New York University is a progressive and social justice-oriented institution due to its excellent public relations. However, NYU is at the forefront of the gentrification of New York City by defiling historically and culturally significant establishments, most significantly around their Washington Square campus. In 2015, NYU devised a 25-year strategy "to locate up to six million square feet of additional territory divided amongst academic space, student services, and affordable housing for faculty and students," known as the 2031 plan. It received almost unanimous opposition from NYU staff and New York City locals, yet the administration has decided to continue with it. NYU's influence in lower Manhattan is common knowledge among researchers, faculty, and students. However, Since NYU's expansion in Brooklyn is relatively recent, there is limited research into NYU's role in gentrification in Brooklyn. As NYU and its students increasingly start rooting themselves in Brooklyn, the threat of dispossession and displacement looms over the residents of many communities in Brooklyn.
NYU is not the sole driver of gentrification, yet it is one of the primary drivers in the area. Gentrification in Brooklyn is not a new phenomenon. It started in the 50s when a white creative class, seeking to reject the middle suburban lifestyle, supercharged the gentrification process in Brooklyn by moving into low-income black and brown communities. It set into motion a process that caused the housing to become unaffordable for residents and displaced many of them. In the 1980s, the creation of MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn alone demolished 100 homes and 50 businesses and supercharged gentrification in Brooklyn. The institution that later became NYU Tandon, although it has existed since the 1850s, was part of MetroTech Center. These developments among others have contributed to making Brooklyn a more expensive and unlivable borough. NYU contributed to the continuation of this process, pledging to spend half a billion dollars expanding into Brooklyn in 2017, and understanding how the development impacts residents is essential. In addition to NYU’s expansion into Brooklyn, students are also moving to Brooklyn, partly for the cheaper rents. As NYU continues to expand in Brooklyn, NYU students are following its lead. Since 2009, the percentage of the NYU community living in Brooklyn has increased from 14.3 to 20.3%. For the past three years, rent in Brooklyn overall increased significantly, now at an average of $3,124.
The New York – Gentrification and Displacement data and NYU 2019 Transportation report shows most areas in Brooklyn from where NYU students are commuting are “at risk of gentrification” to “super-gentrification or exclusion.” The argument is that the increasing unaffordability of the places that NYU students reside might not have only to do with the facilities and students having presence in those communities. However, NYU and its students operate that displacement is an inevitable consequence. Further research is necessary to examine how NYU affects Brooklyn communities and minimize any negative outcomes.
At the same time, NYU aggressively expanded at all costs within New York City and abroad, especially since John Sexton’s “imperial presidency.” What NYU needs to do at this point is cease further expansion. It is the bare minimum. It is not irrelevant to ask why massive buildings like Bobst can only seat 2,600 out of the 53,526 students, just so that it can continue to be one of “the most instagrammable libraries.” Why not tear down the ugly suicide-prevention barriers and connect floors so that more students would have a place to study in between classes? Now that COVID numbers are declining and mask restrictions are loosening, it makes sense to have higher density seating arrangements across the existing NYU buildings. Since the pandemic has familiarized students and faculty with apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, more interactive hybrid learning models in a way that is beneficial to students’ learning but saves space could also be implemented. The university can do more with the current resources but simply refuses to do so.
The election of Eric Adams has led to the destruction of the encampments by moving them to violent and abusive yet lucrative homeless shelters. He expressed support for constructing more affordable housing units but delegated the responsibility to New York Governor Kathy Hochul. For example, rather than providing actual people without housing, Adams uses the Strategic Response Group (SRG) units to brutally kick them out of the places they are peacefully inhabiting. Coinciding with an expiration of the eviction moratorium implemented during the pandemic on January 15, more and more people are under the threat of losing their homes.
There are several actions that the New York City government can take to alleviate the problem of gentrification. In NYC, there are more vacant homes than there are homeless people. What good does an apartment have if no one lives in it? New York real estate and the buying up of empty homes while people must suffer the brutal winter cold demonstrates is a testament to capitalism’s inability to provide a housing solution. The New York City government should expropriate apartments that owners have left vacant for longer than a certain time. For example, in Denmark, it is illegal for the owner to leave a property empty for longer than six months. However, it is unlikely that the New York City government, based on its history of resorting to organized violence over actually attending to the needs of its most marginalized citizens, will act and implement a sensible and pragmatic solution to fixing homelessness in the city.
Therefore, it is up to us as students and residents of New York City to make the politically unthinkable a certainty. We all reside within various contradictions as people living under a violent settler-colonial state. As students at NYU, most of us are not from New York and are gentrifiers and/or beneficiaries of the displacement of low-income Black and Brown residents, regardless of our intentions. However, it is not our fault that housing near campus is becoming increasingly expensive. Students should see that, under this current system, the city will cast us aside just like our homeless neighbors if we were to lose our housing. Dealing with contradictions is a natural part of living under capitalism, and it is possible to acknowledge that we benefit from these violent processes and continue to combat them while recognizing how they harm us. Organizations like the Brooklyn Eviction Defense (BED) and Crown Heights Tenants Union are at the forefront of preventing people from succumbing to this threat, allowing them to continue living in their homes that they have owned for years or even generations. Joining organizations fighting against violent displacement and dispossession is a bare minimum step for what we can do as NYU students.