Rubble With a Cause - Redevelopment woes: Williamsburg residents yanked out by their roots

Posting these stories from NYC (Village Voice) which, for anyone following events in Hackney and the recent campaign in protest against the sell offs and eviction of local shop owners in the east end of London, are full of familiar details. While rezoning is a specifically American phenomenon, the social effect and economic agenda is the same in neoliberal Greater New York and Greater London. If anything the scale of the process of gentrification (ie state-backed and accelerated transfer of property from public and small private ownership to big business) is larger in NYC, with 40 storey condos where in Dalston, Hackney (etc) it is more likely to be a 'modest' 10 storey developments, but the ultimate demographic and economic results remain analogous.

The correspondence between the details is striking - eg a black tenant of 30 years gets the cheque he sent to his landlord to purchase his property sent back; 'too late, property sold'; the city agrees to make money available to displaced factory owners and residents to enable them to relocate a provision of the rezoning of the area for expensive residential development but when the money is needed, it's not there. Bureaucratic wrangles, delays, mistakes, and then - of course - the spate of (effectively manufactured) crises such as this article begins with: eg the builders have undermined the foundations and 'you have one minute to get out of your house!' Bureaucratic inertia is twinned with and productive of emergency, the sclerosis of the state in meeting (already) basic commitments is the flipside of the imperative to vacate immediately.

Gentrification, and indeed the higher level imperatives of the financialised capitalism of which it is a very visible manifestation, is all about the production of situations in which it is 'too late'. While fictitious capital profits by projecting future value (as the Fed says, no need to worry about the deficit, there is always more paper in the printer and more time to repay, terms are infinitely extensible), the poor are forced out on the assumption that time is running or has run out. (eg the money for your rehousing hasn't arrived, its too late, you have to go anyway).

The fait accompli, the preemptive displacement, the emergency evacuation (and prevention of re-occupation on the same terms, in the case of New Orleans) are the hallmarks of this mode of technocratic domination in which it is never ideologically declared that the poor must be flushed out of their homes and areas, but rather, for purely technical, factical reasons, this is exactly what is happening. Nobody ennunciates this policy and indeed it IS NOT a policy, policy states the very opposite (mixed and balanced communities, affordable housing, fresh food shops near estates, not displacement but 'going to a better place' etc etc) - but the real economic and technical conditions mean that this is, de facto, capital's unwritten command.

One last additional point - while this period represents the mopping up of opportunities by capital after 30 years or so of crisis-command, it is remarkable the continuities from the bankrupcy and austerity regime imposed on new york in the '70s down to Hackney's bankrupcy, sell offs and cuts at the turn of the 21st century. On different scales, the same logic operates to create a movement from liquidity crisis (a formerly acceptable operating level of debt is ring fenced and bankrupcy is announced) to austerity (cuts in services, attacks on welfare spending), to sell offs (primitive accumulation as formerly public property is given away to private interests) and neoliberal 'renewal' (culture and social networks put into the service of a new, privatised, financialised, 'vibrantly' revenue-generating city).B

Rubble With a CauseRedevelopment woes: Williamsburg residents yanked out by their rootsby Paul MosesFebruary 3rd, 2006 12:52 PM

Roger Owens was putting his one-month- and three-year-old sons to sleep on November 14 when firefighters banged on the door of his home on Diamond Street in Williamsburg. "You have a minute to get out," Owens said they told him.

With his wife, Pamela, and their children, Owens dashed out the front door to a jarring streetscape of spotlights, fire engines, and hundreds of onlookers. He soon learned that the city had ordered his home vacated because construction of luxury housing next door had so damaged an adjacent building that it threatened to fall down on his own three-story frame house, which has been in his family since 1890, through five generations.

"It was frightening," said Owens, a retired police officer.

Such is life in the rezoned world of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where even the most rooted property owner can wind up homeless on a minute's notice and where longtime tenants, both residents and businesses, are subject to massive rent increases, eviction, and harassment.

Last May's deal between the Bloomberg administration and City Council to rezone the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods for a Manhattan-like string of luxury skyscrapers has superheated the area's already hot real estate market—but city officials have yet to follow through on millions of dollars in protections pledged for tenants and businesses displaced by rising rents.

