7-Eleven and labor organizing

A critic of NO711 says that it's easier to organize labor in giant corporate stores than, say, in a bodega, so 7-Eleven would be better for labor than a bodega. 

But labor in a 7-Eleven is exactly as fragmented as any bodega -- two guys in a store with a manager. That's also true of Duane Reade, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway...the list goes on -- all the chain stores that NO711 is trying to resist. 

So this "organizing" argument is irrelevant. It's about big box stores like Walmart. Here's Human Rights Watch: "[Walmart] stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus." In other words, the larger they are, the more financial and legal resources to resist unionization.  And the more resilience to strikes. Why do you think labor organizes against Walmart? Because it's really bad for labor. Supporting giant corporations because it's easier to organize in them is like contracting hepatitis C in order to get on medicaid. Only an ideologue would be so stupid.  

One begins to get the impression that critics of NO711 don't have much upstairs. Think, guys. Take your slurpee straw out of your mouth....

7-Eleven and jobs

NO711 has pointed out that 7-Eleven, with its self-service model, minimizes employment. Here are the figures to compare.

[I've deleted a paragraph here. The information was not authorized. Please see instead this post.]

I ran into a local resident who owns a restaurant in the LES. It's a small space, single storefront (12.5 ft across). I asked him how many people he employs there. 20, he said. I asked how many are being paid at minimum wage. He replied with pride, none, not one. He went on about how important this is to him. It's an upscale place, so the waiters' tips are significant as well.

Since the restaurant is less than half the size of a 7-Eleven, he provides 4 to 6 times as many jobs as a 7-Eleven would in an equivalent space. 

I also looked at Fresh&Co, which is about the size of a 711: 20 people per shift, 2 shifts, including weekends, all behind-the-counter (no waiter/tips) and well over minimum wage (except the delivery guys -- they get tips so the law exempts them from the minimum wage, like waiters). Total: 56 full time equivalent positions, not counting delivery staff. It employs 5-8 times (!!) as a 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven is actually one of the worst franchises from a labor/employment point of view.

But this is kind of obvious, no? Huge store, self-service: minimal jobs, close to minimum wage. Isnt' that what 7-Eleven is all about? And corporate packaged junk food. What an asset to the global landscape!

7-Eleven and wages

It's important to consider what would replace a 7-Eleven on 11th and Avenue A. Since there are three liquor licenses within 500 feet of the site, it would be difficult for a bar owner to get passed the State Liquor License's constraints on license density. The next likely candidate would be a restaurant, judging by the local commerce in the EV. So how would a restaurant affect labor?

7-Eleven store associate hourly wage can be as low as $7.25/hr; $8.44 average (from Payscale and Glassdoor). 7-Eleven store associates are required to have English fluency: "Must be able to communicate clearly and effectively with customers and coworkers." They are also subjected to background checks -- no undocumented immigrants allowed.

Mean average for a cook's wage, nation-wide, $11.20/hr; median: $10.29/hr; lowest 10%: $8.14/hr (BLS). No language requirement, no background check. 

So replacing a 7-Eleven with a restaurant in NYC would improve the wage prospects generally, and specifically of immigrant workers, documented as well as undocumented. Unless it were a chain restaurant -- a McDonalds cook wage averages, according to Glassdoor, $7.41/hr. That's one reason among many, NO 7-Eleven is trying to curtail all giant chains and franchises. Minimum wage may be fine for a 16-year-old's first summer job, but not a way forward for labor in general. "The majority (66 percent) of low-wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations." 

Is it easier to organize labor in a giant corporation? Maybe (but maybe not). Giant corps also have greater political clout the larger they are, so there is a danger of promoting corporatocracy. In one way it's the meeting of Stalinism and libertarianism -- "free" market corporatocracy replaces the totalitarian state, the "internal contradiction" of libertarianism, trading one form of control (government) for another (corporate giants). Reminds me of a Maoist friend who voted for Giuliani thinking that his reactionary policies would spark a revolution. Instead we have rampant gentrification.

NO 7-Eleven, a grassroots movement resisting the spread of chains and franchises, is holding a neighborhood-wide meeting this Wednesday. Their goal is to require that all corporate clone stores, including banks, be required to obtain approval before opening a new location so the community can have a say in the number and location of corporate chains and franchises. Details below. Please spread the word.

