Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone (uncorrected proof)

CHAPTER FIVE CHINATOWN: UNPROTECTED AND UNDONE SAMUEL STEIN 122 05 Chapter F.indd 122 1 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out! 8/22/16 9:00 AM For years, the immigrant and working-class neighborhood of Chinatown was able to resist gentrification, even as all nearby downtown neighborhoods turned into segregated citadels for the rich and the white. Today, in large part due to zoning actions taken by the city in 2008 and 2011, Chinatown is in the midst of a swift and severe transformation into yet another exclusive enclave. First, a contextual “downzoning” that limited development in the neighboring affluent East Village, absent zoning protections for Chinatown, pushed development pressures further into Chinatown. The subsequent rezoning of a large parcel of public land for large-scale, high-end development was a missed opportunity to create low-income housing to help mitigate displacement, and instead created opportunities for new luxury units that bolster speculation in surrounding areas. Luxury development, rent deregulation, condo conversion, and tenement demolition have all increased significantly since these rezonings, resulting in declining Asian and Latino populations. Attempts to create a community plan that would push back against these trends have so far been rebuffed by the de Blasio administration, which is moving forward with similar rezoning actions, despite evidence of their racially discriminatory impact. The city’s refusal to take corrective action amounts to intentional discrimination against current residents and those who would be expected to reside in Chinatown if corrective fair housing measures were undertaken by the city. HISTORY AND CONTEXT Chinatown and the Lower East Side have long been home to new immigrants and working-class communities. Chinatown is an economic and cultural hub for Chinese and other Asian communities that, over the past century and a half, has developed a complex and evolving network of migration, finance, employment, and land ownership, which, though far from ideal, has provided housing and jobs for generations of immigrants (Kwong 1996). A recent report found that the neighborhood has 116,722 residents living in 2,118 buildings (AALDEF, 2013). According to According to 2013 American Community Survey data—figures that likely undercount immigrants—the racial composition of Community District 3 is 45 percent Asian, 19 percent white, 26 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent black. While the median income for the metro area is $64,786, the median income in Chinatown and the Lower East Side is just $37,996, and on several Chinatown blocks average income is closer to $16,000. Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 123 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 123 8/22/16 9:00 AM The average structure is a five-story tenement with stores on the ground floor. Most of these buildings were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries during one of the Lower East Side’s immigration-driven population booms. Its far eastern edge is home to some of the city’s first public housing projects, including Smith, LaGuardia, and Baruch Houses, as well as Confucius Plaza, a 762-unit Mitchell-Lama cooperative complex. For nearly a century, New York City government and real estate interests have viewed Chinatown and the Lower East Side as opportunities for growth and development. Located in the heart of lower Manhattan, south of Midtown, and near the towers of Wall Street and the iconic East River bridges, these neighborhoods have been subject to one scheme after another aimed at spurring high-end construction and dispersing its population of working-class people of color (Lin 1998). One of the first such schemes was the Lower Manhattan Expressway, a 1929 plan for an elevated highway that would have carried 120,000 cars per day from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. Cutting through Canal, Broome, and Delancey streets, it also would have displaced at least 2,000 families and 800 businesses employing 10,000 people. Over the years, the plan was supported by powerful city interests, including Robert Moses, the influential Regional Plan Association, Governor Rockefeller, and a group of finance and real estate interests known as the Lower Manhattan Association. Opposition, however, was furious and 05.A Neighborhood Map: Chinatown—Manhattan Community District 3 Eas t 14 th S tre et Sara Bow er y D. R oos eve lt P ark Tompkins Square Park East Village Lower East Side Seward Park Chinatown B Br roo id kl ge yn 124 05 Chapter F.indd 124 UR / Urban Research FDR Drive 0 .15 .3 .6 Miles Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM sustained, bringing together Chinatown community leaders with famed activist Jane Jacobs and her Greenwich Village allies (Flint 2009). The plan was eventually shelved, but the impulse to “redevelop” Chinatown lived on. Many of the same public officials and business groups later came up with a Title 1 Urban Renewal proposal called “China