A $2 million fund is supposed to help tenants and aid in the battle against the sort of building abuses that drove Owens from his home. Now, the fine print looms large: The money is to come from sale of air rights over an MTA bus garage. But first the city has to find room for a new depot, the MTA says. City officials wouldn't predict how long that will take.

And, as reported, a $4 million fund to help displaced industrial businesses relocate isn't available yet. The Bloomberg administration and City Council are "at an impasse" in talks on how to spend the money, said Councilman David Yassky, who is pushing for some of it to subsidize workers' health costs.

"I am very frustrated by this," he said. "We did this rezoning eight months ago and these resources still are not out there."

Administration officials also have expressed frustration that the money hasn't been distributed. But neither side sounds as frustrated as Herb Engler, who has written a torrent of letters and e-mails seeking money from the fund to relocate his company, Penn State Fabricators, which is due to be forced out by a housing developer on February 28 after 36 years in Greenpoint.

"At this point I am not only fighting for my own existence, but for those that are presently working for me," Engler wrote in a January 27 e-mail to all councilmembers, ". . . We are being forced to possibly close the company, and those that are responsible DO NOTHING."

Peter Gillespie, executive director of Neighbors Against Garbage, said local groups are reorganizing to press for the money promised in the rezoning deal. "The devil's in the details," he said. "If these promises aren't fulfilled, this rezoning is going to be a disaster for the community."

Neill Coleman, spokesman for the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said he couldn't give a timetable on when the money for helping tenants will be available.

He pointed to the rezoning deal's provision for affordable housing—one-third of the new units, with half of those for community residents. In addition, he said, the zoning is being revised to require builders to get a certificate from HPD certifying that they had not harassed tenants. But the tenant fund is awaiting action from the MTA on the bus site, he said.

Jacek Bikowski, who counsels about 80 tenants a week who face the loss of housing, said the money to fight tenant harassment and illegal building is needed now. "By the time we get the money . . . most of the people who are about to be evicted will in fact be evicted," said Bikowski, who works for North Brooklyn Development Corporation and the People's Firehouse.

Bikowski said the tenants he sees—often elderly Polish-speakers earning under $800 a month—don't want to leave and so are bunking with other seniors, curtaining off rooms. "This is their community and they have doctors and churches and friends," he said.

While the rezoning will create affordable housing, it's not soon enough for tenants like Marie Ditizio, 70.

She said she is under court order to get out by June 30 from the apartment where she's lived in a two-family house on North 7th Street for the past 28 years. With rents running at least double the $600 she's paying now, there is nothing she can afford.

"I don't know what to do," she said.

The real-estate tumult has been so tough on the elderly that it has forced some to move in with out-of-town relatives or to a nursing home.

This is what happened to Phyllis Mascia's two sisters-in-law. All three widows were evacuated from their apartments on Havemeyer Street on June 15. The Buildings Department issued vacate orders for the Mascia family's building and another one two doors down because excavation done to put up new housing at 22 Havemeyer Street caused cracks in the neighboring buildings. Work was being done in violation of a previous stop-work order, according to city records.

Mascia, 67, said the "Golden Girls," as she dubbed them, were separated. A 90-year-old sister-in-law moved to a nursing home, and another, age 87, moved in with her son on Long Island. Mascia found a studio apartment down the block.

The developer, Mike Choi, had wanted to buy the two adjacent buildings, Mascia said. "He had been trying to buy our two buildings before this incident for years, and even afterwards he had the audacity to say, I'll give you $450,000 for the property and you can live in the [new] building," Mascia said. "What a nerve. . . . I said, `You don't understand, Mr. Choi. We're not landlords. We're not developers. This is our home. This is our castle.' "

Asked if he had offered to buy Mascia's building, Choi said he didn't know. But, he said, he has been allowed to continue building at 22 Havemeyer Street and the problems have been resolved.

Ilyse Fink, spokeswoman for the Buildings Department, said the developer was fined $4,960. She said a vacate order was lifted on Mascia's building but one remained in place on another next to the construction.

Mascia said she didn't know the vacate order was lifted until after a local official (alerted by an inquiry from the Voice) told her. "The Buildings Department doesn't know what it's doing," Mascia said, adding her building was beyond repair.