MEETING

NO 7-ELEVEN

Limit corporate clone stores

before they limit our food, our commerce, our labor, our streets and our New York City character

7-Eleven is opening a new location on the corner of 11th Street and Ave. A in June. 7-Eleven already opened 32 locations in Manhattan and has an additional 100 stores on the way! If you are as concerned about protecting the East Village and future of the city, please attend

Next 'No 7-Eleven' Meeting

Wednesday April 24

6:30-8:00pm

93  St. Marks Place

(Btwn 1st and Ave. A)

Web: www.no7eleven.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/no7eleven

Twitter: www.twitter.com/no7elevennyc

New blog "Chinatown for Chinatown: a discussion board"

I started a blog about Chinatown planning called "Chinatown for Chinatown"
http://chinatownforchinatown.wordpress.com/

I've avoided blogging about Chinatown while I was involved with a Chinatown planning group. It's not the kiss-and-tell aspect -- I believe in transparency. But journalism gives the writer an unfair advantage within the group. It can bias the process or coerce it. But the Chinatown Working Group has mostly concluded its discussions, now waiting for its planning consultant to come up with recommendations to the group. So I can write as an outside observer.

I've asked several local voices and urban planners to post as regular guest bloggers. I'm hoping to see an open, broad discussion that will be of help to the planning consultants as they dig into the issues and challenges that Chinatown faces.

What's really wrong with the NYCHA plan

The complaints about NYCHA's infill losing park and air space are difficult for me to identify with. I grew up in Manhattan in a high-density urban street environment, like most Manhattanites. As a child I enjoyed that streetscape at least as much as the local public park. We played handball and boxball on the sidewalk, running around in alleyways, climbing fences. Still today I prefer to walk uptown on 1st Avenue, dull as it is, rather than walk through Stuy Town, which feels like a pristine, landscaped, anti-urban gated community. To me, the tenement street wall is attractive, comforting, neighborly and conducive to community, just as I far prefer tenements to the anonymity of elevator building compexes or the isolation of single family houses. 

So I was gratified to hear GOLES director Damaris Reyes' response last night to NYCHA's presentation to Community Board 3. She jumped on the real danger of the infill scheme: the dilution of the political base in the projects and its likely consequence, the erosion of political will to maintain the NYCHA tenants. Amidst all the NIMBY concerns -- one white gentleman with the most beautiful brown shoes I've ever seen, worried that the new rich tenants might crowd his child out of the better local public schools, a worry that drove home to me, no prejudice to him or his honest issue, just how far this community has changed -- Reyes was almost alone in speaking to the social issue of preserving the community. Bernard Marti also faced that issue, but he spoke in favor of the infill plan, expressing his hope that it would help the NYCHA properties so desperately in need of help. Everyone else demanded a better community process, which seems to me a diversion. We already know what the problem is -- the state has no commitment to public housing. How is a "community process" going to change that? 

You might object that, even without the infill, this neighborhood is developing and gentrifying anyway -- it's just a matter of time, and this infill will at worst speed it up by a few years. That's too coarse-grained an analysis. The poltical base here has remained in the older residential demographic despite demographic upscaling partly because the local housing stock of tenements is ill suited to permanent or family housing, and ideal for transient students and young singles. So the PS 64 transformation into a dorm will bring a lot of youth commerce (bars), but will not change the political base -- most students don't vote. The infill market-rate housing will bring permanent resident voters. 

I asked the NYCHA presenters privately why the state won't build the market-rate housing and give the profits to NYCHA rather than let a private developer build and own it and reap the profit. They explained that the state simply won't touch public housing. This is plain deceit on the part of the state: it builds prisons, and there's no question that prisons are, among other things, public housing, except it doesn't generate market-rate rental revenue. 

An answer for NYCHA's troubles

Our political office holders, assuming that there's no alternative to the NYCHA leasing scheme, are left complaining about the lack of "community process" on how to implement the infill leasing plan. But there is an alternative. 

Here's an op ed I wrote for Bowery Boogie explaining what the city and state can and should do. That they haven't done this suggests to me that the state has no faith in the future of public housing. That's scary. 

http://www.boweryboogie.com/2013/04/op-ed-looking-for-a-better-alternative-to-nycha-leasing/

(Bowerygals' comment on Boogie's site is also a must read.)

There’s been a furor over NYCHA’s plan to lease so-called underused properties to private developers, but there have been few alternative solutions offered. While everyone complains, the NYCHA tenants continue to suffer from hurricane damage and inadequate management. So complaints without solutions just won’t cut it.

Everyone on all sides agree that if the city would properly fund NYCHA, there’d be no need for this leasing scheme. And many are ready to fight to get that funding today. That’s heartening.

But it’s not the solution. Getting the funds today might be possible in this election year amidst the noise that the leasing scheme has raised, but what about next year, when it’s not a city election cycle year and the locals have forgotten all about NYCHA? Fighting for the funding means NYCHA tenants get services one year in every four. In between, they’ll be literally left in the cold.

NYCHA needs a steady, dedicated revenue stream protected from changing political winds, revenue that won’t be syphoned away from NYCHA and its tenants. And it needs a transparent process that will guarantee that the funds won’t disappear into someone’s personal pockets.