Village.” Declaring the neighborhood “one of the worst slums in New York,” the State Housing Division proposed demolishing fifteen acres of Chinatown and replacing it with eight high-rise housing projects and an Orientalist tourist market (as quoted in Umbach and Wishnoff 2008, 220). In the face of opposition from Chinatown residents and dwindling finances, the plan was vastly scaled down, and resulted in a much smaller urban renewal action. In 1981, the Department of City Planning (DCP) proposed a Special Manhattan Bridge District for Chinatown’s east side. The plan would have encouraged the construction of private high-rise condominiums at prices very few Chinatown residents could afford. Several community organizations resisted the plan and sued the city; the most significant lawsuit, Chinese Staff and Workers Association v. City of New York, argued that environmental impact reviews must evaluate the secondary economic impacts of private development, including indirect displacement.2 The judge sided with the community, and the rezoning plan was halted. 2008 AND 2011 REZONINGS AND DISPARATE RACIAL IMPACTS By the early 2000s, years of rising land values and rents had brought significant new, often out-of-scale residential and commercial development to the East Village, Lower East Side, and parts of Chinatown. After years of advocacy for preservation measures by residents and Community Board 3, in 2008 DCP proposed to rezone 111 blocks of the East Village and Lower East Side. The plan called for contextual rezoning and height limits to “preserve the established neighborhood scale and character” as well as increased residential density. In the final iteration of the plan, DCP stated that the city would also provide incentives for affordable housing.3 DCP presented a plan for balanced growth throughout the Lower East Side and Chinatown; however, the downzoning covered the more affluent East Village and the whitest blocks of the Lower East Side. At the same time, the proposed upzoning included a number of blocks with a high proportion of Asians, Latinos, and blacks, including Avenue D and Chrystie Street. DCP followed its longstanding policy of mixing preservation with new development, with the assent of the community board. The city’s rezoning Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 125 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 125 8/22/16 9:00 AM 05.B East Village-Lower East Side Rezoning, 2008 Community District 3 East Village Tompkins Square Park Village View Co-op Str ee t Ave nu eD Ch Sar r ystie a D Str . Ro ee ose t velt Par k E. Ho ust on Rezoning Area Chinatown 0 .04 .08 .16 .24 .32 Miles Downzoned Residential (Contexual) Upzoned Residential Upzoned Commercial New York City Department of City Planning, NYC GIS Zoning Features, December 2015. 126 05 Chapter F.indd 126 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM was sold to the community as a way to preserve the East Village’s low-tomid-rise residential character, and drive development towards its widest corridors. The upzoned area included a voluntary inclusionary zoning program, through which participating developers could receive a floor area bonus and/or tax benefit in exchange for allotting 20 percent of units as income-targeted. There were a number of problems with this plan. The proposed inclusionary housing, for example, would create only a small number of income-targeted rental and condo apartments, and even those would be far too expensive for most neighborhood residents. Qualifying income ranges for the proposed housing were typically $43,000 to $61,500; the median income within the rezoning’s boundaries was just over $25,600 (Angotti and Ervin 2008). This was bound to have a disparate racial outcome, as white incomes in the district greatly exceeded those of Asians, Latinos, and blacks. The biggest problem with the plan, however, was what it excluded. Despite shared concerns over unmitigated development and displacement, most of Chinatown and the Lower East Side’s least gentrified blocks were excluded in the contextual rezoning. Median household incomes for census tracts inside the rezoning’s boundaries ranged as high as $51,413. Meanwhile, all of the community board’s poorest census tracts, with median incomes as low as $11,963, were left out of the proposal. The plan left out the Lower East Side and East Village’s racially diverse waterfront, and did nothing to protect public housing residents.4 Though whites made up just 29 percent of Community District 3, 73 percent of the white population was covered by the Bloomberg administration’s proposal. And while Asians, Latinos, and blacks made up a broad majority of the population, just 37 percent of the area’s Hispanics and 23 percent of its Asian populations were covered by this protective zoning.5 Most of Chinatown and the Lower East Side’s least gentrified blocks were excluded in the contextual rezoning. Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 127 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 127 8/22/16 9:00 AM At public events and in communication with the press, community members argued that the city’s proposal was part of a plan to divert development into low-income communities of color. Josephine Lee, an organizer with the Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA), told a reporter: It’s really blatantly racist, the way they drew their boundaries. The rezoning plan is not so much to protect the East Village as it is to displace the communities of people of color within and around it (Tucker 2008). Wing Lam, founder of the CSWA, asked rhetorically: How can you put a plan like that on the Chinese? Only white [people] like low buildings and sunlight and Chinese don’t like low buildings and sunlight? (Anderson et al. 2008). CSWA and other groups ultimately sued the city, arguing that its Environmental Impact Statement significantly underrepresented the plan’s potential displacement of Chinatown’s working-class people of color. In the course of the debates over the rezoning plan, many also questioned why public housing, home to many Asian, Latino and black residents, was excluded from the rezoning. The zoning on these sites had been established decades ago, when gentrification and public housing seemed incompatible. In public forums, some falsely claimed that NYCHA, which was established under state legislation, was exempt from zoning rules. In the end, public housing residents were not included in conversations and plans for the future of their neighborhood. Public housing residents were not included in conversations and plans for the future of their neighborhood. The community board responded to these concerns with enormous hostility. They refused to provide key information to opponents of the plan. The board denied entry to Chinese and Latino members of the public, even when meetings were not full to capacity; at one point, a community board member even shouted at the crowd to “be quiet and stop your Chinese rebellion” (Li 2010). After a series of blistering hearings, Community Board 3 voted to 128 05 Chapter F.indd 128 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM 05.C Division Street. Photo: Sarah Friedland, 2016. approve the rezoning. In response to the community outcry, the board also recommended that the city introduce programs to address harassment and eviction of rent regulated tenants, monitor and attempt to halt demolition of existing buildings in the district, and identify publicly owned sites for affordable housing. When the plan moved on through the land use review process to the City Planning Commission, however, all of these recommendations were dropped, and the commission voted to approve the plan as written (Xu 2013). By the time the plan made it to the city council, it was virtually assured a victory. Alan Gerson, the city council member who represented the bulk of Chinatown, called Wing Lam, director of the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, and asked for his blessing to vote for the rezoning. A no vote, Gerson argued, would be a useless protest. Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 129 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 129 8/22/16 9:00 AM When Lam refused to accept this compromise, Gerson offered funding for anti-eviction support work. This suggests that public officials understood that the East Village/Lower East Side rezoning would result in displacement in Chinatown, yet proceeded to support it. On November 19, 2008, the city council voted unanimously to approve the rezoning. During the public review process, proponents of the rezoning claimed that the plan was too far along to modify. City officials were also firm and sought to placate the opposition with promises that they would support a future rezoning of Chinatown. The city bulldozed ahead. THE 2011 SEWARD PARK MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT AND REZONING The 2008 rezoning affected most of the Lower East Side but excluded one significant area: 20 acres of largely vacant land known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, or SPURA. In 1967, as part of the federal urban renewal program, the city demolished 14 blocks of “blighted” housing and displaced 966 Puerto Rican families, 762 white families, 193 black families, and 178 Chinese families. Eighty percent of them were low-income households (Turner 1984). The city promised to create new housing in place of the “slums” it bulldozed, but instead SPURA languished for decades. The site includes a few isolated public or subsidized housing projects, but the original promise of large-scale low-income housing was never realized. Most of the lots have been used as parking or were fenced off and left vacant. Over the years there have been both city-led and community-driven proposals to redevelop the site, but they were repeatedly quashed in racially charged political battles. For decades, residents of nearby Cooperative Village, a complex built by and for garment workers — 97.6 percent of whom were white — fought with Chinese, Puerto Rican, and black activists over the site’s future (Turner 1984). White leaders, including the long-term New York State Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver, lobbied and maneuvered to ensure that no low-income housing was built on the cleared SPURA land, largely as a way to preserve their enclave and protect their positions of power. Meanwhile, organizations led by and representing working-class people of color fought for public and subsidized housing on the site. They were often promised parcels that were never delivered. The struggle simmered and raged on and off for over 40 years (Buettner 2014). 