Giuliani didn’t clean up New York. If anything, maybe Dinkins deserves some credit for graffiti-proofing subway cars and staring the ball rolling on adding more police, but really the clean, tidy, safe New York of the last decade and a half was the product of a first gradually, then rapidly, improving regional and national economy going back to the late Koch years.
As goes the housing bubble goes the economy, and as goes the economy go the neighborhoods:
Thirty-four years worth of progress assembled street by street, block by block, house by house is crumbling before Cathy Mickens’ eyes.
“It’s hard to see the neighborhood being torn apart,” said Mickens, director of the Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of Jamaica, the gritty eastern edge of New York City.
Wander any of the side streets just off Jamaica Avenue, the neighborhood’s main drag, and her meaning is clear. Dozens of empty homes, ‘For Sale’ and ‘For Rent’ signs jammed into first floor windows, stand testament to an exploding housing crisis brought on by a flood of foreclosures tied to subprime mortgages.
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Due to a high prevalence of single family homes, Queens has been slammed by the subprime mortgage meltdown more than any other New York borough. And Jamaica is taking the brunt of the hit, leading all city neighborhoods in foreclosures during the third quarter of 2007, according to PropertyShark.com.