The current leasing scheme fails to meet that need from the start. The profit derived from the new market-rate units will go straight into private pockets by right, without even any political corruption or subterfuge. NYCHA is giving its own potential revenue away. Handing the people’s public property into private hands for their personal profit is the opposite of good government. It’s a travesty.

Why doesn’t NYCHA ask the state to intervene, construct the market-rate units itself, and give them to NYCHA? The state loves to construct — prisons, schools, more prisons. It’s easy for the state: issue a bond, the funds go to the huge construction industry, a state favorite, with lots of jobs. And market-rate housing yields a fast return, so why not? Years ago, when I sat on the CUNY Board of Trustees, I watched the state cut the tax-levy budget to shreds, but I never once saw the state deny a capital construction item.

That the city hasn’t asked and the state hasn’t offered suggests to me that neither really wants to save NYCHA housing at all. A 99-year lease will not generate enough for NYCHA’s needs in the future. Luxury housing might, if it were owned by NYCHA, not a private developer.

Should the state get into the business of luxury housing? Consider why government is viewed as a shabby landlord. Government is capable of managing quite well — look at libraries, rec centers and parks, all widely used. But when it comes to housing, government owns only low-income housing. It’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. If the state owned the Upper East Side, it would be rolling in dough and well able to maintain those properties with plenty to spare to keep up its low-income properties in style. But it doesn’t own upscale properties with surplus revenue and, let’s be honest, the city just doesn’t care about its low-income residents. Certainly that’s been true under the current city administration, its mayor and city council leadership.

The new market-rate housing would rob space and air and light. NYCHA must at the very least compensate for those losses with improvements in the remaining spaces so that they are better used and more appealing. More troubling is the danger of upscaling local commerce, outpricing the low-income tenants. NYCHA has to address all these issues as well. I wonder whether the NYCHA tenants would accept these as conditions:

1. The state should issue bonds to build the market-rate units, giving the units to NYCHA so all the profits stay in NYCHA and benefit the subsidized tenants
2. NYCHA should hire a decent architect (there are plenty of brilliant young designers aching to solve urban challenges) to redesign the remaining open spaces to make them greener and better used,
3. The city should subsidize a percent of the commercial space specifically for low-income consumer services
4. Let the current tenant community set out ground rules for public use — music, noise-making (upscale partiers make a lot of noise), barbeques and such — to minimize conflicts between the new and the old.

How to ensure a transparent process that will prevent corrupt officials from stealing NYCHA funds is tough one. It’s a challenge that has to be met no matter what NYCHA chooses to do.

No escape from luxury

Btw, this is the article that Yglesias was responding to:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephensmith/2011/09/29/does-urban-growth-have-to-mean-gentrification/

Smith doesn't assume an upper limit on luxury demand, he thinks the upper limit is reached when overdevelopment begins to lose its attraction. It's a scary thought: the rich lose interest in bland elevator buildings, so they raid the neighborhoods without them. Their presence attract their elevator-addicted friends, so developers construct for them and transform the neighborhood, driving the upscale to seek a hipper slum to raid. It's already happened here -- the Schwimmer Manse. 

Where to apply the Yglesias solution

Matt Yglesias has been arguing to remove zoning restrictions that prevent residential development and increase rents. It's the obvious answer to the misguided view that rent regulations raise market-rate rents. 

Adding supply lowers demand and price, but evicting regulated renters don't add supply since the evicted tenants remain in the renting pool (the piece I did for Met Council's Tenant/Inquilino explains this in more detail), so they just raise rents wherever they go in the locality. The only available means of adding supply, short of killing renters, is construction. As it happens, rent regulations are one of the very few incentives to construct housing: new housing, unless it's subsidized, is unregulated. 

Yglesias also points out correctly that if cities don't construct, a tight housing market gentrifies their older, lower-income neighborhoods, displacing whole communities. 

But what happens when the city constructs at a scale commensurate with its demand? Yglesias seems to assume there is a limit to demand. That might appear to be necessarily true, since there's a limit to global population. But one person can rent more than one unit, so any limit has to be found in the aggregate funds available for rents, and there's no reason to assume that that's necessarily limited, especially where there's fiat money, and that holds of just about every nation across the globe, even Europe if considered as a whole.

In most urban markets, the limit is reached through preference and employment opportunity. More people want to live in L.A. than in Detroit, and in particular, more people with more money want to live there, for a variety of reasons. Supply that preference demand, rents should decline, or should they? 

But not all markets have a limit. Some actually create more demand the more it is supplied. Bars are a perfect example. One or two local bars may suffice for a neighborhood. But if the neighborhood boasts many lively bars, it becomes a nightlife strip attracting non locals. The more the bars, the more attractive the strip to non local consumers. More supply=more demand.

