“A Bronx Community Bloomed After One Housing Crisis. Can It Survive Another?
In 1980s, a govt program helped Black families buy new homes amid fires and flight.
Now that generation is moving south, as the neighborhood faces a new threat: affordability.” newrepublic.com/article/164915…
“Washington has been a key figure on the block since she arrived, part of a cohort that bought low-cost homes through a city program in 1980s.
She is one of 3 homeowners in a single row—all Black women, seniors now—who’ve sold their homes this year and are leaving for the South”
“Their reasons are prosaic:
grandchildren,
the lure of mild winters,
wariness about rising crime,
lessons drawn from Covid-19 about the need to be close to family—but the fact of their departure notes the end of a season in the Bronx.”
“The chapter’s closed. And then, you know, it needs new voices. I’m like the old guard.
The old guard’s got to step aside so we can hear new voices,” Washington said, her voice still carrying the cadence of the South her parents fled in the 1940s.”
“When Washington and her neighbors moved to Prospect Avenue in the 1980s, the Bronx was just beginning to climb out of the devastation of landlord arson that was the culmination of redlining, urban renewal, New York’s fiscal crisis…”
“…and the perverse incentives of an insurance system that made buildings more valuable as fire losses than as places to live.”
“The homeownership initiative that helped Washington buy her home worked to stabilize the neighborhood, and it built wealth—Black wealth—for people more often exploited by the financial system.”
“Washington and her neighbors sold their houses at a profit and are using the wealth they accrued over 40 years to furnish another life, a good retirement.
Washington will use what she gained from the sale of her house to buy land she’ll farm in the South.”
“The days of fires and abandonment are well past in Crotona.
Instead, the neighborhood and the rest of the Bronx face a different crisis.
Property is worth too much.”
“Owner-occupied homes similar to Washington’s are being sold for their tear-down value and replaced with hastily built high rises that make someone else rich.”
“Century-old apartment buildings housing hundreds of working poor families attract international capital, private equity funds & corporate landlords, which conceive of the buildings not as places to live but as financial tools, shells for debt & leverage for greater acquisition”
“For the past decade, banks have underwritten mortgages on Bronx buildings worth many times the income the buildings produce in rent, an arrangement tempting catastrophe, the report found.”
“In Crotona, one in three tenants pay more than 50 percent of their income in rent, according to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU.
Breathtakingly exploitative conditions are common:
undocumented people renting unlit basements;”
“three-bedroom apartments subdivided into rabbit-warren firetraps;
and until recently, whole buildings turned over from rent-regulated housing to carceral and remunerative shelters to house New York’s massive homeless population, at fat reimbursements from the city.”
“the question is how the smoke from a third-floor apartment fire managed to fill the entire building within minutes.
Fire Commissioner said the apartment where the fire started had a door that didn’t close on its own, allowing smoke to quickly fill the building’s corridors…”
“The ownership group said the building did have self-closing doors, which are required by the city fire code.
The Philadelphia row house and the Bronx tower are linked by history as well.”
“How the Christian nationalist movement’s well-funded strategists are aiming at voters in Virginia and beyond for 2024.” newrepublic.com/article/164842…
“There are of many overlapping explanations for the recent transformation of US political life.
But the one that remains underappreciated in the moment is the role of Christian nationalist movement in establishing necessary preconditions for the kind of coup that Trump attempted
“The essential precondition—more important than money, more important than media, more important even than willing liars in high public office—is the existence of a substantial base of supporters primed to embrace a big lie.”
“One player was called a “Black b----” during the third quarter of the game at Russell O. Brackman Middle School while a second was told she was “homeless” on multiple occasions because she wasn’t wearing basketball sneakers.” nj.com/ocean/2022/01/…
“It’s reprehensible,” said Inzelbuch in phone interview.
“The fact that it was players and not fans makes it even worse. As reprehensible as (the racial comment) is, the other comment bothers me equally because a lot of these kids can’t afford certain things.”
“Barnegat Superintendent Brian Latwis said the comments should have been brought to the attention of the referees and coaches during the game “so they could be addressed immediately” and not by Lakewood first issuing a statement to the media.”
“Unemployment is low, wages are rising and the stock market is healthy.
But as long as prices rise, @JoeBiden could pay a political price in November’s midterm elections, which will determine control of both houses of Congress.” washingtonpost.com/politics/democ…
“Fifty-four percent of Americans think the nation’s economy is getting worse, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday, and many are blaming Biden.
Some 57% said they disapproved of Biden’s handling of the economy, while only 34 percent said they approved”
“Lake pointed to aspects of Biden’s signature #BuildBackBetter agenda that are popular with voters and would help bring down inflation — such as lowering the cost of child care, prescription drugs and elder care — but that legislation is stuck in the Senate amid resistance…”