Having grown up in a NYC public housing project, graduated from an Ivy League university, earned a master's degree and created a successful company, I am now looking to move back to Harlem - most likely in one of those "luxury" condos all the local residents are moaning about. While the neighborhood has improved dramatically since I was a child, all the local opposition against development reminds me of the backwards thinking that has kept Harlem from participating in the economic growth that has occurred throughout the rest of NYC.
Most of the opposition is too concerned with the issue of the rich displacing the poor. However, they spend almost no time trying to improve their economic status so that they become - uh, hello - no longer poor. Instead, they blame others for their problems, economic status and disenfranchisement. They rely on government subsidies for food and housing which creates a pattern of dependence that inevitably keeps them poor. They fight against all efforts for investment in their community and they then complain that they have been "left out." They foster the notion that they are somehow entitled to below-market-rate housing, as if it were their constitutional right or as if society owed them a debt. How many years did all those empty/abandoned lots sit neglected before developers finally fixed them up, cleaned up the streets and created locations for businesses and services to come into the neighborhood? Who in their right mind would argue that the vacant, crack-infested lots are better than what is going on now?
As long as local residents keep their "it's us against the world" mentality, fail to embrace investment and deny responsibility for their own economic well-being, they will simply be at the mercy of market forces which have no consideration for skin color, social standing or nostalgia.
Having grown up in a NYC public housing project, graduated from an Ivy League university, earned a master's degree and created a successful company, I am now looking to move back to Harlem - most likely in one of those "luxury" condos all the local residents are moaning about. While the neighborhood has improved dramatically since I was a child, all the local opposition against development reminds me of the backwards thinking that has kept Harlem from participating in the economic growth that has occurred throughout the rest of NYC.
Most of the opposition is too concerned with the issue of the rich displacing the poor. However, they spend almost no time trying to improve their economic status so that they become - uh, hello - no longer poor. Instead, they blame others for their problems, economic status and disenfranchisement. They rely on government subsidies for food and housing which creates a pattern of dependence that inevitably keeps them poor. They fight against all efforts for investment in their community and they then complain that they have been "left out." They foster the notion that they are somehow entitled to below-market-rate housing, as if it were their constitutional right or as if society owed them a debt. How many years did all those empty/abandoned lots sit neglected before developers finally fixed them up, cleaned up the streets and created locations for businesses and services to come into the neighborhood? Who in their right mind would argue that the vacant, crack-infested lots are better than what is going on now?
As long as local residents keep their "it's us against the world" mentality, fail to embrace investment and deny responsibility for their own economic well-being, they will simply be at the mercy of market forces which have no consideration for skin color, social standing or nostalgia.