Gentrification

Home Sweet Harlem feels like chef and owner Donna Lewis’s home. The brick walls are lined with modern artwork by black artists, while the pale yellow back room showcases old framed photographs. Lewis’ menu, which offers Southern food such as homemade pancakes, fresh buttermilk biscuits, and salmon croquettes, exudes a similar sense of comfort.

Columbia is a landlord. Since moving into Harlem in 1897, Columbia has been taking hold of more and more property in the neighborhood, and its aggression seems to know no bounds. From lobbying for the closure of single-room occupancies (or SROs), to the use of eminent domain to acquire project housing, to the lack of enforcement of the concessionary Community Benefits Agreement, Columbia has continually acted with its own moneyed interests in mind, with no regard for the community in which it resides. The administration’s relationship to community members is like that of an antagonistic proprietor: It makes continued efforts to take land that is not its own, minimize dissent, and enforce its own sense of order. Public Safety, which patrols the surrounding neighborhood, seems to prioritize a sense of security for students above all else, including a sense of safety for community members. In light of all this, we should wonder: What are we as students doing to endorse this relationship between the administration and the community? What sort of culture are we as students fostering on campus?

Recent reports extolling Columbia for seeing Manhattanville residents as “partners and collaborators” misportray Columbia’s plan to metastasize into 133rd Street as a consensual expansion. They embellish the truth and tokenize the recruitment of Manhattanville entrepreneurs to execute the plan.

In high school, my daily commute started with a half-mile walk down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to St. Nicholas Avenue. As I passed the Grant Housing projects, bodegas, churches, and all of the other early risers bustling off to work, I began to realize how little I knew about the neighborhood that I’d lived next to for half of my life. Despite having lived only a couple blocks away from Harlem, I had always gone to school and made most of my friends outside of it. Sadly, the greatest contact I had with the community was my walk to the D train station.

Carl Dix, founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party, described 1968 as a radical era of protests at a panel on the relationship between capitalism and gentrification Wednesday night.

Columbia University has resided in the neighborhood of Morningside Heights since 1897. What obligations, if any, does the university have to the community surrounding it? What obligations might students have?

Columbia’s Project for the Homeless and BSO recently held a panel on poverty and displacement in New York City. Present were representatives from all sides of the issue: an economist, an urban planner, a legislator, and social workers.

“I loved my neighborhood… Now I can’t walk from 100th Street to Broadway because I cannot—I cannot—look at those buildings.”

“Enjoy your neighbors, bring out your art, music, ideas,” one speech bubble reads on a black-and-white poster. The announcement for the festival features an aerial shot of a two-way street with a fire truck passing between apartment buildings stacked on both sides. “Tenants Rights Info,” another bubble proclaims, “No biolabs #3, no displacement.”

The day that Gene Schafer happened to pass by his old business on 646 W. 131st St., a small bulldozer was clearing debris on what used to be the black rubber floors of his fitness center, ARC Athletics.