Brigitte Zamzow

This book provides insights in how the lack of coherent social policy leads to the displacement of vulnerable low-income families in inner-city neighborhoods facing gentrification. First, it makes a case for how social policy by its racist setup has failed vulnerable families in the history of U.S. public housing. Second, it shows that today’s public housing transformation puts the same disadvantaged socio-economic clientele at risk, while the neighborhoods they call their homes are taken over by gentrification. It raises the powerful argument that the continuing privatization of Housing Authorities in the U.S. will likely lead to greater income diversity in formerly neglected neighborhoods, but it will happen at the expense of vulnerable families being displaced and resegregated further outside the city, if no regulatory planning measures for their protection are initiated by the government. By providing a solid empirical portrait of public housing in New York City’s Harlem, this book provides a great resource to students, academics and planners interested in gentrification with specific concern for race and class.

The Making of Mixed Communities as a side-effect of transforming public housing stock, intended or unintended, is a highly contested discourse. Recommending policy changes includes the notion that the government needs to step in again by ensuring deep-affordable housing options outside market forces, if a mixed community by income and race is truly wanted.

Central Harlem is the second highest gentrifying neighborhood in New York City after Williamsburg/Greenpoint (The Furman Center in State of New York City’s housing and neighborhoods in 2015, 2016). Whereas Harlem was predominantly black well up until the 1980s, demographic change has come along with the newcomers into the neighborhood.

Do neighborhoods matter?, ist ein soziologischer Diskurs, der seit fast 30 Jahren um die Frage kreist, ob sich die Wohnumgebung eines Individuums negativ auf dessen Lebenschancen auswirken kann. Man geht hier von der Beobachtung aus, dass sich die Armutssymptomatik räumlich in Stadtteilen mit spezifischen Merkmalen konzentriert. Die Nachbarschaftseffektforschung will testen, ob die Verringerung dieser Merkmale zu besseren Möglichkeiten für die benachteiligte Bewohnerschaft führt und unter Umständen sogar sozialen Aufstieg ermöglicht. Stadtpolitisch- und planerisch tut sich die Frage auf, ob soziale Kontakte zu neuzuziehenden Familien mit höherem sozialem und ökonomischem Status eben diesen sozialen Aufstieg ermöglichen. Denn ein Aufbrechen konzentrierter Armut durch eine soziale Mischung scheint naheliegend. In diesem Beitrag wird anhand der nach wie vor maßgeblichen Arbeiten von William Julius Wilson nachgezeichnet, wie sich Armut als strukturell und politisch gesamtgesellschaftliches Problem lokal auf dem Niveau der Nachbarschaft manifestiert. Wir stellen den Teil der Nachbarschaftseffektforschung vor, der speziell zur sozialen Mobilität Daten erhoben hat und zeigen, dass benachteiligend wirkende Effekte des Wohnkontextes auf Individuen wiederkehrend dokumentiert werden. Es wird auch gezeigt, dass der Zuzug sozioökonomisch bessergestellter Familien die konzentrierte Armut zahlenmäßig räumlich aufbrechen kann. Was jedoch noch immer zu belegen bleibt, ist der soziale Aufstieg benachteiligter Familien, herbeigeführt durch ihren Kontakt zu den Neuzugezogenen. Nur durch Sicherung dieser Kausalität ließe sich sicherstellen, dass politische Instrumente, die auf Nachbarschaftsebene soziale Mischung erzeugen, auch tatsächlich brauchbar in der Armutsbekämpfung sind. Als Beispiel wird abschließend das Programm „Soziale Stadt“ angerissen, dass seit einigen Jahren versucht, Armutsprobleme allein auf Nachbarschaftsniveau und ohne staatliches Instrumentarium zu lösen. Wir kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass gesamtgesellschaftliche Probleme wie Marginalisierung, Diskriminierung und Armut nicht allein auf Nachbarschaftsniveau und durch soziale Mischung gelöst werden können.

This chapter shows empirical evidence in support of the claim that a third razing of a black community due to gentrification pressure and lacking public policy might be forthcoming. The interviews suggest that the privatization of NYCHA housing stock affects its tenants not so much by direct displacement, but has indirect long-term effects.

This contribution is derived in parts from the master thesis 'Deconcentrating Poverty in American Inner Cities? Public Housing Policy's Impact on Black Low-Income Families in Rapidly Gentrifying Harlem, New York City' which was awarded the DGS prize for outstanding theses in 2018. The article relies primarily on the New York City government and NYCHA's published 'Affordable Housing' information to determine which clientele will benefit from the planned new public buildings in Harlem. Affordable Housing may be one way of strengthening public control on Global Cities. However, affordable housing will not be created for the poor and marginalized inhabitants of the city within this set of policies. This is why social housing must be protected in order to maintain and create a healthy social mix within the city.

