Setting the Foundation for Gentrification in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
An Introduction to Gentrification in Sunset Park
The Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, has a hugely diverse cultural presence: it’s where the owners of my favorite Chinese restaurant speak Spanish, where taquerias serve pork belly tacos, where a multitude of languages are spoken on one square block—Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Creole, to name a few. Sunset Park is the quintessential melting pot, with immigrants accounting for almost half of its population.
As communities throughout Brooklyn take steps to grow economically, Sunset Park is no exception. According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, displacement of locals in Sunset Park is occurring due to housing prices tripling between 20th and 24th Street, and it’s spreading fast. As rent continues to rise and families become unable to afford it, they enter into a process of displacement known as gentrification—a process associated with class division and racial differences. Property developers and higher-income buyers see Sunset Park’s lower housing costs as investment opportunities, forcing local, smaller businesses out over time and replacing them with chains or higher-end businesses that can afford higher rent.
Individual vs. Corporate Influence on Gentrification
For many local residents, it’s easy to blame landlords who increase the prices of their properties. While New York has strong rent-control policies, such as the Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA) of 1974, there are still loopholes. Even with the ETPA in place, landlords can still increase rent after a tenant leaves or force them out through subtle harassment and intimidation. As Kim Barker notes in a 2018 New York Times piece, NY state law inadvertently encourages this practice: “once a tenant leaves a rent-stabilized apartment, the owner can automatically raise the rent by up to 20 percent”.
While it’s true that landlords play a role in displacement, there is a danger to seeing these individuals as the sole drivers of gentrification, because it ignores the fact that landlords may be struggling to pay their own mortgage or that there are other forces outside of their control. By solely blaming landowners for increasing rent prices, we’re ignoring the role corporations and businesses play in profiting off the displacement of people in communities like Sunset Park.
Shock Doctrine
This inability to step away from the individual owners as the main driver of displacement is often a result of a ‘shock’. A sudden increase in rent creates an economic ‘shock’ to the community where residents feel unable to analyze the larger forces at play in their displacement, since it’s intended to disorient in order for others to profit. Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough, discusses how corporate and political powers can use what she calls the “shock doctrine” (also the title of one of her earlier books) to benefit themselves and capitalize on the vulnerability of citizens. While landowners can benefit from loopholes in rent-control policies, it pales in comparison to the profit that corporations gain from the displacement of the immigrants and low-income residents.
“The impact of white privilege is so insidious that its effects can wash over us without much notice. Corporations, such as Industry City and Amazon, displacing racial groups in Sunset Park is one example of this privilege.
In 2019 alone, residents of Sunset Park witnessed the massive influence that corporations played in the gentrification of their neighborhood. Industry City, which owns thirty-five acres on the waterfront in Sunset Park, is collaborating with Amazon to potentially develop that area, allowing their private and foreign investors to profit. The natural economic response to this becomes a rise in property values and an increase in rent in the surrounding areas.
Branding
Despite a wave of resistance against this corporate collaboration, Industry City suggested that if Amazon settles in Sunset Park, a neglected complex will turn into attractive retails, bringing money into Sunset Park and creating jobs for the community. The problem with this is that it comes at the cost of displacing its original community due to the rise in property values and, inevitably, rent.
“The process of gentrification poses an important question we must ask ourselves as we make choices: how can we value and expand on different forms of prosperity in neighborhoods without displacing its original residents?”
According to Klein, a company’s largest profits often stems from “manufacturing an image”. In the case of Industry City, it has created an image that it’s paving the way for “successful careers for both our tenants and for our wider community”. It insists that by Amazon settling in Sunset Park, it will generate 20,000 new jobs to the area, providing food and retail spaces, classrooms, and educational facilities, consequently manufacturing the false idea that their decisions will benefit everyone. This is a power move on Industry City’s part, creating and spreading an erroneous perception of their motives while convincing individuals that this is what they want, not something fabricated by a corporation via branding and advertising—selling the idea of economic growth for all.
Racial Capitalism
Gentrification is a common manifestation of racial and economic inequality. The impact of white privilege is so insidious that its effects can wash over us without much notice. Corporations, such as Industry City and Amazon, displacing racial groups in Sunset Park is one example of this privilege. The current top directors of Amazon’s board are all white. This lack of diversity is a clear reflection of their values around diversity. A sense of respect and sensitivity around the impact of their decisions is sorely lacking.
The utilization of racial supremacy for economic benefit is racial capitalism. Klein describes it as the “politics of racial hierarchy” that manufactures “false hierarchies based on race and gender in order to enforce a brutal class system”. Industry City and Amazon utilize these falsely manufactured hierarchies in order to push forward their plans to develop Sunset Park, thereby encouraging tension and eventually a divide between newcomers and the local Hispanic and Asian communities, creating a “you vs. me” mentality—a mentality that’s easy to adopt when under pressure.
While economic progress is generally good, we always need to challenge the “why” and “how” of it. When it comes at the cost of increasing racial and economic divides, we must consider whether that’s the price we want to pay. The next time I return to Sunset Park, I wonder whether my favorite Chinese restaurant or Mexican taco stand will still be there. The process of gentrification poses an important question we must ask ourselves as we make choices: how can we value and expand on different forms of prosperity in neighborhoods without displacing its original residents?
We are grateful to May Maani for providing the images of Sunset Park featured in this article.
