Paper-pushing paper-pushers pushing persons

Here's what's most wrong with bureaucracy. The categories of right and wrong are budgetary items, not human concerns. Where the budget allows for discretion, no process is necessary. Through these little items, a world can be changed without accountability or transparency or process.

I spoke again to a Parks and Recreation deputy about the placement of the ping pong table in Tompkins Square Park to find out what their decision process was. Recall that Parks placed it right smack in the middle of the seating space that is used only by either a mixed group of homeless people or low-income people of color. It was uniformly avoided by the mainstream, the middle-class, the young white gentrifiers. For the homeless especially, this was a space to socialize with the only people who want to socialize with them, who like and respect them, identify with them: other homeless people. Socializing is an essential need for a social species. For some of these folks, it seems more important to them even than a home. The park is public; they have every right to be there. They are not criminal or disruptive; they are not less human than anyone else, or less a part of the public than anyone.

This was the second Parks deputy I've asked about the table. From his answer, it seems no one in the Parks Dept. knows that there even was a second ping pong table. They are in good company. The local Councilmember was not informed of it, neither was the Community Board. The Dept. deputy said that a ping pong table addition is a minor item.

That's evident from the lack of process, consultation with the councilmember and the community. I tried to explain to the deputy that while from the perspective of the Dept. it is minor, it might be an important matter to people, you know, human beings that are supposed to be served by the park and its administration. He responded that this was a minor decision. I tried again to explain that from the Dept.'s budget or definitions it may be minor, but for the people affected, it may be important. He responded, no, this is a minor decision. Then he complained that if the Parks Dept. consulted on every minor decision, nothing would ever get done.

In other words, they are clueless as to what decisions effect important changes in the park because they evaluate major and minor only through the budget lines. Driving the homeless from their socialization space is not a budget item in the Ping Pong Category Line. Social control has found its hiding place in the paper-pusher's pile.

The month before, a different Parks deputy suggested that the choice of placement was intended to drive away the homeless. That certainly is not minor. It's probably illegal to identify a specific, non criminal demographic for exclusion from a park without any process.

So either Parks is clueless or it is conducting gentrification and displacement through unaccountable means. Here's the map I presented to the Community Board. You'll notice the top right section "USELESS" indicates a roughly 2500 square foot space that is not only empty, but unused by anyone. no one goes there because there's nothing there, it's a dead end, it's not in a crosswalk. It's just a large, dead space in a park. It's an embarrassment to the administration. It's large enough for two or three ping pong tables. All it needs is a barrier -- row of benches, say -- to prevent ping pong balls from running into the basketball courts.

Talking this Sunday at OWS Altbank (Alternative Banking) Group on zoning and displacement

I'll be giving a talk on zoning, its consequences and how it plays out in local politics. Here's a brief outline.

The Amenties Dilemma

I'll be starting with what I call the "amenities dilemma": whenever some amenity that improves the quality of life is brought into a low-income neighborhood or ethnic enclave, whether it's better plumbing or a nicer sidewalk, it raises real estate values and attracts investment. It's not just a quantity of money that flows into the neighborhood, but the color of money, which is not green. Money in America is white, and it has an affinity as well as a color: it's drawn to more whiteness. Any improvement in a low-income neighborhood tends to whiten it and drive out the color. It's called gentrification and its consequence, community displacement.

Why should money harass the color out of a neighborhood? Is it greedy maximization of profit?

I dislike the use of "greed" as an economic explanation. It implies that there are some defective people who are to blame for what's wrong in the world. That sort of psychological essentialism -- some people are greedy, others not -- leads to a misunderstanding of how economies and societies work, and leads away from any meaningful solutions to its problems. What we call greed may be less affective, personal or psychological than mere opportunity. If there is no opportunity to make money out of some place, thing or person, people are pretty chill about that person, place or thing. It's when there's some kind of opportunity to gain from a place, person or thing that the feeding frenzy begins.

When the Lower East Side was an abandoned slum, it took my landlord eight months to bother to try to evict me for non payment, because the rent was so low that getting the rent or replacing me with another low renter was hardly worth the trouble. Today if I am five days late with my rent, the landlord files eviction proceedings and assesses a late fine onto my rent. Where there's money to be made, the pressure becomes irresistible and fierce.

The amenities dilemma -- leaving the ghetto in poverty preserves the community but ensures their poverty, while improving the ghetto just shifts the community to a new place of poverty (the dilemma was observed way back by Friedrich Engels in his "The Housing Question")  -- is the big problem for zoning designed to create affordable housing. That's what the talk is mostly about. But first I want to look at how zoning came about, what its goals were and are, and how it works.

