Will the just-announced marriage between Amazon and New York City last? Because like it or not, the mega delivery behemoth has just announced it’s setting up one-half of its second headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, in New York. The other half will be in Arlington, VA.
Man, this is interesting. Because also located in Long Island City are the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in America, with 6,000 residents living in 26 buildings. The median household income is $15,843. So these folks are mostly poor. They’re also mostly black and Latino.
A lot are working, and a lot are not. Nas, the rapper who is considered one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all-time, is Queensbridge’s most famous resident.
Then in the same neighborhood, not far away, you’ll have Amazon’s second headquarters, where skilled employees typically make over $100,000. These folks are mostly well-off. Not rich, per se, but comfortable. They’re also mostly white and Asian.
There are a few things to analyze here. First, who will fill those 25,000 new positions? Will it be local Long Island City residents, or will it be skilled professionals that Amazon imports from other parts of the city and throughout the world?
Will Amazon invest in upgrading transit in Long Island City so that residents from the Queensbridge Houses have better access to the subway?
I live in Astoria, Queens, which is just north of Long Island City, and I have access to two subway lines It’s not perfect, but I can get around fairly well. My walk to the nearest subway station is about five minutes.
Residents of the Queensbridge Houses are more isolated, though, and better subway and bus service would benefit them greatly.
That leads to another question, which is why in 2018 do we still have housing projects?
Why do we cordon off mostly poor black and brown folks in shabby housing in isolated areas with little infrastructure and poor services? Is that a recipe for upward mobility? Will that really help people achieve the American Dream? That’s the question, and the answer is pretty obvious.
If Amazon and New York City really want to do some good, they could build scatter site housing throughout the city so that poor folks aren’t cordoned off in medieval housing developments. The idea of scatter site is to build affordable housing for low income people that’s integrated into the neighborhoods it’s located in.
In Seattle, Amazon’s home base, the city is thriving, and the population is booming as more and more skilled tech workers flock to the city to work for companies like Amazon, Boeing and Microsoft.
There’s also a homeless crisis going on. There are differing views on whether Amazon has done enough, as the 5th largest employer in the city, to help alleviate this crisis. But whatever they’ve done, they need to do more.
My brother lives in Seattle, and I’ve been traveling there to visit him one or two times a year for over twenty years now. So I have a pretty good feel for the city.
I love it. It’s an incredibly beautiful cultural mecca right up against Puget Sound and just west of the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.
But when you move around the city, you see homeless folks. A lot. In fact, there are four tent cities for homeless people that Seattle is experimenting with to manage the crisis.
New York has a similar homeless crisis, with over 60,000 people throughout the city homeless on any given night. Amazon could help New York out by working with the city to build better, safer shelters, and by helping homeless people transition into permanent housing.
If Amazon does right by New York City, Long Island City might have an affordable housing building right next to a middle or upper-income building. And nearby there might be a homeless shelter. That way people of all incomes will mix and mingle, and in this way the low-income folks will benefit from the same schools, hospitals, restaurants, shopping and culture as the people with money.
It’s a great strategy for lifting people up instead of holding them down, and it’s been tried in many cities throughout the US. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but what’s the alternative? Isolate poor people in clusters of aggregated poverty like public housing?
No, that doesn’t sound very good to me.
I say burn down the New York City projects, just burn them to the ground, and build decent, affordable housing in good neighborhoods for the half a million New Yorkers who live in public housing. That’s 5% of the city, in case you were wondering.
While we’re at it, why don’t we provide better job training, education, and services for the 44% of all New Yorkers who live at or near the poverty level?
That’s what I would do if I were NYC and Amazon. But most likely they’ll just take the profits and let the poor eat cake. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all plays out. Stay tuned.
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