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There is only one true way to clean up the Bronx. Any other option will only partly or temporarily work. It's simple. They need to take the same approach as the affluent parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn that are intriguing interest.
First off, the projects have to go. I'm a Democrat saying this. Allowing people to live and not work is unacceptable. It might sound mean, but they have no right to live in this city. This city is over-expensive and has no room for human trash. If you are not disabled, you don't belong here. If you can't make enough to live in a rent control building, you don't deserve the right to have your children live with you. Because if that's the truth, you couldn't provide any kind of life for them.
A lot of money would be saved. They'd be able to fix streets, give tax breaks to small business owners and create new jobs. People need to go to college more. People who have loser parents need to do nothing like them. I'm not saying these aren't good people, because most actually are, but poverty isn't doing good for anyone.
By keeping the projects there, you're providing a safety net. You're promoting to people that they have the right to live, if they don't work. This is capitalism. It's a socialist program. It shouldn't exist, because it does nothing for human growth.
Most people don't live in the projects in the Bronx though. Most are in between lower-middle class to middle-class. It takes a lot of money to live here. More people need to be dependant on rent and need to start buying more apartments. Even for as crapy as the real-estate market is, throwing money away at a building is doing nothing if a possible mortgage could be similar in payments.
People need to stop living for the day. They need to ration better. For one, we've noticed this through out the city with the decreasing fertility rates. Less immigrants are coming here now too because this place is over-crowded and America is less desirable.
Unfortunately, for as more successful as you get, the most desirability it will draw from other boroughs. That will improve the economy, but also force people out. This neighborhoods need to be cleaned up. Drugs need to go.
I know nothing like this would ever happen, but it would be a beautiful thing. I used to watch the show third watch. There was some Jamaican guy in the show with the long dreads. He told the cop's to let him handle the situation. He got all the drug dealers in the neighborhood together into the same room. He blew up the building and all of them died.
Life isn't that good though. More harsh penalities need to continue though. That is much of the responsibility of the rest of the city's enforcement too, but people from this community need to fix their problems as individuals. They need to stop relying on other people for support.
If you don't go to college in this city and don't come from money, you'll live a crappy life. If you can't comply with those and don't want that lifestyle, than you should consider another place to live. The Bronx should aim to Queens is at. It is understandable that the immigrants who come to the Bronx aren't as affluent, but that shouldn't effect future generations.
There is financial aid for poor students. There is always a job for someone in this city. Women need to start making equivalent (or close to) the same salaries as men too. That means that you can't stay home with your kid's until they're 8. And than repeat the process all over again. We all wish life could be like that, but if you want that move to Montana where it's affordable. Either that or marry a man who can bring in over 100K.
If you knock down the projects and get new apartments built. It would set a new tone and force people to get better quick. It would institute a new atmosphere that says if you can't keep up, you're going to go homeless. If people got that fear, they'll improve. And the people who they'll be aiming to get at in the small steps will also jump up from possible fear of having no safety net. Some of those buildings in the Bronx are so filthy and poorly structured, they should be knocked down.
If the building codes are approved to these contractors, they could bring more money into the area and drive up the real-estate. People want new. If they're built decent and the people pay up, they'll keep the electricity, plumbing and elevators working. However, if you got dead-end people with **** in your hall ways, I couldn't blame the owner of the building to let the people literally rot in hell.
The rent control buildings should continue to exist here because it mandates that people do have to work. It allows people to have a chance. It basically says you're the lower end of the lower-middle class, but you could still get it together.
Regardless of whether this plan goes through or not, I am confident that the Bronx will continue to get better. People will go to college more and the crime rates will continue to drop. This city and even the Bronx isn't really as dangerous as it's always made out to be. If you want quick results though, you'd go with my plan.
Obviously though, the loser's who live in the projects wouldn't want to give up their lives and would complain, and the media would cry that it's ''discrimination'' against blacks (and possibly the almighty jumbo-irrelevant-tag team-blindsighting-retarding term ''minorities''). It would inevitably keep the African-Americans down and make assimilation a rockier road to get to for lower-middle class immigrants. They have to aim at the status of the most American group that exists in the Bronx now (people of Puerto Rican descent - which is no longer an acknowledged ethnicity - unless you're in a dream world lol). That means losing your culture, but gaining economically.
Actually, I got a better idea that sounds blunt. I read the USSR comparison and it's right. I read the 80-20 city/business presentation, that's the wrong approach. What is this communist China? Government assistance? How about this. Let's dispose of the real trash. And that's about 20 percent of the Bronx. They need to be kicked out on there asses and be forced to starve to death unless they get their god damn act together.
A man who doesn't work doesn't deserve a food stamp. How do you think people overcome there problems throughout the rest of the country? This is the one thing that Republicans really advantage in. They promote self-reliance and to make it on your own. They say you'll be as good as you'll be, or bad.
It'd be like you could get really hot (or good), or freeze to death below 80. Democrat's contain the right for loser's to stay in their little shells and never break out of them.
The should sell them off to contractors as quickly as possible. They should give people a couple years in notice to get there acts together. Those buildings are tearing down the reputation of these places. Just look at how one compared them to the one's in Bed-Stuy. He said the crap here makes it look like Trump Plaza lol Sadly, he's kind of right.
The only government assistance I'd provide is to help contain the lower-income for the old, elderly or hard-working families. That, plus financial aid. People deserve a right to live, but not a life already written. Those who work there ass off in the Bronx deserve the right to feel more proud about where they live.
