CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN NEW YORK CITY
It was considered a model metropolis. Now, slow subways, decaying public housing and creaky rent protections add up to a
Five major years city, ago, with this its seemed bike lanes, the very pedestrian model of plazas a modern and smokeless bars. Outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg even started a pro-bono consulting firm, staffed by veterans of his administration, to tell cities around the world how to solve their problems. ❚ “We have heard this huge demand and need from other cities to learn from New York,” Amanda Burden, city planning director, told The New York Times. “New York is the epitome that cities look to of how to get things done.”
These days, however, other cities look at New York and see three great systems in crisis – mass transit, public housing and rent control. Their dysfunction undercuts Bloomberg’s image of a can-do city and afflicts the average New Yorker that his successor, Bill de Blasio, claims to champion.
This summer, New York has endless waits on sweltering, packed subway platforms, where frustrated riders occasionally slug it out; public housing projects contaminated with lead paint, mold and the smell of urine; and housing prices that drive the poor into the street and almost everyone else farther and farther from fabulous Manhattan.
Here’s how the three crises evolved:
❚ THE SUBWAY
Because of delays and safety concerns (derailments, track fires), Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year declared a “state of emergency’’ that shows no sign of abating.
Despite the much-publicized opening last year of the first three stations on the Second Avenue line (which cost almost $5 billion), service delays have escalated. Only 65 percent of trains are on time weekdays, compared with 90 percent a decade ago.
Assuming money can be found to pay for it, the signal replacement project will not begin until 2020 and won’t finish until 2030, at the earliest.
❚ PUBLIC HOUSING
New York’s public housing was long the envy of the nation and a proud legacy of the New Deal.
But this year, federal investigators accused the authority, over a period that extended into the Bloomberg administration, of failing to comply with lead-paint regulations and then covering it up. Elevated lead levels have since detected in more than 800 children who lived in Housing Authority apartments over the past few years.
The agency also was accused of training its workers to deceive government inspectors. Maintenance crews would turn water off to cover up leaks and post signs outside apartments they didn’t want inspected. The authority has agreed to spend $1 billion on repairs in the next four years and submit to a federal monitor. But the bill for needed long-term capital improvements is much larger: $32 billion.
❚ RENT CONTROL
Love it or hate it, the law limits yearly increases on about 1 million apartments in the city. That’s roughly half of its total, and its largest block of affordable housing.
The system has long been decried by landlords for discouraging private reinvestment and giving an unnecessary break to some affluent renters.
But big landlords and developers have figured out how to remove large numbers of units from rent restrictions. They’re able to charge higher rents by promoting rapid tenant turnover; by making cosmetic improvements to justify hefty rent hikes; and by harassing tenants – by cutting off the heat in winter, or by undertaking renovation projects so loud, messy and prolonged that they drive other tenants out.
In May, a New York Times investigation described a fractured, underfinanced regulatory apparatus that can’t even enforce the law. The result is a steadily shrinking number of rent-controlled units, because once an apartment’s legal rent passes $2,733.75 (or if it’s converted to a condo or co-op), it passes outside control forever.
The rent-control crisis accentuates the critical shortage of affordable housing.
One manifestation is homelessness. Each night about 61,000 people sleep in publicly-provided shelter. Although no one knows exactly how many more live on the street – thousands, certainly – their number seems to be increasing.
However great the city’s problems, though, only a fool would count it out.
An article in the July issue of Harper’s Magazine subtitled “The fall of New York’’ echoes that of “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s biography of master public works builder Robert Moses.
It was published in 1974, a reminder that if New York is falling, it won’t be the first time.
Doomsayers have proclaimed New York’s demise repeatedly over the past half century, only to see the city roar back – until its next crisis.