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This article reads like a paean to a place in the author's nostalgic imagination. The NYC of the past that he describes was dirty, filthy, and downright dangero

This article reads like a paean to a place in the author's nostalgic imagination. The NYC of the past that he describes was dirty, filthy, and downright dangerous. I grew up there at the tail-end of that era, and it wasn't a place to glorify. What paid for this crime cleanup and quality-of-life improvements is in part the same wealth he pans. Not to mention that billionaire absentee ownership has almost no impact on housing availability for the average person. Instead of articles like this I'd love to see one about how to improve housing policy to accommodate a wider cross section of the population, or sensible reforms to tenancy laws that protect the vulnerable while not making it impossible to build new housing.

the_af 8y ago
> The NYC of the past that he describes was dirty, filthy, and downright dangerous The author does address this, and states he doesn't long for this part of the past: "Those of us who have been in New York for any amount of time are immediately suspected of nostalgia if we dare to compare our shiny city of today unfavorably, in any way, with what came before. So let me make one thing perfectly clear, as that old New Yorker Dick Nixon used to say, and list right now all the things I hated about the New York of the Seventies: crime, dirt, days-old garbage left on the street, cockroaches, the Bronx burning, homelessness, discarded hypodermic needles on my building’s stoop, discarded crack vials [...]"
- andrewjl 8y ago
  You can't have one without the other! I.e. someone has to pay the garbage men.
keiferski 8y ago
...and yet, culture-wise, Manhattan is still basically selling and living on "the dream" created by the cultural output of the 70s and 80s. There is no real artistic or cultural activity in Lower Manhattan anymore - it's simply too expensive for normal people to live there. Edit: Added (Lower) Manhattan (which was the epicenter of most NYC culture 60s-80s).
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  > There is no real artistic or cultural activity in Manhattan anymore I don't know if this is true. Hell, I'm pretty damn unhip and I even know a number of artists/musicians/writers living and working in Harlem.
  - keiferski 8y ago
    Sorry, I meant Lower Manhattan. Harlem itself is rapidly gentrifying as well.
    - mimiflynn 8y ago
      Mind being more specific about where in Lower Manhattan you are referring? Lower Manhattan is quite a large space in regards to differing cultures, that further clarification would be helpful.
      - keiferski 8y ago
        I'm not sure what exactly your question is, sorry. Can you clarify? My only point was that lower Manhattan 30-40 years ago was a vastly more affordable and artistically-inclined place. Just read the Greenwich Village Wikipedia page for an example: In the 20th century, Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the Bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. Greenwich Village has undergone extensive gentrification and commercialization;[9] the four ZIP codes that constitute the Village – 10011, 10012, 10003, and 10014 – were all ranked among the ten most expensive in the United States by median housing price in 2014, according to Forbes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village While there still may be a lot of arts and culture going on in Lower Manhattan, it is unquestionably a pale shadow of its former self. Don't take my word for it: David Byrne (of Talking Heads): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/new-york-1percent-stifles-creative-talent https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/new-yo... Moby: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/03/leave-new-york-for-los-angeles https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/03/leave-...
gridaphobe 8y ago
> sensible reforms to tenancy laws that protect the vulnerable while not making it impossible to build new housing. The author also addresses this point, or rather exposes it as a non-issue. > One common belief, even in many liberal circles, is that the cause of these outrageous rents and prices is the very government intervention that was intended to ameliorate them: rent regulation. This notion might have some validity if, say, rent regulations in New York stifled construction. But they don’t. New buildings in the city are not subject to rent control and never have been.
- jhj 8y ago
  When as a NYC renter it is impossible to live in near half of the rental housing stock at any price due to de facto permanent tenancy, this only pushes up the price of the housing that is possible to rent (the exempt buildings). Instead you get people in their 20s, 30s and 40s living in market rate apartments carved into multiple illegal bedrooms, places without a certificate of occupancy, illegal conversions and other shady situations. Rent regulation help defines the price point of the new buildings, and many of the same tenants living in rent regulation are the constituency fighting for downzoning and against new construction. Rent regulation also contributes to mansionization and other reduction of housing stock. At least we have as-of-right development of some kind unlike SF, albeit to ludicrously low zoning limits in many places. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people spend hours every week commuting under neighborhoods in Manhattan that are full of 4- or 6-story buildings when they should really be 20- or 30-story buildings that the commuters can live in instead (the Villages, I'm looking at you). It's impossible to tear down a building with permanent rent regulated tenants and build a higher one without massive buyouts; the buyouts raise the price for any new housing that gets constructed in its stead. Instead, you only get sufficient new construction in places like Williamsburg, LIC, Jamaica and the far west side is because there isn't as much political pushback from such permanent tenants in place.
- andrewjl 8y ago
  That's not even close to showing it as a non-issue. I'll share one example, what happens if a landlord of an older / aging building filled with rent-controlled tenants wants to tear it down and replace with newer and denser construction? Can they just evict the tenants? If not, then that parcel of land is effectively unbuildable. Multiply that by how much rent controlled housing NY has (quite a bit) and it's not difficult to see how it impacts creating of new housing.
zukzuk 8y ago
Your comment starts with "This article reads..." yet you seem to not have read the article.

