Friday Links

Homer Simpson once famously called an RV “A car you can go to the bathroom in”.

But how do they come off calling a schoolbus without drains as “green”? Or as any kind of mobile home? Did you ever see an RV offload its septic tank? People produce a LOT of waste. And in RVs it’s usually dyed blue and smells a lot like disinfectant or creosote. They’re probably draining their dishwater right into the street.

I am a huge fan of mobile homes and manufactured homes and I could probably rant for an hour in favor of them. But these kids are deluded. They’ll freeze this winter – life with a baby and no plumbing is farcical.

They’re also idiots for letting the Daily News do an article about them because the city will move them or ticket them now that they know about them.

So what is “outdated” Benson, when it comes to buildings? Do we tear down the few buildings we have in this city from the 1600’s, 1700’s, now 1800’s down because they are “outdated”? What does that even mean? The older, smaller buildings on PPW are doing their jobs, sheltering people. Leave ’em alone. They add beauty and scale to the neighborhood, and for the most part, frame PP in the way the builders of the park wanted. I don’t see why we should mess with success.

I’d rather see the mixture of structures that are there now, rather than another 4th Avenue. What a horror. And that’s what we’d get, too, not a line of architecturally significant modern buildings.

And plenty of people do pay a premium to live in a 4th floor walkup. If they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t, as they can afford to do whatever they want. Walking up a few flights of stairs obviously isn’t a deterrent, or there would be a lot of vacant 4th floor apartments, and obviously, there aren’t.

we already have had 2 tornados. And you are proposing trailer parks in NYC? that is just asking for more.

Braodwayron;

Mobile homes used to be legal in NYC. There actually was a large development of trailer homes in Staten Island, right where the Goethals Bridge ramp is. The zoning was changed several years ago to outlaw them.

I think that this is ashamed. Although they have become the butt of jokes, mobile homes are a very cost-efficient way to provision low-income housing. If the city were smart, they would use them instead of high-rise housing projects (the density of a trailer park is actually on par with a typical project). Not only are they more cost-efficient, but I believe that trailer homes would engender a keener sense of “ownership” than these ridiculous PJ’s. If one has a space of their own, with a little garden off to the side to grow some vegetables, miraculous things can happen.

Of course, we are too “sophisticated” in NYC to consider such concepts.

Grand Pa;

Bravo!!!! Well said.

I’ll take it a step further.

Thanks to the knee-jerk way in which our preservation laws are conceived and formulated, Brooklyn has lost the opportunity to add another jewel to her crown. I’m talking about PPW in particular. However beautiful one may think the buildings that line it now, they are outdated. No one is going to pay a premium to live in a 4th floor walk-up with the minimum of modern amentities. Development should be allowed on PPW to allow it to become the CPW or 5th Ave of Brooklyn.