nikkas had roommates when NYC was cheap
living at home or in a communal setting is cultural in many cases.
your point on that all spanish and asian immigrants that live 10 a house are family is wrong also
there's really nothing wrong with either living with roommates or alone.
i didnt say it was wrong to live with room mates - i said you have a mkt that ONLY overwhelmingly caters to young adults shacking up 4 to an apt - which is NOT the way you are gonna build a neighborhood
5person single adults who stay for 5 or 6 years and then move on to some other place does not make a neighborhood and certainly doesnt lend itself to being affordable for a "family" and families make neighborhoods not the amt of coffee shops and yoga studios there are
lemme school you again -
you had places like Wash Height s and el barrio on the east side which were PR - crown heights and flatbush which were west indian - and in the late 70s thru 90s those areas were STABLE with those populations - and the same class of people economically were still in those areas - they werent poor but they werent rich and they were comprised mostly of families - so in the 20 and 30 years you had those adults who shared apts even for a short time they werent strangers they were families of those who immigrated and brought other family members in to live there those persons also steadily supplanted a lot of the blue collar and service sector jobs which existed in the city
there were several other neighborhoods in the city and you could find varying strata of classes in those neighborhoods for DECADES - middle and upper middle class neighborhoods Pelham Bay Woodlawn Jamaica Estates Park Slope Middle Village Jackson Heights just to name a few
the problem came with Bloomberg in the 2000's who rezoned and sold large parcels of land and places to high end real estate development
and because they are high end development they were willing to allow tenants to do things single owner landlords usually would not allow - why?
because if i am a company i will take the loss for a few years on a property to have a turnover and cause the rent to rise - since as the apt becomes vacated the rent can be raised much more than a person that simply re-ups their lease and there by increase my profit for the company - way more than the single owner land lord
so the trend now corporations to buy ppty not actual ppty owners and the game became to get tenants in and out within 3 to 5 years and that worked best with young adults who after 5 or 7 years were usually gone...... and then you get in high earning young adults who are nowhere anythign LIKE the people who were in the neighborhood in the first place to pay the higher rent or even BUY
the overall point is this- you had a Harlem or a crown heights or a Soundview or castle hill or east elmhurst because people - families decided to stay in those places for 15 20 or even 30 years and now - noone can afford to stay even 10 years to rent an apt - and the crazy fukked up things is nikkas are like "well thats just how it is now" what the fukk?? you cant lament black and brown people not having influence on city policy on govt on services IF YOU DONT HAVE A STAKE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD !! and the only way to have a stake is to be able to LIVE there
if you just sit there and make excuses for the machinery that is built to disenfranchise the very thing you say you treasure ( or should value ) just so they can satisfy their already rich asses by allowing their rich assed bratty kids a "doorman" bldg in the 'hood. then you will never have a Harlem except as a tourist stop for visiting people to see the smattering of black folk that maybe USED to live there .
williamsburg hell GREENPOINT residents were by and large people that were IN the neighborhood for decades and now the place is a shyt hole of transplants and the very thing that made the place worth living in is gone because the people that made the neighborhood are not there!!
you can go to park slope and see the same 5 or 6 types of place EVERY fukkING BLOCK - a cafe a yoga studio a thai place a mexican place and italian place maybe a cleaners MAYBE a grocery store and fukking consigment store ( 2nd hand /"vintage" clothes )
dont believe me roll down 5th ave from flabush up to union st - 5th ave used to have a variety of businesses and occasionally and eating place and now its a parade of mediocrity and damn near all of the places wont even be there in 4 or 5 years
the Upper west side has BLOCKS of empty storefronts because the rents are too high for even some chain places - fukking banks! cant even hold spaces - and no small businesses are getting started - you cant call someplace a neighborhood and it s got a fukkin duane reade starbucks 7-11 and CVS and Hudson news every other block for 20 blocks
and that kind of phenomena extends to poeple living there - who can start a family if the only way you can afford it is you have 5 full time working adults in the same household that is meant to hold maybe TWO adults- and thos shyt goes on because the mayor is on the take and does shyt NOT to make shyt better for the people that are there but to fatten up the pockets of already fat pocketed high end real estate developers who only want a brown face there as a selling point - they could give tow fukks about the history of harlem or preserving it unless they can turn it in to a theme ride to make you pay for it.
gaaaadamn it fukking sad to see young black men and women cosign this shyt because "white kids " are doing it and have them accept it as the "way" - your fukking neighborhood is being sold out from under you and nikkas just want to shrug their shoulders and live like white kids and not even think about the long term impact of how at 30 and 40 years of age unless you got some deep fukking pockets YOU wont be able to afford to live in the the place you grew up - where your CULTURE came from - YOU cant affrod to live there but someoen white with money can and because things are being made nice for them that means YOU are doing well???
and the white people that are living there dont give a fukk because they grew up someplace ELSE and FLED that boring fukking place to take what you have and consume it ......
) were industrial areas and slums in the 60s. zoning laws also changed to allow residences in those formerly industrial areas (remember cities were de-industrializing during this time)
