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Housing
Contents
Apartment Houses > Before
the Tenement Housing Options in the 1860s > Tenements
> Public Housing > Housing
Abandonment > Gentrification > Homelessness
> Immigrant Housing today > Housekeeping
in the Tenements > Rent, Wages and
the Cost of Living
Gentrification
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Lower East Side
was regarded by many as one of the most undesirable places to live
in the city. According to some, the neighborhood was blighted and
decaying, plagued by crime and drug abuse and littered with abandoned
buildings and vacant lots. Historically a home for generations of
immigrants, the Lower East Side continued to welcome thousands of
new Hispanic and Chinese arrivals. Little more than a decade later,
however, long-time residents began to witness a change in the character
of newcomers to the neighborhood. Since the 1930s, urban planners,
real estate developers, and city officials called for the renewal
of the neighborhood and its redevelopment as a middle-class enclave.
Beginning in the 1970s, developers found an interested population
in students, single-persons, and members of "alternative"
cultures who were attracted by the neighborhood's cheap rents and
gritty character.1
With the advent of a burgeoning East Village arts scene and a shift
in the structure of New York's economy towards the professional
service sector, the Lower East Side became a "hip" place
to live for young, white middle-class professionals working in the
financial, real estate, and insurance industries. Tenement apartments
that had suffered severe neglect and even abandonment underwent
substantial renovation as developers targeted this growing population
of potential renters. In addition, municipal policy in the 1980s
encouraged the change in residential population from low-income
immigrant or migrant to middle-class young white professional. City
programs encouraged building improvements such as new windows, furnaces
and boilers, hallway renovations, brick facing and intercom systems.
The construction of new luxury apartments and the emergence of a
landscape of trendy boutiques and cafes mirrored the renovation
of existing tenements.2
Since the early 1990s, the pattern of gentrification that began
in the area surrounding Tompkins Square Park in the East Village
has been migrating inexorably southward. Over the course of the
last decade, the Lower East Side has lost over 8,000 units of low-income
housing, with a simultaneous loss of residents in the lowest income
group and an increase of those in the highest income group. In addition,
rent levels have risen faster than household income in the Lower
East Side. Today, a studio apartment can rent for as much as $2,000
a month.
Hundreds of low-income families, unable to afford the neighborhood's
rising cost of housing, have been displaced. Particularly vulnerable
are the area's Hispanic residents, who have experienced the most
dramatic decline in population. According to some experts, the trend
of gentrification has worsened since September 11 as increased real
estate speculation prevents city and community organizations from
addressing the housing needs of low-income families. Viewed in this
light, the Lower East Side that has served as a home and workplace
for generations of immigrants threatens to become little more than
a historic tourist symbol of America's welcome to immigrants.
1 Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, "A Divided Community: A Study of Gentrification of the Lower East Side Community, New York (New York: Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, Inc., 2004).
2 Ibid..
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