read.
The most extreme version of this unhappy dynamic emerged at Queensbridge Houses, where hundreds of new upscale condos have sprung up a few blocks south in the last decade, bringing in new amenities like improved streets and fresh produce.
Residents there "felt that these improvements were meant to benefit new condo owners, often called the "runners and bikers" in the neighborhood, “rather than NYCHA residents."
They noted "disparities" between the quality of housing and groceries nearest NYCHA versus the condos farther south. They "felt that condo residents — and not NYCHA residents — are the impetus for and primary beneficiaries of the changes."
Queensbridge tenants and staff at job placement centers in the neighborhood "did not feel that the changes to the neighborhood's economic landscape, such as new hotels and corporate headquarters, have translated into increased local opportunities for NYCHA residents."
At the Chelsea Houses in Manhattan, tenants often felt that the gold rush caused by the influx of luxury condos and art galleries into the neighborhood starting some 20 years ago has passed them by entirely.
GO NAKAMURA/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSCouncilman Ritchie Torres said the city didn't need to spend big money on a study that shows gentrification is hurting NYCHA families.
"NYCHA residents do not feel they are benefitting economically from the neighborhood's increasing development and are very concerned about affordability," the study found.
Residents and community groups say they've pressed developers and new upscale stores to hire from the projects, and have asked the city to help keep affordable restaurants and stores from being forced out by rising rents.
"There are no mechanisms to help mom-and-pop establishments where NYCHA residents used to shop and services they use (like Laundromats) stay in business, and few jobs at the new retail establishments seem to materialize for NYCHA residents," the report found.
The influx of money into the neighborhood did yield some benefits, though. NYCHA residents in wealthier neighborhoods often have higher incomes on average and benefit from lower crime rates and fewer housing code violations than residents living in developments surrounded by persistently low-income households.
NYCHA officials also pointed out that in Boerum Hill and the Upper East side — where the city will embark on its first mixed-income projects on NYCHA properties at the Wyckoff Gardens and Holmes Towers — income inequality was already in place.
The children of NYCHA residents in these higher income neighborhoods can wind up attending public elementary and middle schools with higher standardized test scores.
But even that glimmer of hope was offset by a particularly searing passage about a future in which NYCHA residents share space with a growing number of affluent newcomers.
One particularly searing passage states, "As disparities between NYCHA residents and their neighbors increase, NYCHA residents could become stigmatized or isolated from the surrounding neighborhood."
With Stephen Rex Brown
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Public housing was designed as temporary assistance for people who were down on their luck, not for permanent housing for generations of the same family.
Why/how should residents benefit economically from an improving neighborhood? God forbid the surrounding schools improve.
"Stigmatized?" The government has already taken care of that by convincing people on welfare that it's okay.
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