What's in a Name?
Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries is a man on a mission, a mission to stem the tide of broker-named neighborhoods like “ProCro” and “Greenwood Heights”! According to City Room, Jeffries is going to introduce a bill next week that would require new names for neighborhoods get approved by community boards, the City Council and the mayor. The…
Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries is a man on a mission, a mission to stem the tide of broker-named neighborhoods like “ProCro” and “Greenwood Heights”! According to City Room, Jeffries is going to introduce a bill next week that would require new names for neighborhoods get approved by community boards, the City Council and the mayor. The bill calls for fining brokers who use unofficial names in their listings and, perhaps, suspending their licenses. City Room quotes Jeffries as saying that real estate agents “are allowed to essentially pull names out of thin air in order to rebrand a neighborhood and have the effect of raising rents or home prices.” A senior vice president for the Real Estate Bard of New York, meanwhile, says it would be “difficult to legislate the use of an official name when these neighborhood names are not legally defined.” Still: BoCoCa, we hardly knew ye.
‘SoBro’ and ‘ProCro’ No Joke to Assemblyman [City Room]
Assemblyman Wants To Prevent Realtors From Renaming Neighborhoods [NY1]
Is Jefferies a gentrifier or is he the antithesis of imagined charter school graduate? Growing up in Crown Heights, graduating from a well regarded non entrance exam public high school, graduating from well regarded college, graduate school and law school Jefferies moved home and chooses to make a difference in his community.
The distance between Prospect Heights and Crown Heights means that there is plenty of opportunity for his children to have the benefit and the pleasure of the grandparents.
Well, NOW I know what Hakeem Jeffries does.
I may give him a call to try to suggest a few other things he can be doing with his valuable, tax payer sponsored career. In the old neighborhood of Fort Greene, we have falling down buildings, drive by shootings, drug selling gangs at the subway (selling drugs to the Waverly/Fulton methadone clinic clients who then sleep on our stoops).
Proposed: Henceforth all brokers in his district are required to market properties as part of Hakeemalot.
Everyone then happy?
> Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries…
Or as I like to call him: HakJef.
I heard some people refer to the neighborhood boundary adjustments in L.A. as “White flight without the hassle of moving.”
I think that statement was a bit extreme, but certainly had some truth in it.
Housing values were a large aspect of it, but it was also a social standing thing.
Many people did not like to admit that they lived in certain neighborhoods.
I saw this some among my white friends were were liberal in many other ways, but felt the need to put additional qualifiers on where they lived.
“This usually led to 1 or 2 racially charged political fights a year as as residents tried to get their blocks moved from “less desirable” to “more desirable” neighborhoods.”
BHS- that’s probably the whole point because it affects property values. The neighbors don’t change, the block doesn’t change, the house doesn’t change- I understand that nomenclature affects property values but it just seems so fake.
If potential buyers are too stupid to figure out where a house really is then they really ought not to be thinking about buying a property.
In Los Angeles, the city council set official neighborhood boundaries.
This usually led to 1 or 2 racially charged political fights a year as as residents tried to get their blocks moved from “less desirable” to “more desirable” neighborhoods.
It seemed to me to be an enormous waste of time and a distraction to the real work the city council should have been doing.
this is the same guy who a couple years ago said that gentrification was the worst problem facing his district (all or parts of: prospect heights, crown heights, fort greene, downtown, clinton hill, bed stuy). i’m sorry, really? don’t get me wrong, there are obviously issues that come along with gentrification, but the irony of jeffries himself complaining about it is rich. sure, he grew up in crown heights but his 3 degrees, including NYU law, a pedigree of federal clerkships and corporate law practice, and condo in prospect heights make him just as much of a gentrifier as anyone else.
that said, to be fair, jeffries has been out in front on a lot of the actually important issues, including the schools and stop-and-frisk tactics. this is probably just another (admittedly effective) publicity stunt.