Some cities have this attraction too. The more you construct, the more people live in the city, the more people want to be where those people are. People are themselves an attraction, especially among young singles actively seeking. So if New York abandoned its zoning regulations and constructed wildly, would market rents decline? Would the upscale leave older neighborhoods to themselves? Or would New York just grow, continuing to spread upscale development everywhere? 

If that's so, then the Yglesias recommendation won't help New York, unless other cities become more attractive and cheaper than NYC. The only hope I see to prevent gentrification of the entirety of this city, is recommending the Yglesias solution to other cities. 

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.

Sunday in the Park with NO 7-ELEVEN

We're going to chalk up the park at the Tompkins Square Park nonbandshell at 2pm and then take our chalk and our Community Wheel of Fortune to the corner of Avenue A and 11th Street, the site of the threatened 7-Eleven, and chalk up the street and talk to the passers-by who don't yet know what's coming to their neighborhood. Join us for some good old anti-corporate-anti-suburbanization-and-anti-Pringle-ization-of-our-souls-and-our-streets fun! 

Here's a video journalism piece CUNY TV did on us (NO 7-Eleven starts @ 12:45) --

http://219tvmagazine.journalism.cuny.edu/2013/04/10/march2013/

(Wissecracks about my apartment will be punished.)

Fun in the park

A bit of NO 7-Eleven with Rev. Billy in Tompkins Square Park Saturday from videographer Matteo Minasi

Daddy, where does community come from?

A brief history of how NO 7-Eleven got started. 

Ingrid meets rob on Ave B, one overcast September day. Ingrid: 

"Did you see that 7-Eleven is going to open on the corner of Avenue A? Is there anything the block association can do?"

rob thinks, there's not a chance in hell the block association can stop a 7-Eleven. So he says: 

"Well, I don't know, but we can have a meeting and see." After a few emails, the 11th Street ABC Block Association sets up a meeting for November 14. 

And then came hurricane Sandy. Basement apartments on our street were destroyed. Boilers busted. Circuitry ruined. No lights, no heat, no phone. But we still had a scheduled meeting to hold, so we added hurricane relief to the agenda. 

Big meeting; biggest meeting we'd seen of our Block Association ever. Who was there? All residents, some young, some old, some new to the street, but mostly old-timers from the '70's, artists, performers, poets and some ordinary working folks, even people who grew up on the street. 

Starting with introductions, we asked everyone what they wanted to discuss. No one wanted to talk Sandy. Everyone was there to oppose the 7-Eleven. 

That's how NO 7-Eleven began. 

Dept of I already told you once, papi, don't make me tell it to you again

a reminder

NO 7-ELEVEN and REV. BILLY

COME TO 

TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK 

Saturday, April 6, 1pm 

(7th St. btwn A&B)

FEATURING

The NO 7-Eleven Players, Rev. Billy and the Life after Shopping Choir 

&

The Community Wheel of Fortune w/prizes!

&

The 7-Eleven Dance Competition (for youtube)

AND

Two new plays especially written for this very special event!

"NO 7-ELEVEN!!" 

a tawdry tragedy 

by Sugar Di Abetes

AND

"NO 7-ELEVEN!!!!"

a dour comedy 

by Dewey, Cheatem & Howe 

*

COME ONE COME ALL!!

-nO tOmAToEs-

Dept. of Community Theatrical Transvestite Travesty

NO 7-ELEVEN 

COMES TO 

TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK 

Saturday, April 6, 1pm 

(7th St. btwn A&B)

FEATURING

The NO 7-Eleven Players 

&

The Community Wheel of Fortune w/prizes!

&

The 7-Eleven Dance Competition (for youtube)

AND

Two new plays especially written for this very special event!

"NO 7-ELEVEN!!" 

a tawdry tragedy 

by Sugar Di Abetes

AND

"NO 7-ELEVEN!!!!"

a dour comedy 

by Dewey, Cheatem & Howe 

*

COME ONE COME ALL!!

-nO tOmAToEs-

7-Eleven Legal Defense and Education Fund (SELDEF)

Here's the corporate defense of 7-Eleven with my comments:

1. It provides cheap food for low-income people.

"Let them eat Pringles!"..........

7-Eleven has 48,000 stores worldwide
more than any other retail store

What's this, the 21st century version of "Let them eat cake"? Literally: 7-Eleven promotes every form of sugar possible. 

