Housing: The Hidden Issue (New York City)

The richer they get in Manhattan, the more poor people are evicted in Brooklyn. Gary and Virginia have lived at Berkeley Place in lower Park Slope, Brooklyn, for the past 29 years, almost since moving to the United States from Trinidad in the late 1960s. It's a peaceful neighborhood of oak trees and brownstones, a neighborhood of middle-class homeowners near the park and immigrant renters farther west, families who shop together at the local food co-op and pride themselves on being a comfortably diverse and socially aware community. It's not the kind of place you'd expect to see old people and little kids being put out onto the street. But the times they are a-changin'. As the housing market just across the river in Manhattan has become unaffordable to anyone but the very rich, young stockbrokers, publishers, and doctors with money have had to look elsewhere to spend it. They've flocked to New York's outer boroughs, snapping up sleepy brick buildings in places like Park Slope (where about 25 percent of the neighborhood's housing stock changed hands over the past decade, according to a study by the 5th Avenue Committee, a tenant advocacy group). This has driven up prices there, too--and in their wake, rents.

Publication Date: 
2000
Issue: 
Dec. 4, 2000
Journal Name: 
The American Prospect