Cultural Displacement: Gentrification in New York City’s Chinatown
The tenants of 85 Bowery in Chinatown protest their landlord in 2018 after an unsuccessful eviction attempt. Photo by Felton Davis.
When Columbia students discuss the issue of gentrification, we often focus on Columbia’s relationship with West Harlem. However, gentrification has had a far wider reach throughout New York City—notably in Chinatown, where rents continue to rise, forcing people to move into affordable housing. As in other neighborhoods, New York City’s system of handling the displacement caused by gentrification disregards the cultural ties that Chinatown residents have to their surroundings.
Chinatown has been host to the highest population of Chinese people in the U.S ever since a mass influx of immigrants settled there in the late 19th century. Many Asian immigrants came to New York City intent on working on the Central Pacific Railroad or eventually moving to California and striking it rich in the gold rush. After these industries began to dwindle and discriminatory legislation barred Chinese employment, immigrants stayed in New York City to work in sectors like textile production. Chinatown served as a unique place of refuge for the Chinese immigrant community to establish a cultural center and a political support network.
Throughout the past decade, Chinatown has experienced rapidly shifting ethnic and racial demographics. A study conducted in 2013 revealed that the Asian population in Chinatown has been steadily declining and the fastest growing demographic has been the White population. As new racial groups move into Chinatown, the original residents find themselves displaced and forgotten.
Gentrification is the process by which neighborhoods are changed to conform to middle and upper-class standards through the renovation of businesses and housing. These changes may appear positive because of a direct correlation with economic growth, but many residents are distrustful of sweeping development, worried it will transform their neighborhoods beyond recognition.
A major side-effect of this shift is the displacement of communities and neighborhoods that were traditionally inhabited by specific ethnic groups. These groups suddenly find themselves unable to grapple with increased rent and cost of living and are forced to find housing elsewhere. In Chinatown, 23% of households are classified as “rent-burdened,” meaning that over half of their income goes toward rent. Louise Carroll, New York City’s Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has promised to combat gentrification and housing insecurity in collaboration with Mayor Bill de Blasio through “enacting policies that focus on the everyday lives of tenants.” Unfortunately, for the residents of Chinatown, these plans ignore an important factor in real estate: placement.
When running for mayor of New York in 2014, Bill de Blasio unveiled his ten-year plan to create affordable housing for residents across all five boroughs, through the creation of new housing units for low-income residents. An initial problem is that the so-called affordable housing is not so affordable for the residents of Chinatown living in poverty. Only 20% of the units created would serve households classified as extremely low-income to very low-income.
Another glaring problem is the placement of people into this housing. When applying for affordable housing, applicants pick specific apartments based on income level. The system does not necessarily take neighborhood preference into account. Although you can choose a specific building to apply to, you must fit certain parameters for your application to even be considered. After applicants submit their application, they must also submit extensive paperwork and go through a grueling interview process to confirm that they meet these requirements. Even after all of this effort, receiving affordable housing in their desired neighborhood, or even at all, is not guaranteed.
Residents’ historical ties their neighborhoods have been ignored by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (H.P.D.) in their plan to address the housing crisis. While the department has released several statements regarding their commitment to prevent New Yorkers from being priced out of their neighborhoods, they have not directly addressed the deeper problem of gentrification: cultural displacement. By ignoring low-income residents’ neighborhood preference, the H.P.D. is ignoring essential, decades-long community histories. Having already experienced broader social exclusion, people who lived in supportive cultural hubs are now being scattered—exiled—to new boroughs with no link to the local community there. If they are forced to move into affordable housing in Brooklyn, how will the residents of Chinatown grapple with that compulsory diaspora?
Over three million people in New York City live in affordable housing, including rent-controlled apartments and lottery-style housing. De Blasio has been heavily criticized by renters and reporters alike for his contributions to gentrification, despite his pledge to combat the problem. As students at Columbia, we easily fall into the trap of the “Columbia bubble,” addressing gentrification as if it is an issue only propagated by Columbia and unique to West Harlem. The truth is that gentrification is an institutional issue throughout this city and others.
We become complicit in a broken system when we allow gentrification to occur unchecked and permit politicians to continue breaking their promises of achieving housing equity. Incomplete solutions to gentrification—such as de Blasio’s proposal—fail to recognize how deeply tethered peoples’ identities and livelihoods are to their neighborhood. We must do better to acknowledge the gentrification directly perpetrated by Columbia in Harlem, but we must also combat the machinery that allows gentrification to thrive throughout all of New York City.
Rachel Krul is a staff writer at CPR and a first-year at Barnard College studying Political Science and Human Rights. In her spare time she enjoys visiting a variety of New York City’s extremely niche museums and talking about her cat, Frank.