2. There are empty storefronts in our neighborhood. We must fill them, and 7-Eleven will!

Filling the storefronts serves only landlords. Retail storefronts are not a driver of local labor and the neighborhood isn't lacking in food options. What we'v'e lost here is service variety because nightlife, chains and franchises have upped the commercial rents so that small stores like bookstores (for new or used -- anyone remember Paul's? I loved that bookstore), thriftshops, hardware, stationers&cardshops and curiosities can't stay or get in (does anyone remember places like Celtic Twilight in the 1970's? Where else in NY could you find a copy of Y Gododdin?).

Allowing chains, frachises and bars just encourages landlords to hold out for higher rents. The only way to bring rents down is taking the Big Gulp out of the landlord's hand: no more lifeline to candy, fat and liquor; do some service for the community. Since the neighborhood is dense, so plenty of services can thrive, and service providers will come if the rents ease off. 

3. 7-Eleven prevents gentrification.

There are 7-Elevens on the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, in the Scarano condo building the one professed "gated" community in the neighborhood.  7-Eleven didn't even arrive in the EV until after the neighborhood was thoroughly upscaled. 

4. Remove the corporate clone stores and they'll be replaced with fancy boutiques.

EV boutiques on 9th & 10th arrived decades ago when rents were cheap. New stores here are not SoHo-style boutiques. New storefronts here are usually either upscale food -- North Korean-style ice cream, artisanal water, Japanese-Canary Island fusion, 387 varieties of peanut butter served on rice cakes and no jelly -- or cheap fast food, felafel, pizza, Asian dumplings, bagels, or a cafe w/wifi, cafe w/wifi w/sandwiches, cafe w/wifi w/sandwiches w/cute singles. Which do you prefer? If you choose 7-Eleven, go back to item 1 above and see Marie. For me, I'll take a felafel w/humus, please. 

5. 7-Eleven doesn't exploit undocumented immigrant labor. 

7-Eleven doesn't employ them at all. The undocumented can die in the street for all the corporation cares. Or ex-felons desperately looking for a second chance. Giant corporate control from afar. It's taking over our streets, our lives, our work, our food, our future.  

The only defense left? You're addicted to the Big Gulp. Sarah's got your back --

The source of NYU confidence

The NYU faculty's vote of no confidence in its president is yet another public embarrassment for Sexton. I wonder if it will have any effect. The underlying problem for NYU is its limited endowment which has pushed it to rely on tuition expansion. So even if Sexton goes, their strategy will likely remain. If the state were to fund CUNY adequately, hire more full time faculty and eliminate its tuition, you'd see a lot less student interest in NYU, which is just about the only way to curtail that monster. But as long as the state and the federal government fund student loans instead of funding free state universities directly, the state will continue to promote the expansion of expensive private schools like NYU.

The trouble with Inclusionary Housing

The city purports to encourage developers to build affordable housing by offering them a bonus. If you build, for example, an additional story reserved for low or moderate income renters, you can build another story of luxury units above what the zoning allows. (That's a simplified version, but it's basically how it works.)

Back in 2006 a few of us predicted that developers wouldn't take the bonus because they'd find enough bulk without bothering with the Inclusionary Zoning bonus. That's because the city actually allowed a loophole in the zoning large enough to shove a buiding through it. 

The zoning allows far greater height than the base bulk allowance. So if a developer can buy air rights from an adjacent building, the developer can fill the height with luxury units and not bother with the affordable bonus. 

If the city had modulated the height caps with the bulk allowance, developers wouldn't be able to take advantage of air rights. But since the height caps are fixed and in excess of the base bulk, the city invited developers to buy air rights, encouraged it, welcomed it, pointed to it and ushered the developers to it. 

Important documentary

The Historic Distrcit Council is screening The Domino Effect, a documentary that everyone concerned about gentrification should see. 

Most documentary treatments of gentrification lament its consequences without examining the collusion between city adminsitration and affordable housing non profits. Non profits are funded to create affordable housing, but the city only offers it through cross subsidies that bring more market-rate housing than affordable housing, gentrifying the neighborhood and displacing community.

FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION: THE DOMINO EFFECT

with the documentarian of the film: Megan Sperry

Monday, April 29^th 6:00 p.m. -8:00 p.m.

Join the Historic Districts Council for this event, located at:

Neighborhood Preservation Center, 232 East 11^th Street, New York, NY 10003. 

$5 general admission. You must RSVP to attend. Please contact ashedd@hdc.org or 212.614.9107.

WILL YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD BE NEXT TO FALL?

The Community Preservation Corporation’s “New Domino” project—the redevelopment of the Domino Sugar Factory on the East River into a complex of 2,200 apartments and condos in towers up to 40 stories high—serves as the film’s case study for examining the complex politics of urban development in the 21st century.

http://thedominoeffectmovie.com/

Told through the voices of longtime residents, the film conveys the personal impact of gentrification while also shedding light on issues encountered by residents of cities all across the country. Why have decent jobs and affordable housing for the middle and working classes become increasingly scarce while gleaming towers of luxury condos, high-end retail, and offices continue to rise? What is at stake in the shaping of the 21st century city and how can we intervene to protect the neighborhoods we love?

