THE PROVIDER: PREVENTION EFFORTS LEAD TO A REVITALIZATION
Why Once-Violent Neighborhoods Stayed Calm During the Blackout
August 24, 2003
By BRENT STAPLES
New Yorkers who lived through the arson and looting that
ravaged the city during the blackout of 1977 were
understandably edgy when the lights went out on Aug. 14.
But it was clear by late evening that the blackout of 2003
would be nothing like its predecessor. This night did not
belong to arsonists or looters; it belonged to families and
neighbors who poured into the streets to use the headlights
of parked cars for block parties and barbecues.
Why were things so quiet? For one thing, the World Trade
Center tragedy taught New Yorkers to recognize the
difference between a genuine disaster and a temporary
inconvenience. This blackout also favored us by starting
during the daylight hours - instead of after dark, like the
last one - allowing the Police Department to station
officers strategically around the city before nightfall.
A more important difference between this blackout and the
last one is the massive, publicly financed reconstruction
effort that has rebuilt neighborhoods like the South Bronx
from scratch. The program, begun by Mayor Edward Koch in
the 80's, has produced more than 200,000 affordable
apartments and houses, revitalizing burned-out communities
and turning record numbers of New Yorkers into homeowners
with a vested interest in keeping their areas safe.
The recoveries of the South Bronx and Harlem are familiar
stories by now. But nowhere was the contrast between the
1977 blackout and the recent one more vivid than in
Bushwick, a struggling but improving Brooklyn community
that was widely known during the 70's for its breathtaking
lawlessness and decay. Like many poor communities of the
period, Bushwick watched its middle class disappear,
replaced by the poor families dependent on welfare.
The layoffs and service cuts that came with the city's
fiscal crisis in the 70's further undermined an already
disintegrating community. By the middle of the decade,
Bushwick's decaying wood-frame houses were more valuable to
their owners when they were burned for the insurance. Arson
became a nightly occurrence. Truck drivers who entered the
community first arranged for police escorts. Some
department stores refused to deliver to Bushwick at all,
requiring buyers to pick up their furniture and appliances
at the stores.
This brand of civic quarantine would seem outrageous in New
York today. But it was common in the 70's, when communities
like Bushwick, the South Bronx and, to some extent, Harlem
were so cut off from the rest of the city that they seemed
like distant, third-world countries.
The filmmaker John Sayles lampooned this phobia of minority
communities in his 1984 movie "The Brother From Another
Planet." In the film, a subway magician says he can make
all the white people disappear from a train heading uptown
to black Harlem. At the next stop (the last one before
Harlem), the white commuters exit en masse and - poof! -
the passengers turn black.
The sense of civic isolation in places like Bushwick was
intensified by police officers who took a casual attitude
toward crimes in depressed areas that would have been
swiftly punished elsewhere. Criminals who learned that they
could act with impunity took control of depressed
communities. These criminals organized the looting in the
1977 blackout.
In their book about that period - "Blackout Looting!" -
Robert Curvin and Bruce Porter found that experienced
criminals had actually kept large crowds of less
experienced looters at bay until the most valuable
merchandise had been stripped from stores and carted away.
At the time, the combination of looting and arson proved
especially devastating on the 30-block stretch of Broadway
in Brooklyn between Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, where
just about every major store was ransacked and many were
torched. Bushwick became part of the so-called devastation
tour, in which visitors to New York were ferried by bus to
view urban blight.
By the early 80's, New York was faced with a housing
shortage and the challenge of rebuilding burned-out,
deteriorating neighborhoods. The city committed $5 billion
to build affordable housing in these desolate areas with
the aim of revitalizing the communities. The rebuilding
effort coincided with the rise of community policing, which
got officers out of their cars and into closer contact with
residents and civic groups. The stabilizing effect has been
dramatic in central Harlem - where the home-ownership rate
has nearly quadrupled over the last decade alone. The white
people who once disappeared so magically from the uptown
train now buy houses in Harlem and walk its streets.
A similar transformation is unfolding in Bushwick, where
the New York City housing agency has sponsored new
construction and the renovation of 4,000 homes and
apartments - more than a quarter of them occupied by
owners. Earlier this year, more than 2,000 people,
including police officers and firefighters, inquired about
61 new houses that are going up in Bushwick, a few of which
carry a price tag of more than $300,000. The demand for
these houses marks a big change from 20 years ago, when
middle-class New Yorkers were even afraid to drive through
the neighborhood.
The calm that characterized Bushwick and other rebounding
neighborhoods during the recent blackout vindicates the
housing initiative begun during the 80's. The progress of
the last 10 years reminds us that investing in the poorest
communities benefits the city as a whole.
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