130 05 Chapter F.indd 130 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM For decades, residents of nearby Cooperative Village, a complex built by and for garment workers—97.6 percent of whom were white—fought with Chinese, Puerto Rican, and black activists over the site’s future. After the 2008 East Village/Lower East Side rezoning, the city was finally ready to take action on SPURA. Mayor Bloomberg, in concert with Speaker Silver, insisted that any new residential construction on the site be largely “market-rate,” with some percentage carved out for lower income tenants. Groups like CSWA and NMASS (National Mobilization Against Sweatshops) rejected this framework. In order to fight the tide of gentrification, and to right the wrongs of the 1967 demolition and displacement, they demanded that this rare tract of publicly owned land be used entirely for low-income housing. The city moved forward with planning and negotiations, often excluding these organizations. In 2011, the city’s plan for SPURA was adopted: about 1,000 apartments would be built, of which 20 percent would be low-income, 20 percent middle-income, and 10 percent senior housing. In their guidelines for development, the city insisted that “the mixed-income character of the neighborhood must be reflected in the development plan for the sites.” However, the final plan represents less a picture of Chinatown’s current diversity than a model of its gentrified future. At market rates, 500 of the new apartments would be affordable to less than 1 percent of current Community District 3 residents. Monthly rents in the “affordable” units would be no more than 30 percent of net household income, as per federal and city standards, for those who meet income qualifications. A unit can be considered “affordable” even if it serves persons earning far above the city median income, which is far higher than the neighborhood median income. Thus, among the 500 income-targeted units, at projected rents, 100 units at $3,000 per month would be affordable to only 14 percent of the population in the area; 100 apartments at $2,500 a month would be affordable to 17 percent of the population; and Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 131 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 131 8/22/16 9:00 AM 300 apartments at $1,000 per month would be affordable to a slim majority (53 percent) of neighborhood residents. In this vision of a mixed-income neighborhood, less than 1 percent of the population gets half of the housing, half of the apartments go to middle- and upper-middle-income residents, and low wage earners—47 percent of the existing population—cannot afford to live there at all (Chou and Miranda 2011).6 In 2015, Sheldon Silver, whose shadow hovered over the site for 40 years, was convicted of massive fraud (unrelated to the project) and forced to resign from the New York State Assembly. In this vision of a mixed-income neighborhood, half of the apartments go to middle- and upper-middle-income residents, and low wage earners—47 percent of the existing population—cannot afford to live there at all. THE IMPACT OF THE REZONINGS: DISPLACEMENT AND LOSS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING In 2008 and 2011, when the city’s zoning actions took place, Chinatown was already experiencing gentrification pressures, felt most intensely by the neighborhood’s Chinese and Latino communities. Since then, the displacement has only persisted and grown. Between 2008 and 2011, nearly 6,000 existing and newly developed neighborhood apartments became unaffordable to households making middle-class wages.7 In 2010, median rents for newcomers to the neighborhood were $1,762, a third higher than the citywide figure.8 By 2014, 132 05 Chapter F.indd 132 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM 05.D The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and The Lower East Side and its supporters march to City Hall demanding passage of the Chinatown Working Group community plan. Photo: Samuel Stein, 2016. median asking rents had reached $3,000 a month (Furman Center 2014). Much of this change is due to the deregulation of rent-stabilized apartments, which are disappearing through both legal inaction and illegal transformations at a rapid rate. The prospect of rising rents, according to then-Democratic District Leader Paul Newell, “gives [landords] the incentive to have short-term residents—to flip people in-and-out” who pay more and are less likely to challenge deteriorating conditions (Barbino 2011). This, in turn, encourages landlords to harass long-term or low rent paying residents. As one community organizer told reporters in 2011: “Pretty much every day we have someone coming to us with a new story of a landlord harassing them” (Barbino 2011). As rents rose, income disparities expanded. Average incomes for whites in the neighborhood took off from $35,504 in 2000 to $58,265 in 2010. Meanwhile, wages did not keep up for people of color. Average incomes for Asian Chinatown residents actually decreased between 2000 and 2010, from $31,368 to $29,524. One-third of Asians in Chinatown live below the poverty line. Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 133 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 133 8/22/16 9:00 AM 05E Loss of Latino, Asian, and Black Populations, Growth of White Population in Chinatown and the Lower East Side, 2000-2010 Absolute Change in Number of Residents 6,000 19% 4,000 2,000 0 -2% -2,000 -4,000 -11% -6,000 -11% -6% -8,000 Total Population White Black Asian Hispanic/Latino Demographic *Percentages represent the percent change in number of residents within a demographic between 2000 and 2010. Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Chinatown Then and Now: Gentrification in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, 2013, p.29 www.aaldef.org/ Between 2000 and 2010, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the number of residents of color drastically declined, with a loss of 6,707 Asian residents, 3,823 Latinos, and 131 black residents, while the white population increased by 3,785 residents. This widespread gentrification and displacement of people of color is directly linked to the city’s zoning actions: when landowners find that rezoning has increased the potential value of their land, they typically sell the property for upscale redevelopment, or employ legal and illegal tactics to remove low-income tenants and charge higher rents. If Chinatown had been included in the rezoning with zoning designations that protected existing buildings, the pressures of gentrification and displacement could have been minimized. 134 05 Chapter F.indd 134 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM 05.F A new hotel in Chinatown built after the 2008 rezoning. Photo: Sarah Friedland, 2016. NEW LUXURY DEVELOPMENT In the absence of zoning protections, Chinatown has experienced a rash of new upscale construction. A 2008 survey found 26 new luxury buildings in Chinatown; since then dozens more have been built (CAAAV 2008). These new buildings are easily identifiable: on the whole, they are taller and wider than most Chinatown buildings, they lack affordable retail spaces, and they tend to feature sheets of reflective glass or protruding balconies. Chinatown realtors are not shy about the people they are looking to attract. One agent marketing 123 Baxter, a new luxury building that claims to be in “SoHo South,” told a real estate newspaper she was looking for tenants who are “young and come from a lot of money” (Weiman 2007). The same realtor told The New York Times that their target was people “who want luxury but want to stay under the radar and who think SoHo is too trendy already—I think trust-fund babies with ripped jeans is the profile we’re looking at” (Toy 2006). Hotels are also rising throughout Chinatown. They are typically discouraged in residential neighborhoods, but permitted under Chinatown’s zoning. On blocks zoned for manufacturing, hotels can be built as of right. Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 135 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 135 8/22/16 9:00 AM Now that Chinatown is no longer a garment-manufacturing hub, many of the spaces that once housed sweatshops are being converted into luxury hotels or demolished for new hotel construction (Kwong and Stein 2015). These properties include: • At 54 Canal Street, DLJ RE Capital Partners, an investment firm with developments in the US and China, is working on a 140-room conversion. • On 154 Madison, a new Comfort Inn squeezed into a slender lot. • On 185 Bowery, Brack Capital, a Dutch real estate conglomerate with properties around the world, is opening “CitizenM Downtown,” a new 300-room hotel that is larger than its Times Square counterpart. • At 50 Bowery, Alex Chu of Eastbank is demolishing the old Silver Palace restaurant, site of one of the longest and most militant labor strikes in Chinatown’s history, and building a 22-story hotel. These developments will do nothing for Chinatown’s existing population, and will only advance the neighborhood’s transformation into a tourist attraction along the lines of the 1950s “China Village” plan. 05.G Development in Chinatown. Photo: Sarah Friedland, 2016. 