What’s wrong with the Bronx? We are. Those of us who live here are the problem, according to a widely-circulated piece of punditry in The New York Times.
“The Bronx’s inability to catch up with the rest of the city’s phenomenal economic growth has been disconcerting,” writes columnist Adam Davidson, in an article headlined “Why Can’t the Bronx Be More Like Brooklyn?”
“In the early 1970s, the Bronx and Brooklyn had similar average household incomes,” Davidson writes. “Since then, though, the gap has grown significantly. The average Brooklyn resident is now around 23 percent richer than the average Bronxite.”
How come? Because the Bronx “became, by the late 19th century, a haven for immigrants.” It “developed far fewer wealthy areas, and many neighborhoods became devoted to less-gentrifiable housing units.”
That’s a triumph of circular reasoning. There’s an income gap because poor people live in our borough.
Worse is the assumption that gentrification is the way to bridge the gap.
Davidson may not remember it, but in the early 1970s, when that income gap began to grow, the Bronx was on fire, and the fires were in no small measure the result of deliberate public policy.
Robert Moses pushed the poor out of Manhattan, building Lincoln Center in what had been a working class neighborhood, for example. He pushed them into the towering Housing Authority complexes that are so plentiful in Mott Haven.
Then, first Washington turned its back on cities, and then City Hall turned its back on the Bronx. In 1973, Moses told The Times that the South Bronx was a slum, “beyond rebuilding, tinkering and restoring.” It must, he advocated, “be leveled to the ground.”
Davidson and the many others in the city’s elites who share his point of view think the only way our borough will prosper is if many of us move out, to be replaced by people of greater wealth and more sophisticated taste.
Similarly, Robert Moses couldn’t imagine that the very people he had consigned to the rubble of the burnt-out South Bronx could have the vision, the ingenuity, the gumption and the persistence to rebuild. But that’s what happened and is continuing to happen.
Grassroots organizations like Nos Quedamos, Banana Kelly and the Mid Bronx Desperados resisted efforts to displace residents. They found ways to rehabilitate and rebuild their neighborhoods’ housing stock, work that continues.
Other organizations, from the Bronx Committee for Clean Air to the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality to Friends of Brook Park have labored to improve our quality of life with new parks and greenways and cleaner air and water. The Bronx River Alliance rescued a river; the Harlem River Working Group intends to rescue another.
Much more is needed. Our school system short-changes poor children, and the Bloomberg and Obama formulas of more and more tests make things worse. Gangs and gun violence prey on our neighborhoods.
But when people come together to promote change, they can make a difference, as the successes of the past have shown. Those efforts provide another way of measuring the Bronx’s future—a better way than counting the borough’s money.
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“That’s a triumph of circular reasoning. There’s an income gap because poor people live in our borough.” This is not circular reasoning, it’s why the Bronx was invented, as a place for people of modest means to live decently. The question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing.
Hi Dart….It is how these poor people live….not the fact that they are poor.
Are they out of work and cleaning out the tree pit of a beautiful flowering tree that was placed beside there brand new apartment with granite counters and hardwood floors? no…probably not….
The reason lies squarely with elected officials. So long as the Ruben “We rather not have jobs” Diaz types continue to prune the Bronx for their own political benefit (keeping it poor, ignorant and segregated, their core consituents), the Bronx will never change. The borough’s economic engine is in lower-working class housing. That is not an economic engine, but don’t tell that to our local officials.
Until we get real leadership, nothing of any substance will change in the Bronx and we should all resign ourselves to that reality. In 2025 we will be like Brooklyn in 1997…believe it.
agree with you!!
I read in (I think) Mayors Bloombergs 2030 PLANYC
that if the affordable housing is situated close to a train line 30% of the subsidized programs money could be saved on transportation and instead spent on clothes and TV, Phones etc.therefore helping the economy???
That’s really dissecting the lower-working class housing
as your economic base.
whats wrong with the bronx…really do you have a week to listen…im here since 78…and both husband and i work..im in ne bronx a suposeibly working area …i want to know why is it if i move and ive got to pay 16 or 17oo a month why my credit is checked…and why is the guy across the street on section 8..in his brick house!!!..i find it ironic…and the landlords who rent out their 3 family houses rent to sec 8 and then the place goes to hell….y ,,because these people have NOTHING to do all day long but play music…run in and out all nite long…sorry but if you need sec 8 ok..fine,,but when you have 6 people in a one bedroom apt theres a problem the landlords dont care its a money thing..it just pisses me off because i have to have my credit checked to live in a house and sec 8 shows the check..its totally amazing….
I know how you feel, their are so many illegal uses of these subsidized rents. I lately heard of a very common use of NYCHA Apartments. The one legal rental….on disability…rents each room for 125.00 cash a week to 4 people. that’s 500.00 cash in his pocket.
While he is living free…
I lived next door to a woman who had 3 children on her lease….her boyfriend moved in, then his motor cycle, there were what appeared to be drug sales, then drag racing….luckily her daughter got pregnant for the second time after the first abortion and she moved out with her child on her own subsidized program.
Then they all moved…..I am in peace after 7 years of that. (by the way this is an illegal 3 family which also encroaches 15 by 100 feet of our street).
