https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/how-liberals-quash-housing-development-getting-richard-l-cravatts/
Kristin Richardson Jordan, Harlem’s City Council member, seems to have put the final nail in the coffin of a 917-unit development, One45, proposed by developer Bruce Teitelbaum for a location on West 145th Street in New York.
Even with the developer’s latest pledge that 40 percent of the units in the twin towers would be affordable, Ms. Jordan (pictured above, center) was apparently unsatisfied—in fact, insulted—that the proposed development was not comprised completely of affordable, rather than mixed-income, units, referring contemptuously to Mr. Teitelbaum’s offer as merely “11th-hour breadcrumbs.”
Maintaining a concentration of poverty has no positive benefits for a neighborhood and specifically works to dissuade middle- and upper-income residents from moving into the area, including white ones, whose presence in Harlem will inevitably result in better public services and schools, upgraded businesses, and an enhanced quality of life.
Ms. Jordan may wish to condemn Harlem to being a monoculture of poverty, entrapping its poor, mostly black residents in an intergenerational trap of decaying real estate, dangerous social pathologies as a result of poverty, and a general cultural and physical stagnation, but no one—including Harlem’s poorest residents—should believe that this outcome is either inevitable or desirable.
Housing for the nation’s poorest citizens is the responsibility of the government and taxpayers, not private real estate developers like Teitelbaum who may wish to do the right thing by offering a portion of One45 as affordable housing but whose main concern is, and should be, maximizing a return on his investment.