This screening is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support is provided by Council members Margaret Chin, Inez Dickens, Daniel Garodnick, Vincent Gentile, Stephen Levin and Rosie Mendez.

NYCHA could do much better

I want to say again, the state loves to give money to the construction industry to build just about anything that can be justified and some that can't be. The state easily floats bonds to build prisons and colleges and just about anything in between except, apparently, housing. So why is NYCHA letting a private developer reap the profit on the Federally-owned NYCHA properties when the state could own the market units and syphon the profits to NYCHA buildings? It would provide a much more robust revenue stream than a 99-year lease. 

Minimum wage

In the discussion of minimum wage, I don't see a lot about wage subsidies. The Germans, who've managed several crises pretty well, use them. 

There's some empirical evidence that raising the minimum wage does not reduce employment (Card & Kreuger comparing NJ and PA). Most left economists see the additional consumer power of a raise will increase demand and therefore production and employment. But increasing demand also raises prices, which can cancel out not only the employment increase but also the increase in wealth at the bottom. A wage subsidy wont solve the latter, but it does solve the former. 

Integrity among bloggers

I've been polite and friendly in public in response to the critics of NO 7-Eleven (except one comment-in-frustration that included "THINK!"), but when someone states outright falsehoods and refuses to post replies that correct his blogposts, what should I do? What can I do? 

As a matter of integrity and fairness I have never moderated this blog despite many angry responses. I've even taken it on the chin when I've been corrected here -- take a look at the post about the rats in TSP. I was corrected, I was excoriated, but I didn't censor any of it. It's a matter of truth, fairness, openness and integrity. 

Antifragility in a fragile town

I  find in Taleb's new book Antifragility strong support for what I've been observing in Chinatown. The Asian American Federation study a few years ago found that East Broadway was one of the few sub-economies that was not harmed by 9-11. The older Toisanese commercial storefronts took a tough hit. Many closed. But not East Broadway. Why? Because East Broadway serves the local, recent immigrant Fujianese residents. They don't rely on tourism.

Chinatown was booming when residents, who mostly worked in Chinatown, would shop in Chinatown and ate in Chinatown, until the garment industry mostly dried up. But the Fujianese community still has that economic strength, driven by recent immigration. The glut of labor there depresses wages, but the high savings rate deflates prices, so they cancel out for the residents, and the high volume bolsters the local commerce. The threat to this balance is housing. That's where tenants advocates like CAAAV are essential to the overall well being of the neighborhood. 

Human beings are resilient -- antifragile. Tourism speculation and development schemes are extremely fragile. You see it in "developer's blight" -- the developer demolishes a building, digs a trench, then loses financing and leaves a big, empty, useless sore. You see it when tourists decide to go to China rather than visit the narrow sidewalks of Mott Street. Tourism is a trend, a fashion. It doesn't take a 9-11 to shut it down. It sways with the weather. But local residents have daily needs, and daily energy. They are the deep well of stability. When they leave, Chinatown leaves unless new immigrants replenish the resource. 

Chinatown has always been a dual community -- partly a clearing house for immigrants who live inexpensively, saving until they can move out of Chinatown to buy property of their own elsewhere; partly a community that has taken roots buying property within Chinatown. The latter community has become more fragile lately, threatening their sustainability, yet it's just as much part of the character of Chinatown. The new BID is intended to support that community, but it's an additional tax burden, and so you have to wonder who is the real beneficiary of the BID, the local community, or the banks that profit from the local commerce and will profit regardless who owns the properties or the businesses.

The purpose of an Economic Development strategy

Is the purpose of the CB3 Economic Development Committee to fill all the storefronts in the neighborhood, or is it to encourage commerce that serves the community and prevent commerce that harms the community? They are not necessarily consistent goals -- they can be, in fact, contrary goals.  

The goal of filling storefronts regardless of community needs seems to me to serve only landlords. It's not a local labor issue, for example. Stores in the East Village are not a significant driver of local labor. The EV is a residential neighborhood and, like most New Yorkers, residents work outside the neighborhood. What labor is here isn't in storefronts -- public schools, music schools, theaters. Nightlife employs a few locals, but storefronts are not and will not be a major driver of local labor. 

Landlords represent less than 1% of our community. And many landlords -- most of the large ones --don't even live here. Are landlords defaulting or abandoning their properties? I haven't seen that. It's more likely that storefronts are vacant because the landlord is demanding an exorbitant rent, not because no one would rent it. 