The delayed city funding, noted Bikowski, would help neighborhood groups stop such abuses. "We need to research what's going on, follow up on every development, check records of landlords' harassment," he said. "We would increase the cooperation with the Department of Buildings."

In the meantime, Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, a Greenpoint Democrat, has proposed legislation requiring developers to create escrow accounts to reimburse those displaced by faulty construction.

Owens said that ultimately he casts blame for what happened to him on the city for allowing such rapid change and then doing little to help those it hurt. "I have more anger for the city than I do for the builder," he said, adding that the builder, at least, found him an apartment. The pressure is not likely to ease: Owens said he got an unsolicited offer for his home even after it had just been ordered vacated. "Somebody came up to me that night," he said. "I said, `Listen pal, this isn't my investment . . . it's my home.' "

Eve of ConstructionIn the new Greenpoint, that means destruction for long-timers forced to close up shopby Paul MosesDecember 2nd, 2005 5:18 PM

The peace treaty that was announced last spring between the sachems of Greenpoint-Williamsburg and City Hall pledged $4 million in reparations to help the manufacturing companies that soon would be driven from their land by a rush of so-called pioneers. But like other such pacts from frontier days of yore, the treaty hasn't been much help to the natives.

Herb Engler, owner of Penn State Fabricators, 124 Newton Street in Greenpoint, found that out. For 36 years, he has run his business in a 25-by-100-foot, one-story brick machine shop that is thick with the smell of grease and metal. It is a place where people work with their hands. They cut big discs out of half-inch-thick sheets of aluminum to create a buffer that cushions the jolt from the business end of a pile driver.

Now, his business is set to meet the wrecking ball, and the promised buffer of aid for factory owners has turned out to be about as solid as a press release.

Engler said the land beneath his business will be sold out from under him to a developer who made ever increasing offers to the owner. The machine shop will become a parking lot for two adjacent housing complexes, he said.

It is no surprise that the modest block in Greenpoint, with its mix of shingled frame houses and low-rise factories, is suddenly real estate gold. As part of the peace treaty signed into law on May 2 in City Hall, it was rezoned to induce construction of upscale housing. Existing companies could have stayed, but the peace treaty is accelerating the market forces that are driving them out, along with jobs for people who know how to work with their hands.

Even before the property was sold, Engler said, the development company sent a letter saying he had to be out by June 1. Then there was a letter saying his water and sewer service would be cut off. Engler said he went to court and got an extension until the end of the year. But still, he had no place to go because, he said, his business couldn't survive the $50,000 cost of moving so much heavy equipment.

But Engler learned that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council had agreed to put up $4 million to help companies that might be displaced because of the peace treaty. So Engler contacted the Brooklyn borough president's office for information. On July 20, he got an e-mail telling him that "the Council and the Mayor's office have not fully worked out the details of the program and how businesses like yours can access the relocation services." The borough president's staff forwarded the matter to the Mayor's Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses.

The bottom line, Engler found, was that, as he puts it, "they have $4 million set aside. Nobody knows what to do with it."

Said Adam Friedman, executive director of the New York Industrial Retention Network: "It would have been better to have put this safety net in place."

The Bloomberg administration has broken some ground in paying attention to the plight of manufacturing companies and their workers, but that can't compete with its drive to accelerate the gentrification that is sending the poor and working class packing all across northern Brooklyn. First things first.

City planning officials had given the impression that they had every angle covered in their bid to rezone Greenpoint and Williamsburg; displaced factories would simply be relocated to industrial parks, with city assistance. It doesn't look so easy now, with an Oklahoma-style land rush sweeping across the northern Brooklyn waterfront.

City officials said they would try to help Engler. "We're going to work with the guy under existing programs," said Ethan Davidson, spokesman for the city Department of Small Business Services.

"What guy is this?" Engler said last week, adding that after months of trying, he was still getting nowhere with the city, which gave him a list of real estate agents. After 36 years, he has to get out on December 31. He has nowhere else to go.

Penn State Fabricators is a small business; Engler employs four other people. But he said there are many others like his in the neighborhood that are under pressure. "It's a feeding frenzy," he said, adding that he understands property owners will sell their land because the profits are so large—he'd do the same.