The origin of zoning

In 1915, Equitable Life built an office tower designed to be the largest such space in the world. Taking up a huge lot, the building rose straight up 38 stories, casting a shadow a quarter of a mile. This was a time before Wall Street was covered with skyscrapers. The buildings there were much more modest and natural light was still available. Commercial buildings were structured to use natural light. Cast iron, favored for commercial buildings, allowed maximal window coverage with minimal structural support. The Equitable Building's shadow instantly depressed real estate values all around it. Landlords and real estate speculators throughout the city were terrified and infuriated, not just over the building, but the possibility that other corporate giants would build near their lots. The real estate industry demanded that the city respond with a permanent fix so that this never happen again.

The very next year the city implemented its first zoning law. Note that the city responded immediately. The disastrous 1879 Tenement Housing Act that created dangerous and unsanitary conditions in the ghetto wasn't fixed for twenty-two years. Zoning took a matter of months. The difference? Money and investors vs immigrant labor. Note also that the housing need for the ghetto was dangerous and unsanitary structural designs inducing life-threatening diseases and fire; the needs of the real estate industry were investment.

The zoning had two new requirements. One was a restriction on types of uses so that factories couldn't be built along residences. Factories bring noise and stench and worse, laborers, who are also noisy and smelly that destroy the real estate value of a residential neighborhood. The city came up with the idea of creating residential zones where commerce was allowed but not manufacturing. There'd also be commercial zones where some residences were allowed, and manufacturing zones where manufacturing and some commercial buildings but not residential buildings could be built.

The second idea was a design innovation. Any tall building had to attenuate -- as it grew higher, it had to be more slender. The idea was to prevent the skyscraper from blocking out all the sunlight, while still allowing developers to build big to cash in on rental space. This requirement of attenuation is easily visible in the most familiar and identifiable NYC skyscrapers. The Empire State Building took its design not from any fashion, but from the strictures of the law. In fact, the real estate industry hired an architectural draftsman, Hugh Ferriss, to interpret the legalese to the architects.

These gradual attenuations are called setbacks.

Both of these innovations were specifically designed to protect the interests of real estate industry -- landowners and developers.

Next up, tower-in-the-park zoning, modernism -- design with a social conscience and unintended consequences -- and developmental rights or how gov't creates property and value for the landowner out of thin air.

The mayor washes his hands on the backs of the homeless

Since de Blasio was voted in -- even before he was inaugurated -- the rich, the conservative and the middle-class comfortable have been more than grousing, more than worrying. They've been warning and predicting with the assurance of a street corner evangelist predicting Armageddon, that he'd bring New York City back to the "bad old days" of muggings and race riots.

Political executive office holders who win on a progressive ticket in this country feel compelled to show the rich, the conservatives and the comfortably middle class that their administration is not bent on destroying the fabric of society, increasing crime or allowing riots in the streets or desecrating their pristine neighborhoods.

Its a familiar story. Progressives overcompensate by being more reactionary than the reactionaries. I don't blame this on the progressive politicians. I blame it on the biased, bigoted, comfortable conservatives who complain about everything that doesn't directly benefit them and have zero faith in the potential of anyone but their own kind.

I received an email from the local councilmember passing along a particularly underhanded de Blasio effort to remove the homeless from sight under the guise of having the community "help" Homeless Services "help" the homeless. The administration wants you to identify homeless people on your street who might need "help."

To me this is just a way for the administration to harass the homeless while washing its hands of responsibility for it by blaming the community. The councilmembers no doubt can't push back against such an effort -- if they don't sign on, they look like they don't care about the homeless, and if they do collaborate, they gain the support of those who think the homeless are being helped by this city-wide street sweep of humans, as well as the support of those who just want the homeless removed from sight at whatever cost.

De Blasio already removed the homeless around the 9th Street walkway through Tompkins Square Park. Now it's getting anonymous residents to do the dirty work of fingering a homeless person so the administration can get credit for cleaning up the streets as well as "helping" the homeless.

In any institution or organization, those most vulnerable get pushed around. Denigrating them is often the license for the poor treatment. The homeless are the most vulnerable and the most easily denigrated. And out of sight, out of mind.

The consequences of unaccountability

The Parks Department closed the basketball court all summer to resurface it even though there were no complaints about the old court and there was no community need for a resurfaced court. The Community Board did not request a resurfacing. Calling it a "repair," the Department proceeded without consultation, consent, or process.

The Department also renovated the nearest basketball court on Avenue D at the same time, closing out basketball to the community youth for nearly the entire summer.

The placement of ping pong tables in the park was also done without process beyond finding a space. The installation of a police surveillance station: also without process or consultation. Both of these targeted the homeless in Tompkins Square Park who've been part of the park community for decades.

The police station was installed after an article appeared in which a new young white person complained about the homeless in the park. The article appeared in the New York Observer, owned by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who owns at least 36 buildings in the neighborhood. The homeless are clearly an obstacle to financial appreciation of his holdings and his vision for the neighborhood, one that is cleansed of anything but wealth and whiteness.

The park is the center of the Alphabet City neighborhood and community. It is being transformed without any accountability. I often hear the simplistic analysis that gentrification is the inevitable the result of global capital accumulation seeking a place to develop new markets. But gentrification doesn't happen without government complicity. Parks, development, real estate taxes, zoning restrictions, housing availability and regulation, services -- all these are within government purview. Gentrification is as much a policy choice as a pressure from capital.

