Gentrifying Crown Heights Is Losing Its Black Community
Crown Heights is changing, and high rents and landlords’ aggressive tactics are pushing out longtime tenants, typically African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants. Familiar businesses — bulletproof bodegas, fried chicken joints, video stores — are being replaced by expensive eateries, cocktail bars and national chains. Property values are rising, with 19th century townhouses now commanding prices in the millions….

Crown Heights is changing, and high rents and landlords’ aggressive tactics are pushing out longtime tenants, typically African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants.
Familiar businesses — bulletproof bodegas, fried chicken joints, video stores — are being replaced by expensive eateries, cocktail bars and national chains. Property values are rising, with 19th century townhouses now commanding prices in the millions.
White college grads and young urban professionals are moving into freshly renovated units with freshly elevated rents. Former tenants lived with rats and prewar kitchens, but many can no longer afford the neighborhood.

While longtime residents struggle to pay rising rents, they also note that everything from produce to crime has improved in the neighborhood. However, priced out, they cannot reap the benefits.
As rents surge higher, working class and minority residents increasingly find they can no longer afford to live in the same area, and are forced to move deeper into Brooklyn, to the outer boroughs or out of the city altogether, according to The New York Times. A reporter spoke to more than three dozen former and current residents of the area, as well as experts, about relocation.
Between 2000 and 2010, Crown Heights (as well as adjacent Flatbush and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens) lost 10 to 14 percent of its black population, census data shows. Not all may have been forced out by rising rents, although the Times story focused on renters.

Many former members of Brooklyn’s West Indian community have relocated anywhere from eastern Brooklyn to Boston, Maryland, Philadelphia or even back to the Caribbean, said the Times.
In the case of seamstress and former Crown Heights resident Shirley De Matas, she watched the rent on her two-bedroom at 1170 Lincoln Place rise from $800 a month in 1999 to almost $1,300 in 2014. Compounded by bursting pipes, rats, and an unhelpful superintendent, De Matas and her family moved out last February, renting in East New York for $750 a month.

For others, moving back in with family is the thriftiest option. After years of living with seemingly incurable mold and vermin, hospital receptionist Angelique Coward moved herself and her four children three flights above her 761 Propsect Place home and into her mother’s apartment. The landlord has since renovated Ms. Coward’s three-bedroom and tacked $1,400 onto the monthly rate.
Other struggling Brooklyn residents opt for landlord buyouts. In 2010, Raquel Cruz gave up her Franklin Avenue apartment after agreeing to a $10,000 buyout from her landlord as well as three months rent on a $1,300-a-month Bed Stuy unit.
She had to pawn some of belongings to pay the rent. Luckily, she found an affordable apartment in public housing.
While accepting buyouts, living with family members, or moving deeper into the borough grant temporary relief to the affordability crisis for many residents, longterm plans increasingly include moving away.
[Source: NYT | Photos: Brownstoner]
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The goal of gentrification is to make NYC look like everywhere else. It wont be complete until Walmart comes to Brooklyn. Then in 20 yrs, the grown up kids of today’s gentrifiers will wonder where all the black people went– and then go there to start the process over again.
The goal of gentrification is to make NYC look like everywhere else. It wont be complete until Walmart comes to Brooklyn. Then in 20 yrs, the grown up kids of today’s gentrifiers will wonder where all the black people went– and then go there to start the process over again.
lol what if the current market keep changing –frequently?
Also Cate since a co-op is treated like purchasing a share of stock in a partnership the closing costs are way less so the numbers you mentioned compared to purchasing a condo or standalone building basically result in being close to a net zero in most cases.
the neighborhood changes you had witnessed was a natural ethnic change that took decades to occur. The gentrification that is happening today is far from a natural social process– this is called hyper -gentrification which is being orchestrated by greedy developers and foreign investors with no regard for nyc historically multi ethnic cultural dynamic. Generations of families are being systematically uprooted to allow corporate entities to fatten their pockets.
the neighborhood changes you had witnessed was a natural ethnic change that took decades to occur. The gentrification that is happening today is far from a natural social process– this is called hyper -gentrification which is being orchestrated by greedy developers and foreign investors with no regard for nyc historically multi ethnic cultural dynamic. Generations of families are being systematically uprooted to allow corporate entities to fatten their pockets.
Also Cate since a co-op is treated like purchasing a share of stock in a partnership the closing costs are way less so the numbers you mentioned compared to purchasing a condo or standalone building basically result in being close to a net zero in most cases.
NOP I could poke holes in the data above pretty easily, ie. thats $45k of traceable income. Many property owners of 2-3 families dont report that cash income.
The comments around too big to fail banks are grossly flawed and a perfect example of how someone needs to know how the system works before throwing out irrelevant arguments. The top 10% of earners in this country, most of which can afford to buy an apartment anywhere they want to live, pay nearly 2/3rds of all taxes. The bottom 80 percent of Americans are expected to pay 15 percent of all federal income taxes in 2014.
NOP I could poke holes in the data above pretty easily, ie. thats $45k of traceable income. Many property owners of 2-3 families dont report that cash income.
The comments around too big to fail banks are grossly flawed and a perfect example of how someone needs to know how the system works before throwing out irrelevant arguments. The top 10% of earners in this country, most of which can afford to buy an apartment anywhere they want to live, pay nearly 2/3rds of all taxes. The bottom 80 percent of Americans are expected to pay 15 percent of all federal income taxes in 2014.