New York City just had one of its most contentious elections yet with the first mayoral primary to utilize rank choice voting and a ballot filled with high profile figures. Viewed as one of New York City’s most pivotal elections in helping the city recover from the pandemic, issues of contention ranged from crime and policing, to business restoration and housing. However, the issue of gentrification, a longstanding problem for BIPOC and lower income communities, has been surprisingly (perhaps even purposefully) overlooked in both mayoral debates and policies. Out of four front-runner candidates, only Maya Wiley explicitly listed gentrification as an issue for the city on her official policy page. Meanwhile, the victor of the Democrat primaries, Eric Adams, who once faced backlash for his statements as Brooklyn borough president telling transplants to “go back to Iowa” avoids the issue altogether in his forty page policies list, a decision that becomes clear when one considers the fact that development companies were one of his biggest backers during the primary election. This is especially concerning considering that housing and rental prices across American cities continued to rise during the pandemic, and with an eviction moratorium set to expire in October, the process of gentrification in New York City is expected to accelerate. However, even with gentrification obscured from the mayoral spotlight, the local primaries for city council have placed gentrification on the forefront and nowhere is it more evident than in NYC’s two largest Asian communities: Flushing, Queens and Chinatown, Manhattan.
Before diving into the intricacies of gentrification within these two communities, it’s important to examine the broader context of gentrification in New York City. Defined as the displacement of urban residents by wealthier developments and people, gentrification has been prevalent in New York City since the early 2000s, a problem largely spurred by mayor Michael Bloomberg’s aggressive development plans that paved the way for the gentrification of areas like Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn. Although proponents have argued that more developments would create more affordable housing, Bloomberg’s developments have left a legacy of empty luxury apartments in a housing market that continues to skyrocket.
In fact, the housing supply well outpaced the city's population growth, as it has in the past several decades. The number of housing units increased 5.3 percent between 2000 and 2010, while population rose just 2.1 percent, according to the Furman Center. But greater supply has not reduced the percentage of income that people spend on housing: in 2002, renters spent 28 percent of their income on housing; seven years later, they spent 34 percent.
— Emily Badger and Luis Ferré-Sadurní
“As Bloomberg’s New York Prospered, Inequality Flourished Too”
One of the biggest myths about gentrification is the focus on individual gentrifiers. When people think of gentrification, they think of wealthy hipsters and artists pouring into lower income urban centers and displacing blue collar residents. Although true to a certain extent, this narrative of attacking gentrifiers does little to alleviate the problem and distracts from the larger forces at play. Gentrification is far from an issue created by the six figures earning Midwesterner, but rather a collaborative scheme between development companies and local politicians to rake in millions of dollars at the expense of the city’s inhabitants. In fact, most developments that resulted in the gentrification of neighborhoods were oftentimes backed by city officials who either used eminent domain laws to seize property or subsidize new buildings. One of the most notorious examples was the creation of the New York Times offices in which the city utilized eminent domain laws to seize ten properties from small landlords in Manhattan for well under market value. Subsidized with 30 million dollars of the city’s own funds, the New York Times bought the property for 85 million dollars and forcefully evicted the prior residents. Mayor Bloomberg had also used eminent domain in areas of Queens to displace several Latino owned businesses as a way to facilitate the creation of Citi Field resulting in a push and pull battle that continues to this day. Meanwhile, in 2009, the state utilized eminent domain laws in order to seize land for Columbia University to expand into parts of West Harlem. However, eminent domain seizures were an overtly obvious and unpopular method for politicians to strong-arm residents in support of private corporations. Since then, there has been a shift towards a new method of forcing displacement through rezoning laws. Zoning laws in New York have long dictated where developers are allowed to build and restricted the types of buildings allowed on certain properties. Rezoning allows for politicians to redraw zones that can allow private developers to build in areas they were previously restricted from.
For residents of Manhattan Chinatown, gentrification isn’t a new phenomenon. Dating as far back as 2001, gentrification began when lagging businesses sought to jump-start the local economy by turning Chinatown into a “business improvement district,” effectively raising the price of properties, a move that was championed by Chinatown’s councilwoman Margaret Chin. Then, in 2008, the city government passed a rezoning law that prevented gentrification in the East Village, but rejected a similar rezoning for the nearby Chinatown resulting in a flock of developers shifting their focus towards the Asian community. Now, with the pandemic having devastated immigrant communities, Chinatown is seeing evictions of tenants and closures of some of its most iconic restaurants. Jing Fong, a Cantonese Dim Sum restaurant that has served the community for nearly 50 years, shut down despite rallies from locals due to rent hikes from Chinatown’s infamous father-son landlord duo Alex and Jonathan Chu.
Everyone has celebrated their birthdays at Jing Fong.” The need for this place to bind the community together was a theme repeated throughout the rally. “You destroy Jing Fong, you basically destroy Chinatown,” says Kai Wen Yang of the Chinese Staff and Workers Association. “It’s not just the size of it. It’s actually because people have birthdays, they have weddings, cultural events.