the_af 8y ago

> The NYC of the past that he describes was dirty, filthy, and downright dangerous The author does address this, and states he doesn't long for this part of the past: "Those of us who have been in New York for any amount of time are immediately suspected of nostalgia if we dare to compare our shiny city of today unfavorably, in any way, with what came before. So let me make one thing perfectly clear, as that old New Yorker Dick Nixon used to say, and list right now all the things I hated about the New York of the Seventies: crime, dirt, days-old garbage left on the street, cockroaches, the Bronx burning, homelessness, discarded hypodermic needles on my building’s stoop, discarded crack vials [...]"

andrewjl 8y ago
You can't have one without the other! I.e. someone has to pay the garbage men.

keiferski 8y ago

...and yet, culture-wise, Manhattan is still basically selling and living on "the dream" created by the cultural output of the 70s and 80s. There is no real artistic or cultural activity in Lower Manhattan anymore - it's simply too expensive for normal people to live there. Edit: Added (Lower) Manhattan (which was the epicenter of most NYC culture 60s-80s).

electricslpnsld 8y ago
> There is no real artistic or cultural activity in Manhattan anymore I don't know if this is true. Hell, I'm pretty damn unhip and I even know a number of artists/musicians/writers living and working in Harlem.
- keiferski 8y ago
  Sorry, I meant Lower Manhattan. Harlem itself is rapidly gentrifying as well.
  - mimiflynn 8y ago
    Mind being more specific about where in Lower Manhattan you are referring? Lower Manhattan is quite a large space in regards to differing cultures, that further clarification would be helpful.
    - keiferski 8y ago
      I'm not sure what exactly your question is, sorry. Can you clarify? My only point was that lower Manhattan 30-40 years ago was a vastly more affordable and artistically-inclined place. Just read the Greenwich Village Wikipedia page for an example: In the 20th century, Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the Bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. Greenwich Village has undergone extensive gentrification and commercialization;[9] the four ZIP codes that constitute the Village – 10011, 10012, 10003, and 10014 – were all ranked among the ten most expensive in the United States by median housing price in 2014, according to Forbes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village While there still may be a lot of arts and culture going on in Lower Manhattan, it is unquestionably a pale shadow of its former self. Don't take my word for it: David Byrne (of Talking Heads): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/new-york-1percent-stifles-creative-talent https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/new-yo... Moby: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/03/leave-new-york-for-los-angeles https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/03/leave-...

gridaphobe 8y ago

> sensible reforms to tenancy laws that protect the vulnerable while not making it impossible to build new housing. The author also addresses this point, or rather exposes it as a non-issue. > One common belief, even in many liberal circles, is that the cause of these outrageous rents and prices is the very government intervention that was intended to ameliorate them: rent regulation. This notion might have some validity if, say, rent regulations in New York stifled construction. But they don’t. New buildings in the city are not subject to rent control and never have been.

jhj 8y ago
When as a NYC renter it is impossible to live in near half of the rental housing stock at any price due to de facto permanent tenancy, this only pushes up the price of the housing that is possible to rent (the exempt buildings). Instead you get people in their 20s, 30s and 40s living in market rate apartments carved into multiple illegal bedrooms, places without a certificate of occupancy, illegal conversions and other shady situations. Rent regulation help defines the price point of the new buildings, and many of the same tenants living in rent regulation are the constituency fighting for downzoning and against new construction. Rent regulation also contributes to mansionization and other reduction of housing stock. At least we have as-of-right development of some kind unlike SF, albeit to ludicrously low zoning limits in many places. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people spend hours every week commuting under neighborhoods in Manhattan that are full of 4- or 6-story buildings when they should really be 20- or 30-story buildings that the commuters can live in instead (the Villages, I'm looking at you). It's impossible to tear down a building with permanent rent regulated tenants and build a higher one without massive buyouts; the buyouts raise the price for any new housing that gets constructed in its stead. Instead, you only get sufficient new construction in places like Williamsburg, LIC, Jamaica and the far west side is because there isn't as much political pushback from such permanent tenants in place.
andrewjl 8y ago
That's not even close to showing it as a non-issue. I'll share one example, what happens if a landlord of an older / aging building filled with rent-controlled tenants wants to tear it down and replace with newer and denser construction? Can they just evict the tenants? If not, then that parcel of land is effectively unbuildable. Multiply that by how much rent controlled housing NY has (quite a bit) and it's not difficult to see how it impacts creating of new housing.

zukzuk 8y ago

Your comment starts with "This article reads..." yet you seem to not have read the article.