136 05 Chapter F.indd 136 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM ADDING INSULT TO INJURY: THE EXTELL BUILDING One of the most alarming new developments is a proposed 80-story, 800unit super luxury apartment building along the waterfront in Chinatown. Until recently, it was the site of a 24-hour Pathmark, the only accessible supermarket for the neighborhood’s low-income population. On March 15, 2013, Extell Development Company purchased the land for over $103 million. Since Pathmark had 30 years left on its lease, Extell also bought out their lease for an additional $46 million, bringing the total acquisition price to just under $150 million. The new building will feature such absurdist amenities as a golf simulator room, a dog spa, and a cigar room, and is designed as a virtual gated community. The developer, however, is financing their project with public money (including Low Income Housing Tax Credits and 421-a tax abatements), and is building a separate, smaller, lower quality building with below-market rents. The plan is to build a 13-story, 205-apartment structure next to the high-rise, for families making up to 60 percent of New York’s Area Median Income. A qualifying family of four could earn up to $51,540 (Litvak 2014) while the median income for that particular census block is just $20,450 (Pratt Center for Community Development et al. 2013). This segregated development will exclude people of color and low-income families currently living in the area, while also creating secondary displacement pressures by fueling rising rents and land prices. DISPLACEMENT OF PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS Luxury development has also been proposed on the neighborhood’s public housing campuses, which were also excluded from 2008’s contextual rezoning. Smith, LaGuardia, and Baruch houses were chosen as potential development sites in a 2013 proposal for infill development at eight Manhattan public housing projects. The new buildings would be placed either on parking lots or on land now used for parks and playgrounds. At Smith Houses, plans were released for one 50-story luxury building (with 20 percent “affordable” housing), which would tower 33 stories over the current buildings, and two 35-story buildings, including one on top of the project’s baseball field (Smith 2013). Smith resident leader Aixa Torres told reporters: “They’re going to literally squeeze my residents like they’re roaches and they’re going to build this huge beautiful complex” (Smith 2013). Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 137 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 137 8/22/16 9:00 AM While Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s infill proposal was defeated by resident organizing, NYCHA (the New York City Housing Authority) has sold and leased property for private development on a piecemeal basis throughout the city, and is planning a new iteration of the large-scale infill plan. Since 2013, NYCHA has sold 54 plots (441 square feet) to private developers (Smith 2015). In 2015, Mayor de Blasio proposed the “NextGeneration” plan for NYCHA; activists were quick to dub it “NextGentrification” (Pinto 2015). The plan’s centerpiece was a proposal to lease large amounts of NYCHA land to private developers, who would build 7,500 new units of housing at 50 percent market rate and 50 percent “affordable,” though even these income levels would be significantly higher than public housing averages (Nahmias 2015). The plan also included steps towards privatizing select developments and increasing rent collection levels, with the implied threat of evictions for non-payment (Navarro 2015). Many fear that these actions, undeterred by zoning changes, are creating a pathway to privatization and laying claim to one of the last guarantees of affordable housing for low-income people of color in Chinatown and beyond. EXACERBATING INEQUALITIES By restricting development in the more affluent East Village and pushing development demand further into Chinatown, and by rezoning SPURA to stimulate high-end construction, the city’s land use policies have increased displacement pressures on the Asian, Latino, and black populations of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The real-life impacts of displacement go far beyond losing one’s home. Many tenants face constant landlord harassment, rising rents, and deteriorating conditions. Residents of aging tenement buildings frequently confront landlord negligence, often a form of harassment, that results in leaks and mold, chipping paint and plaster, vermin infestations, and more serious structural deterioration. Many of these low-income tenants are paying upwards of 50 percent of their incomes to live in such hazardous and inhumane conditions, often while facing housing court battles and off-therecord conflicts. Most recently, in May 2015, Chinatown tenants brought these issues to light in a protest of a local slumlord. Tenants and activists described living conditions: rats [are] all over the place coming out from the holes. [Tenants] have to knock on the door to make the rats leave before they can even enter their own bathroom (Airoldi 2015). 