— Chris Crowley
“Inside the Fight to Save Jing Fong”
Jing Fong hasn’t been the only property displaced by the Chu’s who had also shut down the former Silver Palace restaurant in order to develop a new hotel. Meanwhile, Jonathan Chu also acts as the co-chair for the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), a controversial museum that’s been accused of displacing local establishments and taking bribes after receiving 35 million dollars from the De Blasio administration as part of the city’s plan to build a new jail in Chinatown. However, for many of Chinatown’s activists, a small victory materialized during its primary elections for a new councilman when Christopher Marte, a community organizer who centered his campaign around fighting against gentrification, won the Democratic nomination. Despite pushback from the Democratic establishment, Marte received an overwhelming majority of votes and is expected to win the councilman seat with plans to submit a rezoning plan to the city council that would protect Chinatown from gentrification similar to the rezoning passed in East village back in 2008.
Across the East river in Queens, the neighborhood of Flushing faces an eerily similar story. Compared to Chinatown, Flushing is a far larger and diverse Asian community consisting of Chinese, Korean, and South Asian immigrants. While Chinatown’s battle against gentrification was represented through the closing of Jing Fong, Flushing’s activists are battling against the creation of a new commercial waterfront called the Special Flushing Waterfront District. The new Waterfront is described as a 160,000-square-foot commercial center filled with shopping malls, hotels and luxury condominiums. Despite being touted by developers as an area that’ll bring prosperity and housing to Flushing, less than five percent of the Waterfront’s new housing units are expected to be affordable and the construction site has already displaced a beloved local supermarket.
Ten years ago, Byeon would chat with Korean grandmothers selling vegetables in Downtown Flushing. The aunties aren’t there any more. In high school, she hung out with friends in Assi Plaza, an affordable Korean grocery store located in the now hotly contested waterfront. But in 2014, Assi was closed and the land sold for $55m; it was then resold multiple times until Young Nian Group bought it for $115m last year.
— Sarah Ngu
“Not what it used to be: in New York, Flushing’s Asian residents brace against gentrification”
Local activists have since pushed back against the Waterfront to little avail, with Flushing’s councilman Peter Koo being the Waterfront’s biggest supporter praising its “potential to transform an isolated and polluted brownfield into an active waterfront community.” It was with Peter Koo’s support, the city council passed a rezoning law in Flushing allowing developers to build in an area that was once formerly off limits. Similar to the end of Chinatown’s councilwoman Margaret Chin’s twelve year reign, Flushing also saw the end of Peter Koo’s decade-long term. However, unlike Chinatown, the Democrat primaries in Flushing saw a devastating blow for activists when John Choe, the lone candidate who promised a reversal of the construction of the waterfront, lost to Sandra Ung, a candidate backed by Koo.
Although construction has yet to be completed, the Waterfront has become a symbol for the accelerated pace of gentrification in recent years as Flushing’s landscape became littered with glass skyscrapers, luxury apartments, and construction sites. Much of this gentrifying presence can be attributed to F&T group, an international development conglomerate based in Taiwan, who's responsible for the countless new shopping malls and food courts that has replaced Flushing’s once bustling immigrant run restaurants and street vendors. On F&T’s official website page, one can find a quote from Confucius stating “Only when all contribute their firewood can they build up a strong fire.” For the developers, it appears Flushing has become that firewood.
The stories of Chinatown and Flushing share a remarkably similar pattern, representing a new form of gentrification threatening Asian communities. Rather than a direct and obvious invasion that erodes its cultures and people, gentrification takes on a subtle form of commodification that displaces residents nonetheless. Decades long Chinese restaurants aren't being replaced by Starbucks or Whole Foods, but rather trendy, international Boba chains. Gentrifiers are no longer white developers, but wealthier Asian landlords or international companies from Taiwan and China. Therefore, the fight against gentrification isn’t so much outsiders against locals but working class residents against the local politicians and corporations within their own community.
Asian Americans are now the most economically divided racial group in the United States; those in the top 10 percent of income distribution earn 10.7 times more than those in the bottom 10 percent. In his book, Peter Kwong describes the city’s Chinatown economy as ‘divided into a small elite who own large enterprises and a working class who are exploited.’
— Sarah Ngu
“Will luxury towers edge out the last of the working-class Chinese in New York’s iconic Chinatown?”
The origins of Chinatowns, Koreatowns, and other Asian neighborhoods are stories rooted in survival and necessity. They were built up by immigrants and workers who retreated within their own communities as a means to sustain themselves and safeguard against discrimination and violence. These communities have since flourished into culturally rich and successful neighborhoods because of their efforts. Therefore, any form of development should be for the benefits of the working class people present in the neighborhood.
In the years following 9/11, Mayor Bloomberg welcomed developers with open arms and open pockets justifying it as a means to stimulate economic growth. When Bill de Blasio took over in 2013, despite a progressive campaign centered around remedying the city's economic gap, he continued the process of sponsoring developments through rezoning laws and the guise of progress. With the likely succession of Eric Adams as the new mayor, the city government's support for gentrification is expected to remain unchanged. The conversation on gentrification is often a battle of discourse and words. So let’s clear up what gentrification really is. It is not community revitalization, it is not urban renewal, and it is not modernization. Gentrification is class warfare and most of the time it’s state sponsored. Gentrification means evictions, closed storefronts, and property seizures. When public lands are sold to private corporations without consent from community members and families are forced out of the neighborhoods they’ve built decades prior, gentrification can never be called progress.
What are your thoughts on gentrification? Have you seen similar instances of gentrification in other cities? Drop a comment below.
To further decolonize our minds:
New York Times | New York City Can’t Just Gentrify Its Way Back to Normal
Curbed | A Decade of Destruction in New York City
Grubstreet | Workers Rally To Save NYC’s Jing Fong
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