New York trades charm for wealth

The city is safer than it was 20 years ago. But the price is high. Many New Yorkers complain about the astronomical rental prices and cost of living. From the change of New York from the rough metropolis to the colorless corporate headquarters.

I’d been complaining to friends about the changes in the New York cityscape for years. They just said, ‘It’s normal – New York is always changing.’ But I knew something else was going on here, ”says Jeremiah Moss. Then he started his blog. “Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York” is now well known throughout the city.

Around eight and a half million people live in New York City. This means that there are as many residents crowded into an (agglomeration) area of ​​just over 8,000 square kilometers as in Austria, which is more than ten times the size. And the influx does not stop. After all, thanks to globalization, every child knows that nowhere is there closer to the pulse than in the city that never sleeps. But with the unique marketing concept Manhattan, with the glitz, glamor, the lights and the excitement, many New Yorkers are now in a hangover mood. It may be true that the center of the world is somewhere on this overpopulated island. In the immediate vicinity, however, are also the downsides of fame.

Gentrification in fast motion. Classically poorer districts with a predominantly black, lower-income population class are gradually being replaced by chic areas full of mostly white high-earners, marginalized and finally displaced entirely by the island and the surrounding area. This socio-economic structural change is called gentrification in technical jargon and, when applied in small doses and at a slow pace, can contribute to the security and prosperity of a neighborhood. In New York, however, the change is not proceeding cautiously, but has been sweeping through the street canyons increasingly from west to east and from north to south for some years. “It’s not an organic process that is driven by individual individuals,” says Moss. “Rather, it is a strategy devised by the city government and the large corporations that are jointly using it to take over entire neighborhoods and remodel them for the upper class.”

This strategy produces chic apartments, corporate branches and neighborhoods that have been cleaned of all charm and roughness. This metropolitan phenomenon has been christened hypergentrification. What brought the economic boom to Soho in the 1970s and 1980s and a little later to Chelsea has long since arrived in areas that used to be wicked to life-threatening, such as Brooklyn, the East Village or the Lower East Side.

Little Italy is everywhere. Security came at the price of skyrocketing rents. A recent case in Little Italy sums up New York’s dilemma. At the beginning of the 20th century, the neighborhood in southern Manhattan was home to 40,000 southern Italian immigrants. Today it is a sad shadow of itself that has shrunk to two streets, clichéd tourist bars and souvenir shops. 85-year-old Adele Sarno, of Italian-American origin and at home in Little Italy for over 50 years, is one of the few remaining “locals”. She fought for her dirt cheap apartment in Manhattan for five years. Previous cost: $ 820. Then the landlord asked for $ 3,500 a month. Otherwise there is a threat of eviction. Explosive detail: The landlord is the Italian-American Museum.

Thus, the institution dedicated to preserving Little Italy’s fading cultural heritage. Mrs. Sarno is the personified epitome of this dying culture. But that didn’t seem to help her in this case. The litigation is lost. The elderly lady has until the end of June to find another accommodation. Cases like this, albeit less emblematic, happen daily in New York. The Small Business Congress NY, an organization founded in 1991 to help small business owners survive, estimates the number of small shops that have to close each month due to rising rents at 800 to 1000.

Anonymous Robin Hood. Many New Yorkers are now fed up with the fact that another traditional bar, a long-established diner or cozy bookshop is replaced by a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts branch every day. A local journalist and activist has become one of the main mouthpieces of their displeasure. He runs the blog “Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York” under the stage name Jeremiah Moss. For professional reasons, he does not want to reveal his true identity.

The anonymous avenger of New York renters and small businesses enjoys considerable local fame in the city. Since the blog started in 2007, Moss has documented the changes in the New York cityscape in a laconic, funny and snappy way in almost 3,000 entries. In the wake of thousands of Facebook and Twitter friends who eagerly spread his message of the dying rough charm of the metropolis under the hashtag #SaveNYC on social media. He told about his project for the “Presse am Sonntag”. “I want people to see what is happening here so that they cannot deny it later. I want to accumulate evidence. Day after day. To show that this is not a single business here and there. A cultural cleansing is happening here, ”says Moss.