Yo, I'm fairly conservative and all but you've got to chill. Saying that people need to be thrown out on the streets and starve is not helping anything. Thats just hurtful rhetoric.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nyc0127
Actually, I got a better idea that sounds blunt. I read the USSR comparison and it's right. I read the 80-20 city/business presentation, that's the wrong approach. What is this communist China? Government assistance? How about this. Let's dispose of the real trash. And that's about 20 percent of the Bronx. They need to be kicked out on there asses and be forced to starve to death unless they get their god damn act together.
A man who doesn't work doesn't deserve a food stamp. How do you think people overcome there problems throughout the rest of the country? This is the one thing that Republicans really advantage in. They promote self-reliance and to make it on your own. They say you'll be as good as you'll be, or bad.
It'd be like you could get really hot (or good), or freeze to death below 80. Democrat's contain the right for loser's to stay in their little shells and never break out of them.
The should sell them off to contractors as quickly as possible. They should give people a couple years in notice to get there acts together. Those buildings are tearing down the reputation of these places. Just look at how one compared them to the one's in Bed-Stuy. He said the crap here makes it look like Trump Plaza lol Sadly, he's kind of right.
The only government assistance I'd provide is to help contain the lower-income for the old, elderly or hard-working families. That, plus financial aid. People deserve a right to live, but not a life already written. Those who work there ass off in the Bronx deserve the right to feel more proud about where they live.
Yo, I'm fairly conservative and all but you've got to chill. Saying that people need to be thrown out on the streets and starve is not helping anything. Thats just hurtful rhetoric.
I agree with his point that if you are not working and are not disabled, you should not be living in NYC, not in any of the boros...The projects have existed as a safety net for too long for some people. You have generations of family who have lived in the projects. Something is wrong with this and when you start being a little harder on folks, i.e. making it harder to qualify for gov't housing, they either need to shape up or ship out.
Yes I think NYC was just letting off steam...as his "plan" is just nonsensical ramblings. The projects are not going anywhere for the forseeable future, but the WAY the projects are run, and their role in this city, can change greatly.
You know that saying "It Takes A Village". That's what it will take to get the Bronx back to some sort of order. People working together.
That is the very attitude that caused the problem to begin with. Great Society presupposed that "the VILLAGE" existed apart from the village's constituent parts.
As Guy said in his letter to Barack Obama, if I may paraphrase, "change begins with one man/woman planting a tree"...............................implicit in that statement comes the supremacy of the individual's capacity for change not the individual waiting for "the VILLAGE" to tell them to plant a tree or worse yet what tree they can plant!
Ogden..thats an interesting perspective....I udnerstand what you are saying...individuals need to take actions and responsibility instead of waiting for mass consensus or support. You end up with meetings to schedule when the next meetings will be and nothing is ever done.
But I think the essence of SongBird's statement is that people DO need to work together...and they are doing just that. These are the groups that are reshaping the Bronx, and the South Bronx in particular, into the affordable housing resource for the working/middle class..the backbone of the city: teachers, police, city workers, etc.
Historically speaking, the South Bronx was always an affordable, poor to working/lower class neighborhood whereas the northern part of the BX (University Heights, Fordham, Bedford....) was more of a upper to middle class neighborhood considered to be a 2nd tier upwardly mobile neighborhoods. The exception was the Concourse that was the upper class backbone of the BX hence the 5th avenue of the Bronx. For whatever reasons that have been discussed in detail in other threads, we can conclude that this ascension of class was stalled, digressed and replaced by the current state of affairs. There seems to be a consensus that these housing projects are a major contributor to the state of affairs in the Bronx. All that said it seems to me that by putting money into these projects and attempting to fix them may just feed the problem in the long run given the reality of politics, lawyers and civil libertarians in NYC. I have read some very reasonable ideas in this thread but considered them to be impossible to implement in NY. Other Boroughs have upper, middle, and working class neighborhoods in their economy that seems to work together. The Bronx has tremendous waterfront potential to build desirable housing. It also has tremendous business potential. A parallel initiative to build luxury housing in the Bronx to bring income into it that would also bring jobs while cracking down on the free housing benefits and force these people to work may jumpstart the cycle. Its worthy to note that a better economy or money stream in a borough would also provide better schools and programs to support it. I believe that a focus on working class neighborhoods cannot sustain an economy since it will always require an external funding stream during downturns.
That is correct Circa..however we must also work within the confines of the current state of affairs of the South Bronx: a heavily segregated, extremely poor, entirely subsidized district. Building luxury housing is great..but who will pay the premium to live amongst the extreme poverty and filth when there is an ENTIRE world that you can live in outside of the South Bronx that is fighting to get your money. You are missing the middle step BEFORE you jump to luxury housing....and thats returning the middle class back to the area FIRST with affordable housing (not low income housing) and the amenities to support the new population. The middle will return in droves as quality, affordable housing is built, along with the amenities and infrastructure to support their lifestyle...and that is exactly what you are seeing today.
Once that is completed, the next step is further diversifying the area by transforming some affordable housing into market rate, as well as low-income to affordable housing, and so on. It takes steps, which is why areas in the South Bronx are a LONGTERM investment.
I agree with the potential that exists in the Bronx..and South Bronx in particular, but it takes one step at a time, and that is exactly what is occuring in the area. The middle class first....all others after.
Guy, I agree that you can’t plop these places in the middle of the filth but by looking at the Brooklyn and LIC water front projects as an example, they built these places near the water in a self-sustained community that transformed the surrounding area in a very short period of time. I see plans on the horizon for water front park developments and a new middle class condo near the University Heights Meto-North station that seems to follow that trend that works.
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