Structural obstacles to community
“When they rate the boroughs, and they go “the worst borough is the Bronx!” I don’t pay that no mind because I know the Bronx is like that for a reason.” Mike sees it as an issue with fund allocation--he watched Queens and Brooklyn receive more infrastructure and services while Bronx was allowed to deteriorate. The more services were needed in the community, the more they were stripped.
Redlining in the 1930’s prevented South Bronx landlords from acquiring loans for building upkeep, thus much of the housing began to visibly deteriorate. Even in these conditions, however, Mike says that people took pride in their homes: “People used to protect their property. You know, sweep in front of their buildings, keep the stoops and everything clean. And they wasn’t getting paid for it, they wanted their stoop to look good. They would wash it down with hoses just to make sure that where they lived was decent, clean--or looked clean. You don’t see that any more.”
As Evelyn Gonsalez, author of The South Bronx: a History, astutely puts it, “Poverty and old buildings do not inevitably lead to crime, abandonment, and arson.” The forces that conspired to create a more-and-more inhospitable living environment in the South Bronx were numerous and broadly out of the residents’ control.
The constant in-and-out flux of residents had ravaging effects on community. As large sections of the Bronx were being demolished and rebuilt, people were moving in and out at a very fast rate. The newcomers needed to lay down the kind of roots, friendships, and support networks neighbors were able to establish in previous years, but the design of public housing also wasn’t conducive to that. The impersonality and the many unseen spaces allowed for antisocial behavior to occur, and there were too few spaces where community could come together. As the Women’s City Club pointed out at the time, this set-up “even denied [residents] the comfort of neighbors.”
Additionally, the city lost 500,000 factory jobs in the city between the year 1950-1976. That left a large section of working-class Bronx families unemployed. In 1976, one in every 3 residents was on welfare and up to 25-30 percent of the eligible workforce was unemployed. As crime escalated as a result of the 1960’s heroin epidemic, middle and working class families began to leave public housing with greater frequency, leaving only the city’s poorest in high concentrations. Economic opportunity stagnated because of this.
Though all of these factors made life very difficult in the South Bronx, much of the community’s spirit remained unbroken. Let’s fast forward back to today to look at some of the ways residents are successfully fostering community in the neighborhood.