Suicide City

Manhattan is undergoing many disruptive changes. None of them are really good for the city. Ex Mayor Bloomberg had some strange notion that if you turned the city over to the Real-estate Magnates, and IF they got away like burglars with the money from their ridiculously tall buildings, this would bring money into the city. And, that there would be some kind of trickle down in the housing shortage.  Well, I grew up in the Real Estate Business, so I have a pretty fair idea of the of New York City property values. Yes, there is little space in some parts of the city, so of course it’s a great temptation to build upward. Even if doing so  destroys the street life, the quality of life, the Central Park Life and even though it brings nothing to the City itself. Only very tall buildings with ten to thirty year Tax abatements so that for that length of time no money is seen by the City. The money that these buildings bring are largely secreted funds from other countries, and are being illegally laundered in this New York Real-estate .The Real Estate magnates, the so called developers sell the property to these people as soon as they can build them and they get their money and then are gone with no Taxes to be paid to the city. They then stick their money somewhere in the Cayman Islands. They aren’t really crooks because they are aided and abetted by the system.

The real issue here is that no one except these rich foreigners can afford to live in this city anymore. Normal working people are having to move farther and farther out of town. The rents have become ridiculous and the government is doing nothing here to create affordable housing. They talk, they talk and in the end they help the Real Estate magnates to create even less affordable housing.

I walk the City streets day after day. Everywhere I look there are stores for rent. I know that the rents are impossible and lack any connection to reality. Stores can only afford a certain rent. They simply cannot make enough money to pay these astronomical prices. Even Wall Street banks are looking elsewhere. What was the point of building buildings that no one benefits from? We can’t any longer maintain our restaurants, our stores, or our Wall Street banks in this city. We will be left with nothing but empty streets on the ground floors with only the very wealthy foreigners affording to live here. Young people and artists and students and working people have already fled the City. In five more years, this will be a desert with only the very rich and commuters filling the streets in the daytime, and fleeing back home out of town in the evenings.

What ever happened to the idea of affordable housing? I know that Real Estate magnates can’t make that much money on the kind of housing that is needed to maintain the foundation of this City. BUT I do believe that they too must be able to understand the need. That need can be filled, and money can be made but NOT in the most densely populated part of Manhattan. Build elsewhere in town where there is space. BRING THE RENTS DOWN SO THAT STORES AND PEOPLE can afford the city. Make it once more a livable place to be. We have everything going for us, Opera, Ballet, Theater, Concerts, but no one can afford them and no one can afford to live here to attend them. The City depends more and more on Tourism. Like Disney World, we are becoming an amusement park which people come to visit but not to stay. This is suicide.