The story is that 4 “thirty-something hipsters…including a well-known illustrator and designer, and a Vogue Australia scribe” bought a building on Bergen between 6th Ave and Carlton that is home to 5 rent-stabilized units. And the people who live there.
The law is that the owners can evict the residents for “personal or family use,” and that’s what they’re trying to do.
The new owners are artists, which has surprised some people:
“You’d think as artists these people would basically have better politics but they’re basically building their dream house on the backs of long-term rent-stabilized tenants,” [Brent] Meltzer [a lawyer for one of the tenants] said. “When they bought the building, they got it for that price [$866,000 in 2006] because it came with five-rent stabilized tenants.”
The comments on this Village Voice article aren’t too surprising - poor people have it easy, poor people have it hard, why would you think artists would have good politics? et cetera.
What seems interesting to me is the value or culpability that gets attached to “coolness”:
Yeah, those damn poor people. They have some nerve paying their rent, with regular rent increases, and living in a neighborhood that no one wanted to live in until Mr & Mrs Yuppie & their partners decided that it was “cool” and bought a building below market rate. And some of those tenants are senior citizens. How dare they not just move out onto the street because a greedy couple doesn’t have enough to satisfy them.
Coolness is a funny thing. Sometimes when something is trendy it is because it is a good thing that can really improve the world (the sustainable food movement?) or sometimes it is trendy because it helps people feel better than other people (remember bling?), and most of the time it’s some of both (um, like both of the above examples).
OK, but what I’m really getting at is the fact that every cultural convention we have started as some kind of cool trend… whether it became cool because it helped people not die as often or as quickly (hygiene, vaccinations, etc.) or because it helped people not be disfigured freaks (not sleeping with your cousin - what’s cooler than that?).
And right now, gentrification is cool. Thirty-somethings are coming of age who were raised by baby boomers. The baby boomers thought the coolest shit was to get rich and move to the suburbs. The thirty-somethings think the opposite is cool. And the baby who is raised wearing Sonic Youth onesies will eventually grow up to be a proper lady.
Gentrification clearly affects peoples lives in a much more serious way than baby fashion. And this type of gentrification is possible because of free-market capitalism and our legal system. The whole way our society is set up means that whoever has the most wealth will get to fuck the most people. And there are way richer people than these artists who have inevitably made these artists feel victimized before… but in this situation the artists are clearly doing the fucking.
And people who’ve grown up poor are obviously the ones who get fucked over and over again by this system. Councilwoman Letitia James was at a block party/rally to protest the attempted evictions. Which is great. Support your electorate.
Pic from Village Voice
But it’s hard to be totally into it when the most recent decision to come out of City Council is a ban on metal bats. Not anything about renters, eminent domain, or evictions. In a situation like this it’s really only a change in law that could keep these tenants in their apartments. Or in the next building that this happens to, to keep the tenants in their apartments. And so on…. And what happens when all those yuppie owners/livers are her electorate? That must be a scary thing about being an elected official in a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood. Huh.
Because it is a trend, and it seems unlikely that case-by-case advocacy could change that. If it could, would we have ever seen another publicly fucked-up celebrity after 12 year-old Drew Barrymore finished rehab?
No.
Pizappas,
I do not know you, but my guess is that you live in Brooklyn, and that you are originally from somewhere other than, and probably very far form, either spatially or psychologically, NYC.
If we did not allow rent control to be challenged, if we did not fill 7th ave with trendy stores, coffee shops, and brooklyn industry stores, and if we did not fill prospect heights, park slope, and all the other “gentrified” brooklyn hoods with white people who look a lot like you, I’d bet my rent controlled UWS apartment that you would still be living in Stamford or Providence or Greenwich or wherever you are probably from.
Many parts of Brooklyn that are today home to young, creative, hard-working, and productive New Yorkers, native or not, were not that long ago places where you would not have felt comfortable walking around in by yourself, let alone ever consider living in. Sometimes, gentrification is a good thing.
If smart people didn’t buy undervalued property and kick stupid people who have been plodding through life on government handouts to the curb, much of the things that add comfort and pleasure to your life would most likely be missing. And remember that rent control is blind, so for ever Harry Moron who makes 15K a year and gets kicked out of Manhattan only to move to Brooklyn, then gets kicked out of Brooklyn when that turns nice only to move to Newark, there is a Mr. and Mrs. SmartnResourceful who make a combined 550K but only pay $500 a month in rent for a duplex in the West Village cause they took the time to read the law and learn how to make it work for them.
I am not quite sure what the point of your post was, but I know I didn’t agree with it and it mad me mad.
Ruff,
I definitely feel lucky to be a hardworking non-native New Yorker living in a rent-stabilized apartment. And like you, I’m not sure what the point of my post was, other than to raise questions and issues that reading that Village Voice article brought up for me.
Clearly, the law favors the owners’ right to kick out the people who have been ‘plodding through life,’ and I definitely think that it is valuable to notice and think about what will happen afterwards (both to individuals and neighborhoods), and what the trend means for local elected officials, and what the trend and the trend of resisting the trend means for all of us native/non-native, hardworking/lazy, white/nonwhite, priveleged/poor people who live in Brooklyn.
I totally commend people who take the time to read the law, and I hope that they can make it work in their favor. The above post is an example of one time when the law did not work in the favor of the poor people living in 533 Bergen.
I’m just glad someone’s kicking out those old people who sometimes have been at these places all their lives. Loafers…living on social security and medicare. Mooching off the government. Who they think they are? They’re just taking up prime real estate for poor art kids. Society needs that art, and they need a place to live! Everyone wins!
I’m exaggerating. I mean I’m in a slowly gentrified neighborhood and I walk the extra block to the strangely all white cafe’, complete with 5 dollar coffee drinks. At the same time, I think there’s a difference between gradual changes in a neighborhood, and a group of landlords who participate in shady practices to kick people out who are living there legitimately under all the rules and guidelines provided to them.
