Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
60
Where You Can Work’ campaign, and the glorious Victoria Theatre, which was hailed by the
time of its opening in 1917 as one of the most beautiful theatres in the city.
The Real Estate Boom in Harlem during the Bloomberg Years
Since the early 2000s, the influx of new in-movers and the rising average incomes have
consistently driven up prices in Harlem. It was the relative affordability of housing in Harlem
in the early 2000s that hastened the gentrification of the neighbourhood in the years to follow.
By 2006, the average sale price in Harlem had soared to 458 dollars per square foot (an
almost 250 per cent jump compared to 1996). In 2007, Harlem average sale prices had already
peaked to 713 thousand dollars (Corcoran Group 2007). At the zenith of the housing boom,
prices of new residential condo units in Harlem had become comparable to those of other
luxury developments in Manhattan, with prices ranging from 450 thousand to 650 thousand
dollars for a one-bedroom, and from 675 thousand to 2.2 million dollars for a two-bedroom
condo unit (Barnes 2007). The staggering costs of living in the neighbourhood made
headlines:
‘It is increasingly difficult to find a one-bedroom apartment rental for less than
$1000 even on the outskirts of Harlem. On any given day you will find at least a
dozen condominiums for sale in the New York Times for about $5 million’
(Dessus et al. 2007)
The 2008-2010 recession brought a dramatic drop in real estate values in the
neighbourhood. Foreclosures and bank takeovers increased steadily in Harlem, while stalled
developments and fenced-off construction sites dominated 125
th
Street. However, the slump
was short-lived, and median sale prices in Harlem rose again swiftly in 2010-2011. By 2011,
the most luxurious condominium developments in Harlem commanded prices of over 715
dollars per square foot (Fusfeld 2011). Among these were developments like 5
th
on the Park,
the Langston, the Lenox, the Lenox Grand, and the Dwyer
—
all of them offering luxury
amenities like 24-hour concierges, gyms and landscaped roof gardens. By 2012, in the highly
gentrified tract around 110th Street, home values had jumped 39 per cent compared to 2007
levels
—
the highest increase in all of Manhattan. Currently, the price per square foot for an
apartment in the best areas of Harlem is nearly the same as in Chelsea and the upper West
Side.
Residential Gentrification and Displacement in Harlem
Escalating housing prices are putting a severe strain on long time low- and middle-income
Harlem residents. By 2008, the Harlem Tenants Council reported complaints by hundreds of
Harlem tenants being displaced or threatened with eviction because of escalating rental prices,
landlord harassment or expiring rent regulations
(Bailey 2008).
As I have mentioned in the sub-section on
Affordability of New Housing and Threats
of Displacement
, DCP Chair Burden mentioned the ‘over 90 per cent’ of existing rent-
protected housing units in the neighbourhood (quoted in Williams 2008b) to reassure
residents that their fears of displacement were unsubstantiated. It is true that subsidized