This paper puts the Tower in the Park Concept that was made responsible for the failure of modernism in the historical, political and social context of the 1950's until the 1970's. First, the rationale behind mass housing blocks will be rediscovered. The author will demonstrate that mass housing blocks did not fail to provide clean, affordable housing and even led to bonds that formed a community within. In a second step, she will prove that the social isolation caused by politics and economic changes led to a deterioration of living conditions. The author shows that it is shortsighted to assume that the urban design alone led to the concentration of poverty in inner-city neighborhoods. With the help of the 'Disadvantaged Neighborhoods' approach, she will explain the fact that the neighborhood itself had a disadvantaging effect on its inhabitants. The research gap the author contributes to is on the current question of the impact of the built environment on the community. The aim of this paper is not to disregard critique by the users for mass housing at all, but rather to promote an in-depth hermeneutic approach to avoid generalizations about urban designs in the future. New York City will be used as a case study because here, up until today, public housing within Corbusian towers exhibit functioning communities, despite global fiscal pressure and national privatization efforts affecting the city.

This master thesis focuses on the interrelation of public housing policies and concentration of poverty in hyper-segregated American inner cities known by the name of 'Urban Renewal' and 'Slum Clearance' in the 1930's and 1960's, and currently 'Neighborhood Revitalization'. The thesis' hypothesis is that the privatization of public housing in Harlem, New York City will lead to a third collapse of a black community, resegregating and reconcentrating the most vulnerable to less desirable areas with less infrastructure, less access to available jobs and desolate housing conditions, affecting inhabitants depending not only on their class, but also their race. It thereby reproduces racial hierarchies by empowering elitist stakeholders, letting them create enclaves of 'whiteness', even if they intend to do that within a ghettoized neighborhood.
Earlier in the century, poverty-ridden neighborhoods were attempted to be uplifted through installment of public housing, but due to systemic racism, this led to further concentration of poverty inside public housing projects. It contributed to a deteriorating inner city and forced Harlem into a ghetto. Especially distressing is the fact that it ensured that people of color were not able to flee these circumstances to the suburbs as whites were capable of. Twice in New York, poor black communities were broken apart by demolishing and rebuilding public housing installments. It will be argued that this phenomenon happens today again by leasing and selling off public grounds step-by-step to private developers who intend to build “affordable housing”. This housing is not affordable to affected black public housing tenants, but to the newcomers and therefore contributes to the tenants' continuing displacement.
In order to validate the findings through empirical research, two anthropological methods will be applied: Participant observation and in-depth interviews. The findings will be analyzed with Philipp Mayring's Qualitative Content Analysis. Having attended numerous Committee Board Meetings in Harlem, which are a government advisory board at the most grassroots level of the city and are quite unique in the US-American urban landscape, having visited public housing sites and talked to tenants the investigation will be complemented by interviewing a community advocate and two experts on public housing and affordable housing. The gathered data will be backed up with the 2015 Furman Center Study and data collected by the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) from 2014.

The debate on social mix lies at the intersection of disadvantaged neighborhoods and gentrification research. Also, current public debates around activists and concerned tenants criticize that the city accelerates gentrification with its top-down insertion of higher-class clientele.  The other side argues that a social mix promises to alleviate poor families out of their misery: The literature argues that services will return and a better habitus which will then lead to upward mobility for the disadvantaged and the neighborhood is deconcentrated from poverty (Byrne 2003 or Chaskin 2010 or Goetz 2003). However, this way, not the actual reasons of poverty are being treated and the services are not provided in favor of a social democratic reasoning of the city but because it caters to a consumerist middle-class lifestyle (Zukin 2013). Whoever of the poor can follow, will be able to gain social capital, the others will be isolated and displaced.
The current social mix debate lacks one significant factor: the understanding of the agency of the disadvantaged/working-class community. While the discourse usually sets a middle-class lifestyle as a normative model for all working-class and low-income families, the community’s individual ideas of what a ‘good' life means to them is a different story altogether and will be the center of this investigation. The center of the data collection will be the ‘green’ infill development in the Bronx at Arbor House 770  and/or a development site where the new buildings has not yet been established, as in the planned infill development at 120 3rd Avenue, in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn or the Holmes Towers on the Upper East Side.

This book provides insights in how the lack of coherent social policy leads to the displacement of vulnerable low-income families in inner-city neighborhoods facing gentrification. First, it makes a case for how social policy by its racist setup has failed vulnerable families in the history of U.S. public housing. Second, it shows that today’s public housing transformation puts the same disadvantaged socio-economic clientele at risk, while the neighborhoods they call their homes are taken over by gentrification. It raises the powerful argument that the continuing privatization of Housing Authorities in the U.S. will likely lead to greater income diversity in formerly neglected neighborhoods, but it will happen at the expense of vulnerable families being displaced and resegregated further outside the city, if no regulatory planning measures for their protection are initiated by the government. By providing a solid empirical portrait of public housing in New York City’s Harlem, this book provides a great resource to students, academics and planners interested in gentrification with specific concern for race and class.