Back in the 1970's when I first moved to Loisaida, there was little commerce and virtually no money here. The storefronts were either occupied residentially, or by a social club or simply vacant. I vividly remember a friend one day having the idea of sewing spandex shorts -- spandex was new then. She found an empty storefront on 7th Street off A, and without asking anyone, set up a sewing machine in it. In a few days dozens of local kids - five, seven, eight years old -- were all running in and out of her dark little storefront helping her sew spandex shorts. A little piece of heaven. 

A month ago I presented the NO 7-Eleven program to Community Board 3's Economic Development Committee. They raised several intelligent and important questions -- on what basis would a community board accept one formula store and reject another? Can 7-Eleven offer a good deal to the franchisee or a better option to a bodega owner?  But one comment puzzled me: "There are many vacant storefronts that corporate formula stores could fill." I just don't see why vacant stores should be a concern for the community board in a neighborhood full of money. It's almost unbelievable just how much money there is in the EV. And landlords are reaping that money hand over fist. Residential rents are astronomical. So why worry about filling the landlords' storefronts? 

There are commercial problems in this neighborhood. The students and young singles who bring most of that money enjoy living here in large part because of the nightlife. But older residents complain about the noise and disruption from bars. For a while bars were replacing local services and it became harder to find those services. Older residents were afraid that they might lose their supermarkets. 

Those are genuine community concerns, genuine community conflicts that require some kind of oversight and balancing. I can imagine a community board strategy of filling all the vacant stores with local services that are welcomed by the community. But simply to ensure that storefronts be filled doesn't seem to me to merit community board effort or concern.

The situation in Chinatown, for example, is quite different. There, in the older Toisanese community, property owners are having trouble meeting the real estate taxes, with so many rent regulated residential tenants. Their commerce doesn't have the high volume of the recent Fujianese immigrant commerce on East Broadway, so they often look towards higher-end, more tourist-friendly commerce. That's a fragile program. But the EV, with Daddy NYU supplying new renters every year, the worry is not how to fill stores, but how to fill them with something that best serves the community. If there's no oversight or resistance to formula stores, giant corporations will answer that from afar. 

NO 7-Eleven Truth

Some folks have been purveying nonsense about NO 7-Eleven, so I'm going to post a series about what this effort is really all about.

First, it's not just about 7-Eleven. We're trying to get the city to adopt a zoning amendment that would prevent corporate formula storefronts from opening unless the local community board allows it. It would cover anything from Duane Reade to Chase Bank to The Gap -- any store that has 11 other clones in its corporate model.

The intention is not to eliminate all corporate formula stores. The zoning amendment would allow the local community to have a say on how many those stores should be in their neighborhood and where they should be located. After all, formula stores have a place and a useful function. But not everywhere and to the exclusion of everything else.

Other cities have such requirements. And it's been successful. It slows down the commercial rent raises -- chain stores can pay higher rents than mom and pops --and it resists corporate control, corporate growth, corporate management from afar of our labor, streets and neighborhoods.

NO 7-Eleven is not a panacea. It won't prevent gentrification or upscaling of neighborhoods or lower tuition at CUNY or improve your schools or end war. But there are a lot of good reasons to resist corporate control, and if we don't start to resist, corporate spread will not stop here. 7-Eleven is planning 100 more stores in the next two to three years. And that's just 7-Eleven.

NO 7-Eleven and the soda ban

Now, someone says that NO 7-Eleven is against the >16 oz sugary drink ban. This complaint strikes me as moronic, but I guess we have to explain this, since there are morons.

NO 7-Eleven thinks the ban unfairly promotes 7-Eleven and its aggressive campaign to add 100 new stores in Manhattan. People think that the conveneince store exemption doesn't unfairly benefit 7-Eleven because 7-Eleven competes with other convenience stores, not with restaurants and movie theaters. This analysis is not moronic, it's just thoughtless. Pizza places, Chinese take-out places, bagel stores, cafes, felafel places -- 7-Eleven competes with all of them, but 7-Eleven offers the Big Gulp, those others couldn't under the ban. So the ban would have given 7-Eleven an unfair advantage. You go to 7-Eleven for your Big Gulp, and what do you see? They offer pizza there. QED

Does that mean that NO 7-Eleven supports >16oz drinks? Silly rabbit. Of course not. Our objection is to the unfair application of a ban that promotes a corporate store over its competition.

Look, the ban doesn't prevent consumers from drinking sugary drinks. It just directs them to 7-Eleven where the Big Gulp is emblazoned all over its marketing. So the ban doesn't promote health. It promotes 7-Eleven.

Moron.

