Simple movements

From a Q&A with where NY residents ask questions of NY Times Metro Editor, Joe Sexton.

Q. The transformation of Manhattan into an exclusive borough for the "super-rich" — I believe that this important issue is under-covered by The Times. Also, the affordable sections of Manhattan (below 14th Street), and the gentrification that has affected southern Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and now the Bronx. This is having a devastating impact on the middle and working classes.

I live in Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town, which was built for the middle class and is now being turned into ersatz luxury apartments. Typical rents have risen from $1,300 to way over $5,000, and when the lease is renewed, a 17 percent increase is added.

A. You are not alone in wondering how people of more modest means manage to stay in Manhattan.

[...] I think we've done some good work trying to capture the full dimensions of the extraordinary remaking of the city that has been under way for years.

[...] We've struggled a bit at getting at what would seem to be some critical issues. If the less well off are being pushed out of the city, for instance, where are they going, and is there a reliable, effective, practical way of actually comprehensively documenting where they've gone? It's trickier than you might think. Or maybe we're just short of good ideas. All suggestions welcome.

We're also currently talking with our reporters about starting a beat we might call "Frontiers'' — a sustained, sophisticated, aggressive look at the intersections of development and preservation, of gentrification (not necessarily a dirty word) and neighborhood identity.

Sexton must remind the reader that gentrification is not a "dirty word". This is correct; it encompasses far too much to be simply negative. However, the issues raised (the quadrupling of rents; conversion of middle class housing to luxury condos for the extremely rich; de facto 17% rent increases during lease renewals) describe a very negative, or perhaps a 'non-positive' change for the lower and middle classes.

Sexton also refers to the lower classes as the "less well off". Indeed, the starving are somewhat deficient in nutrition and cancer patients are perhaps less than healthy.

The immediacy of the middle or lower class family or individual who has been forcibly pushed from their home due to the uncontrollable metaphysics of the market (or so it is claimed) does not experience this change as a polite and necessary shift for the betterment of all; it is devastating and demoralizing.

They are human beings and not the abstract fictions of a ledger sheet.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/business/media/21askthetimes.html?pagewanted=all