But, he said, "What kind of incentive are they giving the small guy?" His answer: "Nobody's paying attention to the other end of what's going on"—the people being forced out.

Poor ExcuseRezoning plan for Brooklyn's fourth avenue forces lower-income neighbors outby Paul MosesJuly 5th, 2005 1:15 PM

Ann Thompson, 76, had yet to wrap her antique glass so that she could move out of the apartment she's lived in for the past 20 years on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. Nor had she found a place to live.

Thompson, who retired six years ago and lives on a state pension, had been getting along just fine in her $550-a-month apartment on the second floor of a two-story brick home just off Warren Street. But two years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a rezoning that set off a land rush in Thompson's neighborhood.

"The result of this rezoning is they're kicking all the minorities out of here—I can give it to you in two words," said Thompson, who is black. "And my God, they're giving the seniors hell."

Back in January 2003, City Planning Commission chairwoman Amanda Burden, Bloomberg's Upper East Side neighbor, started the rezoning process by telling Brooklyn Community Board 6 about a "carefully thought-out" plan that would assure "preservation of the character of the neighborhood . . . while providing housing opportunities on Fourth Avenue," according to minutes of the meeting.

That is: The city would protect the brownstones in the wealthy section of Park Slope and create "housing opportunities"—10- and 12-story luxury buildings—in the poorer section along Fourth Avenue. But these were far from "opportunities" for Thompson and her neighbors.

Within months, according to city property records, the man who owned Thompson's house sold development rights for it to a local businessman who also bought the adjacent house and who already owned the other next-door building. (Neither owner returned phone calls.) And then, this past April 1, Thompson's rent check came back marked, "rent not accepted—house sold." She had to get out.

It is like that all over the neighborhood, said Thompson's daughter, Katie Rubin, 42, who had come over to help her mother pack. People she had grown up with were being forced to find new housing, and the rents were astonishing. "Being that we grew up in this neighborhood, we know that the apartments aren't worth $3,000," she said.

City Planning Department spokeswoman Rachaele Raynoff said that even without the rezoning, the area was still hot and could have seen development of buildings up to eight stories. The new zoning will create a lot of housing, she added.

There is a trickle-down argument to be made for rezoning land for big luxury housing developments in hopes that simply having more housing will lead to lower rents. But it means that the wealthy get theirs now, and the poor take their chances.

And since property owners don't have to seek a variance anymore, the rezoning makes it difficult to negotiate with landlords on behalf of the ousted tenants, said Artemio Guerra, director of organizing at the Fifth Avenue Committee, a nonprofit group that is assisting Thompson. "It's no leverage," he said.

And it's extremely difficult for displaced tenants to find new apartments at comparable prices. According to the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, the vacancy rate for apartments in the price range Thompson had was a scant 1.04 percent, while it was more than 10 percent for apartments renting for $2,500 and up.

Complicating the problem, it appears that the rezoning has encouraged those who rent out affordable housing to develop luxury housing in its place. Landlord Shahn Andersen said he has applied to the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal to demolish the four-story, eight-unit rent-stabilized building he owns at 475 Fourth Avenue and replace it with a 10-story luxury condominium building with 20 units.

"I've heard a lot of talk from the landlords I know that part of the purpose of the rezoning was to make Fourth Avenue into the Park Avenue of Brooklyn," he said, adding that he would prefer to include some middle-income housing if the city had made a subsidy available to him.

"Maybe the DCP [Department of City Planning] made a mistake," he said.

I would say so. City Council members had pushed the Bloomberg administration for inclusionary zoning, which would allow developers bigger buildings in return for reserving some units for affordable housing. But Bloomberg and Burden rejected that.

They compromised by creating a $6 million fund for affordable housing on Fourth Avenue, but no developer has drawn on it. One solution is for Burden to admit her mistake and to grandfather in the inclusionary zoning, which has since been used in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront rezoning. It can be done as part of a rezoning now being devised for southern Park Slope. But that would still come too late to help Ann Thompson.

"If I had a place to go, I'd leave today," she said. "The problem is, there's no affordable housing for anybody."