I'm sure the article has already been linked to death, but I just read it for the first time, and like everybody else who's seen it, have been struck with the similarities in real estate issues now and over 20 years ago:
You can argue what neighborhood most closely resembles what the East Village was encountering in 1984, but the language used and points made are lifted every day to describe a bunch of Brooklyn neighborhoods. This could be an article in 2007 about Williamsburg, Bushwick, even speculation-heavy Clinton Hill. Here's a list of stuff lifted from this article that parallel what we've been seeing happen lately:
- Local commenting on newcomers: "I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, 'There goes the neighborhood.' "
and
"Why are all these people coming here, where they're so riotously out of place? I don't want my neighborhood to change."
- Contrast of old-school and new construction: "The chrome and glass facade of a newly renovated co-op is a block away from a corner known for prostitution."
and
"There is a sushi bar across the street from an abandoned warehouse and a neoned art gallery stands across from a Ukrainian restaurant closed by spiraling rents after 32 years."
- A reminder of how the process tends to work: "The first of these [steps to gentrification] is marked by building deterioration and neighborhood crime, the second by short-term speculators, the third by long-term investors and renovators and the last by full-scale construction."
- Quarrels over the very name of a neighborhood: "As soon as they said 'East Village,' they tripled the rent. It's the East Village to the real-estate brokers," she said of the area that has been her home for 30 years. "To us it's the Lower East Side."
- Quotables from those for and against the changes:
"The area used to be a last-choice area – people thought I was crazy when I started buying here in [insert year]."
"It's finally happened down there. It went through the burnout and the druggies and now there's action."
"I think it's hypocritical of the people who live here who rail against it. They benefit from the changes. We all do."
- The East Village had (and still has) a Life Cafe, as does a certain, other so-called up & coming neighborhood. Okay, that's a stretch, but I like the symmetry.
- And my favorite one-sentence description of a new resident: "The neighborhood is now home to people like Miss Kelley, who graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton two years ago with a degree in art history and works for a Wall Street real estate broker."
But at what price, your rent? If you run some of the the numbers mentioned in the article through an inflation calculator, you get this:
1984/Now
Studio: $570/$1112
1-Bedroom: $700/$1366
2-Bedroom: $900/$1756
Store with Adjoining loft: $500/$975
3-Bedroom: $2000/$3,900
3-story Brownstone: $100,000/$195,153
A cursory search of craigslist seems to show that 3-bedroom apartments are still in that range (those there are tons up in the $4500-5000 range). But most 2-bedrooms are nearly twice what they used to be. Studios seem to be as low as $1500. Sadly, brownstones (even in the bad neighborhoods) go for a helluva lot more than $200K. Feel the burn!
