Brit None Too Fond of Bed Stuy
In an article on the impending bursting of the bubble in New York real estate, Sunday Times (UK) columnist Dominic Rushe manages to make a rather offensive comment about the borough which he is temporarily calling home: I now live in Williamsburg, a horrifically trendy part of Brooklyn. I moved here because it was cheaper,…
In an article on the impending bursting of the bubble in New York real estate, Sunday Times (UK) columnist Dominic Rushe manages to make a rather offensive comment about the borough which he is temporarily calling home:
I now live in Williamsburg, a horrifically trendy part of Brooklyn. I moved here because it was cheaper, slightly, than where I lived in Manhattan. Now warehouse properties here are selling for as much as flats in Tribeca. Prices are even going through the roof in Bed-Stuy, a horrible and inconvenient area of Brooklyn with some lovely buildings and a nasty crack habit.
Nice. Real nice.
Big Apple Homes Ripe for Fall [Sunday Times UK]
Why is what he saying so controversial. New York is at its lowest crime rate in 40 years. If the crime rate stays where it is over the next 20 years, then an investment in Bed Stuy will turn out to be golden. If, however, the crime rate rises (not all the way up to the mid 80s numbers but let’s say to the early 90s numbers) Bed Stuy will become a TERRIBLE neighborhood to live in. And all those gentrifiers will sell there brownstones (at a loss) in the middle of the night like so many families did in the 70s.
this conversation has become silly. the truth is bed stuy is a big place and the good people who live there are sick of the bum rap. labels are superficial. if a murder happens on nostrand and gates, does it matter that you live in clinton hill instead of bed stuy? you could be just as close to the murder living in clinton hill as elsewhere in bed stuy, but psychologically you feel more secure. that’s a tenuous grip on reality.
afterall, it’s in brooklyn, new york city, usa. where do you draw the line and when do people start caring about each other and stop looking the other way because it’s “not my neighborhood?”
Imagine Bedford Stuyvesant being all white, with trolley cars running through it. Welcome to the Bed Stuy of 1899.
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/BES/BED-bedstuy_family_history.htm
I have to wonder why people are so fond of beating up this neighborhood? I live in Bed-Stuy and find it to be a quiet beautiful area with new and great services opening up (still need more) and genuinely nice people. On all sides of us we have neighbors whose names we know, who have accepted packages for us during the day, watered our plants, we sweep and shovel in front of each other’s houses, the list goes on. (In fact I’d so much rather live there than off of 7th Avenue or Smith Street – those areas have become so filthy!) I don’t hink anyone is trying to say that as an area it’s BETTER than other areas, just that it’s a great place to live. But if declaring it a “ghetto” makes you feel better about yourself, so be it.
The article was superfluous, but that doesn’t mean that Bed-Stuy isn’t a landlocked, outer-Brooklyn pit that’s swarming with poor people. Any neighborhood where my wife is too afraid to walk home from the subway stop after 9pm is a ghetto.
lol! that says a lot more about those stereotypical and ridiculous entitled imperial british attitudes than it does about anything else.
i also like how he lives in horrifically trendy billyburg — oh, did he move there accidently? hilarious!
Bed-Stuy covers such a huge area hard to dismiss whole neighborhood as ‘crack invested’ or inconvenient.
Area is larger than BkHts, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hills put together. So to say
BkHts doesnt have projects while Bed-Stuy does is bit misleading. Plenty of projects within walking distance to Promenade.
Blocks of Bed-Stuy are great and for sure some very troubling blocks also.
I bought a great house in BedStuy and I love it. Our neighbors are great and we can comfortably afford our house. I am a lawyer and my husband is a midlevel executive. We have money to vacation, time to play with our child and extra money to spend on good bottles of wine and a decent car. The people I think will be sorry are those that have paid over a million dollars to live in Clinton hills or those struggling to afford Brooklyn heights. Being house poor can’t be fun. I think people will continue to move to bedstuy if the price stay reasonable and allow all of us buppies and yuppies to have the things we like: food, wine and vacations. Plus, unlike all the people we know who have bought houses this year we have paid off an extra 30 thousand on our mortgae this year and saved about 20 thousand (we can afford private school when the time comes).
The real estate market will go into a down cycle at some point. Anyone who paid over 500K for a house in Bed Stuy now during this Bed Stuy bubble will regret it.
Yes Bed Stuy has some lovely houses but so do many other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Bed Stuy has high crime and crack houses. Bed Stuy has more Housing Projects than any other neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Let’s assume that you only consider Brownstone Brooklyn and not the more suburban areas of south Brooklyn for living/investing.
The Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods are commanding the multi-million dollar price tags. You might assume Bed Stuy can reach theses prices soon. That would be an incorrect assumption. Both PS and BH do not have Housing Projects.
What is also important is that BH and PS have amenities that Bed Stuy will never have: the Promenade and Prospect Park, the restaurant/ shopping streets: Montague/7th Ave and now 5th Ave, good public and private schools, and multiple subway lines.
What does Bed Stuy have to offer that PS and BH do not have? Low prices and the G train.
As they say in Bed Stuy: let’s keep it real. Bed Stuy needs to remain an affordable neighborhood for the community that has lived there for decades.
If gentrifiers, which for this area is anyone spending over 500K, move in and inflate the prices competing against each other, then it will only result in a burst in the Bed Stuy bubble.