Also I know a woman with 7 children who got her apartment, moved in her boyfriend, mother in law and another man…when the landlord got fed up they stuck him with 6 months rent and now are in a homeless shelter in Hunts point.
They are waiting for NYCHA to accept them…but no one gets a job. Her 3 boys get disability because of (Eating lead paint) but it is really a genetic learning disability and they attend special schools.
she had the 7th child after her tubes were tied…she was supposedly pregnant before the tubes were tied?
by the way this woman with the 3 kids had such bad asthma that she got disability for that and her daughter got it for not being able to read. The mother smoked like a chimney had 6 or more animals at all times and was admitted to the emergency room on a regular basis….
I grew up in The Bronx of the 1970’s though the 1990’s and I am proud of the rebuilding and growth my beloved city has accomplished. There is more to be done but let’s be proud of who we are and were we come from!
While most others my age and younger joined the “White Fight” I dug in and bettered my neighborhood. BUT!! it is an ongoing time consuming chore. There are not enough police around to enforce all the laws that are being broken each day at our expense.
Melinda, I agree, I lived there in the 50s and 60s. From around l968 or so things were going down, I’m not talking about the South Bx. only. I lived in the W. Bronx, and started to see a shift starting around that time. I can’t tell you how it hurts my heart to have seen what you described above beginning.
It’s just common sense, I can’t say too much here, but it breaks my heart.
P.S. What happened to the Concourse area since then is a disgrace.
its more the politicians fault, they don’t care about our neighborhoods, they let any one dump their unwanted projects in our neighborhoods. we are a dumping ground for drug programs, homeless shelters,the criminally in sane, sexual predators , you name it our politicians will gladly take them . they don’t inform the people that elected them. when we get real leadership then we will see our way out of this mess
If you notice it is not only about dumping these people in our neighborhoods….but surrounding them with the “FREE” or “Subsidized” programs that support their habits, abuse, rehab, medical, dental, Pharmaceutical Psychiatry, etc.
Our neighborhoods have become one big REHAB center.
There is no enforcement of rules in many of the Parks which are dedicated (By the Parks Department and elected officials) as the Parks where the “Undesirables and Outsiders” will be further away from their daughters and wives ex.;Ferry Point Park.
And (oh by the way)….Yes there is still an underlying prejudice in the Bronx which brings out the feelings of “don’t give them anything more” and conversely….”They are not giving enough”….
creating a tug between people who end up with a mess of costly bureaucratic bullcrap between them.
When large projects are accepted “As of Right” by our “Leaders”….they are so involved in “What’s in it for Me” that they through the neighborhood surrounding the project “under the Bus”.
If I had not fought for 2 years to keep the 5 facilities that connect to the future “Iroquois Pipeline Extension” from Brush Avenue….with the existing Con Ed connection on Brush Near the old Cinema site….how much development do you think there would be????
Pepsi & Target would not have purchased the sites, and the future mall at the cinema site would not either.
Yet they do not fix Brush Avenue infrastructure to hold the weight of the vehicles or the traffic.
Hundreds of TNR groups run around trapping Cats and rescuing dogs “For Free” yet there is little accommodation for the animals to be adopted and sheltered.
We need a Bronx 24 hr 7 days a week shelter.
All Greenways should be connected and Bike share should be added to the Bronx….starting with secure sites.
Waterways should be accessible and children should be routinely taught about the deteriorating plastic floatables and the affect on the fish they eventually may eat.
I believe that low income is not something that defines a persons character. I have met more low income people who I would trust with my life, money or posessions that I have “Wealthy” people.
BUT…low income people do not have the support of “Money backing them”….Money runs the election….election put our “Leaders” in power. The next rung up the ladder for them costs MORE MONEY.
Who are they going to help next????
As long as there is not a definite limit (enforced with research)on the donations to elected officials….we are screwed…..
OK I’m done with my frustrated opinions….
Enjoy your day….but watch out for the thousands of gallons of our clean city water that is being pumped into the empty streets morning through night in the NYCHA housing areas…..sprinklers are on but no one shuts them off….(FREE WATER ….but we pay for each gallon)
We in the Bronx are stuck in an economic time warp. At one time the Bronx had a thriving economic base and a thriving if not small manufacturing base, but that was in the 1930’s. Since then, the Bronx has been the victim of the “vision” of Robert Moses; the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Bruckner Expressway. These two highways serve as a bypass for traffic away from local neighborhoods. Couple that with the relocation of businesses to places with cheap labor and of course the deliberate abandonment of housing by landlords, and you have a recipe for disaster. Since the Koch administration, the plan has been to privatize and eliminate all city services and replace them with private firms to deliver services instead. The Bloomberg administration will put the final touch to this long term plan and shut the door for any change that will challenge the elites as represented by their paper “The New York Times”. However, we can change this course, if we act swiftly and decisively. We have to rely on our assets of human and educational capital as well as apply “out of the box” thinking. We also have to change the political culture in order to facilitate these changes. We can no longer afford to rely on the same political and economic ideologies to save us from disaster when they were the ones that got in this situation in the first place.