On the subject of change

I recently visited my old Brooklyn neighborhood.  The brownstones are still there as is our apartment building, streets alive with pedestrians, mostly Haitian. I remember a block full of children, Italian, Irish, primarily Eastern European.  Rent was cheap, $125 monthly bought a foyer, three bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bath.  Floors were hardwood, walls solid plaster.  Kids could navigate the block in minutes, run from play to lunch and back again.

The key phrase here is neighborhood.  Not in a pejorative sense rather an embrace of the true meaning, community.  There is a great and wondrous place where children go to grow, experience and learn.  Neighborhoods are social laboratories.  Prejudice is liability when choosing sides for a game.  If I know your name, indeed if I know what is behind your name, I can reach out at more than a visceral level.

Today there is one critical difference.  The old neighborhood is in the throes of gentrification.  Apartments are now condos with an asking price of over $300,000. Slowly the regular inhabitants are moving out.  Many newcomers are waiting for suitable public accommodation before moving in.  I grant you suitable is often a euphemism for bias.  Soon Caribbean markets will be replaced by nail salons and boutiques.  Expect to see fur topped gentry walking poodles down Flatbush Avenue.

All of this would make some sense if the original tenants were offered palatable alternatives.  If you take away my neighborhood, force me to uproot the family, I should at least be guaranteed comparable sanctuary.  Project housing is certainly not the answer.  Patois is charming on the street.  It loses a bit of magic between the floors of an urban high rise.  I like using the term vertical neighborhoods to describe projects.  Same paint, same space, same lack of communal heartbeat.  No-one takes the staircase, elevators are unsafe.  Who can play, run home, have lunch and return to the game in less than an hour or two?  Modernization has its values and wealth its privileges.  Radical change in this case remains a flirtation with pretense.

Why  not a system of cooperative housing, basic but attractive?  In simple terms why not create homes for people with roots in the community?  The buildings are already there.  Urban homesteading has proven workable in cities like St. Louis and Milwaukee.  A man with a paint brush can be inspired by the sense of ownership.  Let residents share in the adventure.  A neighborhood reclaimed is quite different from one embellished.  It is a place where you can stand still inside yourself.  Fewer fur collars, poodles and more songs, laughter and play.