I’m not completely up to date on the amount of rent controlled apartments, but I’m fairly sure there is a diversity in neighborhoods between rent controlled apartments and non rent controlled apartments. So it’s not like the neighborhood is stagnant because there are 5 tenets in a building that are in a rent controlled apartment.
There’s a process in place to remove the status of being rent stabilized/controlled, and I don’t see what’s wrong with that process.
Finally, a post that stirs some dissent among the Skeptic crowd. Now, this is a free country. Artist who happened to have some money came in a bought a building. They own it; they are free, without the boundaries of the law, to use any and all means to evict hold-over tenants who don’t want to leave. A paternalistic state, New York has some of the most severe rent-controlled and-stabilized laws in the country. Many think these are outdated laws and empirical studies prove they artificially drive up the costs of those paying market. Like the dependent rent-controlled tenant who, after years of controlled living and dependency upon bad law, rightfully bitch (I can’t blame their reliance at this point) when they get the boot, so, too, do market tenants have a right to bitch about their costs. By parody of reasoning and with an even stronger rights-based theory, property owners are free, by and large (NY has so many convoluted laws), to get rid of those paying below market and/or do whatever they want with their property. It’s a fundamental right. That right – the right of ownership – trumps any leasehold claims. This is the Lockean theory that animates our Constitution.
This isn’t injustice; it is America. And it is what makes America great. You can work hard and reap the rewards. In this instance, some artists bought some property – good for them. Not all artists have to be starving, degenerate and useless until they hit it big. Which reminds me, any free-thinking person should resent the assertion by the rent-stabilized tenants’ attorney – “You’d think as artists these people would basically have better politics but they’re basically building their dream house on the backs of long-term rent-stabilized tenants . . . .” First, better politics than whom? Second, the flawed assumption in this statement goes back to the continued ill-conceived liberal ideas of yesteryear. These buyers are not building on the backs of anyone. Renters are aware going into their apartments that they have no unfettered right to occupy; their leases are only as good as the owners who drafted them (with exception, again, this is paternal NY).
A final thought, RuffnReady has made the point I’ve been making for years about blithely, aloof out-of-towners complaining about the perceived injustices they see or how they yearn for old New York and hate Disney. You don’t know New York. As RuffnReady rightful points out, you wouldn’t be here but for the peaceful and business-friendly conditions that New York is now in, which contribute to mass-gentrification (which you are a part of), a public good on so many fronts. Indeed, you never would have left Ohio or Michigan or Wisconsin had New York City not dramatically changed from an underperforming wasteland to the safest largest city in America.
Mommy and Daddy never would have subsidized or countenanced such a move, so don’t kid yourself. Now you have the unmitigated gall to
complain about the same conditions that brought you here? Disingenuous transplants should be checked whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Neo,
I can’t help complaining so much. When my midwestern Mommy and Daddy subsidized my move they budgeted in $1000 a day worth of whining. So here I go…. waah!
Um, but seriously. I am all for the discussions raised before that, but when asking questions and noting clear and relevant social trends is interpreted as whining… well then, me and my unmitigated gall are going to have to go get a latte or something and leave you to cool off. I am not being disengenuous.
I believe you’re wrong BKNC. I’m not too familiar with the laws, but from what I’ve read there are rules. You can’t just kick someone out because you think they don’t pay enough, because there is a contractually set rent. I’m also fairly sure that the buyers know how many units are rent stabilized, and by purchasing also agree to following the rules and laws governing such units. So THEY knew what they were getting into.
This is why this is going to the housing courts…because you’re not free to do whatever you want as a landlord and have to follow certain guidelines.
I also think the whole native vs non-native isn’t nearly as homogeneous (or true)as you two are making it sound. Since you’re sorta making the argument that “real” new yorkers love gentrification, there’s someone making the opposite argument on the village voice website. I just don’t think the argument is along those lines. Besides I’m willing to bet the ones starting this are transplants, and the ones being kicked out are the “real” new yorkers.
I don’t think anyone is questioning the law in this circumstance. Clearly, they own the property and thus have the right to do with it as they please. People may not agree with this however. Anyone has the right to voice any protest (might be a more accurate word than “bitch”) they please, be it writing a blog post or holding a block party, if they are not satisfied with the nature of the actions taking place around them and feel so inclined.
We apologize, dear BK, for being born outside New York area codes (how rude of us), and yes, we are part of mass-gentrification within most areas in Brooklyn. At the same time, Brooklyn is now where we live and love. I think that gives any of us the basic right to comment on something read in a newspaper. While you can say “This isn’t injustice, it’s America,” others might see it as more of the former.
I don’t understand, RuffnReady, why you think being rich or poor has to do solely with how hard a person works. People whose families have had money for generations have advantages when it comes to continuing to cultivate their (or their family’s) wealth that people who have never had money just don’t. I understand that in America we all love the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” but let’s please not be so self-righteous and hateful as to consider ourselves inherently deserving of our access to education, healthcare and employment, or to see poor people as stupid morons who are only poor because they’re lazy. There’s a lot more to it than that.
I have met a few too many wealthy idiots and even more brilliant working-class people without any higher education to claim that being rich or poor has to do with the quality of a human being. I hope, regardless of your feelings on the law and the rights of landowners, that Brooklyn Skeptic’s readers (from all parts of the political spectrum) don’t forget that these are people who are being displaced from their homes and that if we were in their position we’d hope at least for some sympathy…if not from the government or the wealthy people who are uprooting them, then at least from some of their fellow citizens. Regardless of these peoples’ legal rights, given the position they’re in I think the last thing they deserve is to be insulted. Have some respect.