The government in a democracy purports to be us. But when a government agency -- whether it's Parks and Recreation or the NYPD -- or the mayor himself changes the landscape without process, that's where gentrification gets in the door.

Marginalizing the Homeless

Last night I attended a town hall on homelessness and homeless services. As would be expected, the local electeds and the city administration spoke mostly about public safety -- they have to appease the local residential voters. Only Gail Brewer, the Borough President, addressed her comments to the needs, rights and interests of the homeless themselves. Props to her.

In the Q&A, a couple of middle-aged white men asked pointed, testy questions about public safety. A few graceful senior white women made constructive suggestions on how the homeless could be better served. Not surprisingly, the most trenchant comments were made by the homeless themselves -- several members of Picture the Homeless were present: Why doesn't the city ask the homeless what they need rather than funnel them into the modes convenient to the city. Why solve a housing problem with a policing answer? Why is all the affordable housing in the mayor's housing program way beyond the means of a minimum wage worker?

I complained to the council members present that the Parks Department continues to marginalize the homeless in Tompkins Square Park (Parks last month installed a ping pong table right smack in the middle of the space where the homeless regularly gathered), a public park that has been for many decades a place for the homeless to socialize with their friends, feel at ease and enjoy. They have every right to be there. What they don't have is the political clout to protect their right.

Afterward, a well-intentioned rep from a city agency said to me, giving me her card, "If any of your homeless friends aren't being served, please contact me." IOW, 'help me funnel your friends.' My take-away: the people who've been funneled are the people working for the city.

The city is focused on dragging street people off the street.into shelters. They wanted residents to be complicit in this, distributing to the audience maps for residents to pinpoint places where they could identify "problems" (aka a homeless human that the resident wants to have disappeared into the system). Presumably that gives the police the excuse to forcibly remove the human. Providing homes seems to be way down their list below the level of constituency politicking.

From shopping mall to political transformation

The protest in Turkey, like Occupy Wall Street, began with middle class discontent. OWS was ostensibly about money in politics, welfare for banks too big to fail and income inequality, but the pocketbook issues were student debt and unemployment. Critics thought these were spoiled, over-educated, middle-class kids, but we learned that they were economically and socially not the EV gentrifiers. When Penley tried to bring OWS to Tompkins Square Park, EV newbies howled and screamed: not in our backyard (here, also see the negative comments on Grieve's post.)

In Istanbul the protest started as a defense of a local green space from another shopping mall. It almost sounds like a bourgeois NIMBY story from Greenwich Village protesting NYU. Police repression fanned the flames into a much broader anti-government repression movement. But the central issue is still community self-determination. From RT: 

"...respect must come back to the political approach and implementation… That has to do with the way people feel fed up with the interference, micromanagement of their lifestyles." -- Istanbul-based political columnist Yavuz Baydar 

The Art Canard: artists bring gentrification, not!

Time to put to rest the tired complaint that artists gentrify neighborhoods.

In the 1950's and '60's, lots of artists moved into the Bowery. Many began to move out in the '70's and '80's, and most were gone by the 1990's. From the 1950's to the 1990's the Bowery steadily declined. Even the so-called Bowery renaissance (CBGB's, Amato Opera and the Bowery Lane Theater were active, but all around Bowery & Bond) had no gentrifying effect on the Bowery overall. When gentrification began when the Chystie Avalon opened in 2005, most of the artists had long been gone. In other words, there was no relation between the presence of artists and gentrification. Those are just the facts.

Also in the 1950's artists moved into the LES north of Houston, what's now called the East Village. Did the neighborhood gentrify? No, it declined. It declined for four decades. When did the neighborhood gentrify? When the entire city began to revive in the late '80's and especially through the Clinton boom.

Does it take forty years before artists gentrify a neighborhood? The presence of artists preceded gentrification in Williamsburg by about a decade. But notice that gentrification in Williamsburg began around the same time as the gentrification of the EV. And it sped up radically after it was rezoned under Bloomberg.

It empirical facts show unambiguously that artists have no effect on gentrification whatsoever. Gentrification responds to upswings in the economy and administrative efforts to capitalize on it. The renovation of Tompkins Square Park -- an administrative decision -- began the gentrification of the EV in earnest. The construction of the Chrystie Avalon, another administrative effort, ironically intended to bring affordable housing, gave gentrification its first entree into the Bowery, which had until then been considered an unredeemable skid row.

The role of capital accounts for the driving pressure of gentrification. Administrative decisions are the facilitator. It is a mistake to suppose that gentrification is inevitable. If the administration promoted development vigorously away from low-income neighborhoods, those neighborhoods might have a chance. Instead, DCP plans exactly the opposite. It seeks to spread gentrification through zoning throughout the city. Gentrification raises revenue, human beings be damned.