(Sorry for the verbal abuse, but really, sometimes comments are so rabid and thoughtless.) My personal view on sugar-based beverages: producers of corn syrup should be desubsidized and the corporate procurement of sugars in production should be heavily taxed. Then the burden would be on the corporations, not on low-income consumers (corporations couldn't pass on the cost without losing market share), and it would encourage corporations to find cheap alternatives to refined sugar-based beverages.

7-Eleven and gentrification

An objector to NO 7-Eleven thinks that somehow 7-Elevens prevent gentrification or that restricting 7-Elevens will lead to the East Village becoming a gated community.

7-Elevens have appeared on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. The Scarano condos, the most upscale development on the Bowery, boasting a "gated driveway" -- it doesn't get closer to a gated community in this neighborhood -- has in its commercial storefront...yes, a 7-Eleven. 

So if 7-Eleven doesn't prevent gentrification and appears in the most upscale environments, would restricting 7-Eleven lead towards a gated community? Suppose SoHo-type boutiques or more upscale restaurants move in where 7-Eleven wasn't allowed. Would they drive out rent regulated or subsidized residents? 

There's no mechansim between commercial upscaling and evicting rent regulated and subsidized tenants. The pressure on tenants already exists in the residential market, since the EV is already upscale. But even NYCHA's plan to build market-rate housing doesn't threaten subsidized housing -- it's intended to maintain it. 

Restricting corporate formula stores will drive low-income residents to search harder for fast food options and rely more on supermarkets which provide both cheaper and better food than corporate formula stores. So that is the burden. But maybe low-income residents will discover the 6th Street Community Center and its healthy food co-operative. Sounds like a happy ending. 

7-Eleven and labor exploitation

Many commenters object to NO 7-Eleven because, according to them, bodegas employ undocumented immigrants and may pay under minimum wage, while 7-Eleven doesn't pay under minimum wage. But 7-Eleven doesn't employ undocumented immigrants at all -- 7-Eleven subjects employees to background checks (it's on their website).  So 7-Eleven is in no way better for the undocumented. 

Exploitation of undocumented immigrant labor cries out for a solution, but corporate formula stores like 7-Eleven are not providing that solution in any way shape or form. They also don't hire ex-felons and parolees -- many having accepted plea bargains under duress of inflated charges and then incarcerated for non violent crimes -- who now are trying to construct a normal, decent life for themselves. Corporate stores will not employ them. Mom and pops often will. 

The cycle of inflated charges>plea bargain>prison>parole>prison is one of our nation's worst and most racist human rights violation. That alone is a reason to curtail the spread of corporate formula stores and support local stores. Decent people deserve a second chance. 

Will the real NO 7-Eleven please stand up

A commenter has been misdescribing (purveying falshoods, actually) about NO 7-Eleven. He won't publish my corrections on his blog, so I'm compelled to correct him here. 

For the record: the active members of NO 7-Eleven consist of a couple of well-published local poets who also teach college, several painters, several performers, a photographer, several working moms, including the owner of a thrift shop, and the rest work for non profits or for some other boss, like most New Yorkers, outside the neighborhood. No one in NO 7-Eleven is in the food business. 

Almost everyone in the group has lived in the neighborhood since the 1970's, a few only since the 1980's. Two are more recent, but one of those is married to someone who's been here since the 80's. That's who we are.

Build, don't lease

There are two arguments for building market-rate housing on the federal land leased NYCHA: 1) it'll pay for maintaining the NYCHA housing, 2) it could ease the gentrification of older housing stock in the neighborhood. The second holds a risk -- bring more market-rate tenants and you might raise surrounding real estate values, upscaling the neighborhood even further. To the extent that the EV is already upscale, I'm more worried about the Smith Houses' proximity to Chinatown, especially with the closing of the Pathmark for a huge entirely private luxury development there.

Having the city move into upscale development doesn't bother me. If the city owned all of the Upper East Side, the city would be overflowing with surplus with which to manage low-income housing in style. What bothers me is the 99-year lease in this scheme. Why doesn't the city ask the state to build, own and reap the profit of the market-rate housing?

Years ago I was on the CUNY Board of Trustees as a student rep. I saw with my own eyes that state never once rejected a construction proposal from the university. They build and redisign stuff in CUNY constantly. Some of the projects are huge. The state loves the construction industry -- big money, big contracts, lots of jobs. Look at prisons. And it's easy for the state. Just float a bond, and the money's there. In the case of luxury housing, it's even easier, since the return is faster than a college or a prison.

None of the elected officials I've talked to have shown any interest in working on an alternative to the NYCHA leasing scheme. Have they all drunk the koolade?

NO 7-ELEVEN!!

Speaks for itself:

That huge construction shed on the corner of 11th and Ave. A is prep for a 7-Eleven. The neighbors aren't sitting for it. Look for more chalkings and city-wide organizing.