138 05 Chapter F.indd 138 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM One resident has to hold an umbrella when she uses the restroom to protect herself from leaks. As David Tieu of the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops stated: A lot of luxury development has been pushed into our community […] and it encourages landlords […] to use these slumlord tactics to push out long-time residents (Airoldi 2015). A 2010 tenant lawsuit claimed that landlord harassment tactics included: disrupting three tenant meetings by calling the police; rejecting rent payments; frivolously pursuing legal eviction proceedings; suspending essential services for a prolonged period of time; and ordering tenants to remove Chinese cultural symbols and decorations from their doors (Lee 2009). Residential and commercial displacement is particularly impactful in immigrant communities, where locally run businesses and organizations serve particular linguistic and cultural needs. These losses of community and culture are both emotional and practical. As Chinatown and the Lower East Side’s Asian and Latino residents, stores, and cultural centers are displaced by new development and rising rents, those who are able to stay lose local resources and are increasingly isolated. As their communities shrink, they are increasingly underrepresented and underserved. Residential and commercial displacement is particularly impactful in immigrant communities, where locally run businesses and organizations serve particular linguistic and cultural needs. Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 139 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 139 8/22/16 9:00 AM THE COMMUNITY PLAN FOR CHINATOWN: HOW THE CITY DESTROYED THE EQUITABLE ALTERNATIVE One way to curb displacement and segregation is to engage in and implement genuine community planning, which can manage development and protect existing residents and businesses. After Chinatown was excluded from the 2008 rezoning, the three community boards that contain pieces of Chinatown—Manhattan’s community boards 1, 2, and 3—came together with over 40 neighborhood organizations to form the Chinatown Working Group, a body tasked with creating a planning and zoning document that would help shape Chinatown’s future. Rather than creating a formal 197-a plan, a slow and cumbersome process that ends in a legally non-binding plan, the Chinatown Working Group aimed to build internal consensus, then hire an outside consultant to turn their ideas into a formal rezoning proposal. In consultation with DCP and other agencies, planners from the Pratt Institute developed a formal plan, which included a special zoning district, strict anti-eviction and anti-harassment provisions, a very targeted 05.H The Plan for Chinatown and Surrounding Areas: Preserving Affordability and Authenticity 140 05 Chapter F.indd 140 UR / Urban Research Zoned Out 8/22/16 9:00 AM and comparatively affordable inclusionary zoning program, restrictions on big box stores and hotels, and more allowances for light manufacturing in character with the neighborhood’s existing economic activity. As the plan was being approved by Community Board 3, however, DCP Director Carl Weisbrod sent a letter to the board, informing them that they had no intention to approve the Chinatown Working Group’s plan. Calling it too ambitious, they offered to consider the portions of the plan that emphasized development over preservation (Litvak 2015). This suggests that the problems of racially unequal zoning practices were not limited to the Bloomberg administration, but constitute a pattern and practice of discriminatory planning policies, deeply imbedded in city government. In response, Chinatown and Lower East Side residents and workers have been protesting the mayor and his planning priorities at the Extell development site, at city hall, at Gracie Mansion, and at real estate banquets. With their own community plan in hand, Chinatown activists are demanding an end to racist rezonings, and the beginning of a new era of community planning. Endnotes 1. The author would like to thank Wendy Chang, Kai Wen Yang, Gui Yang, Wing Lam (Chinese Staff and Workers Association), and David Tieu (National Mobilization Against Sweatshops) for all their input and guidance, and recognize Peter Kwong for his many years of mentorship and insightful analysis. 2. Chinese Staff and Workers Association et al., Appellants, v. City of New York et al., Respondents. Court of Appeals of the State of New York. Decided November 18, 1986. 68 N.Y.2d 359 (1986). 3. “East Village/Lower East Side - Approved! Overview,” Department of City Planning, accessed January 23, 2016, http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/evles/index.shtml. 4. For more on the exclusion of most public housing from the 2008 rezoning, see Martinez 2010, 143–145. 5. Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side (2008), Bloomberg’s Racist Rezoning, accessed May 4, 2014. http://protectchinatownandles.org/english/DCP_plan.html#affordable. 6. These calculations assume the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s standard guidelines for affordability. 7. During this period, Manhattan’s Community District 3 (which includes most of Chinatown and the Lower East Side) saw 5,890 apartments become unaffordable to households making under 80 percent of Area Median Income (ANHD 2013). 8. In 2010, New York City’s median monthly rent was $1,184 (Furman Center 2011). Stein 05 Chapter F.indd 141 Chinatown: Unprotected and Undone 141 8/22/16 9:00 AM