#hypergentrification

A powerful creative statement

“We love it here because we love you here,” read the enormous ad covering the side of a red double-decker New York City tour bus, touting H&M’s new Hudson Yards location. The slogan is a lie. Hudson Yards does not love you. We do not love Hudson Yards. And we especially do not love it here, in a city that is desperately trying to maintain the illusion that we are all something more than props in…

The insipid pseudo-culture of affluence and skyrocketing housing costs that now engulf Seattle testify to Amazon’s effect on the city and are ill omens for New York, especially Queens. Seattle’s ethnic neighborhoods — like the African-American Central District and Scandinavian Ballard — grow ever less so as the well-to-do displace longtime residents.

In 1950, my grandparents bought their house in Bryant for $10,000, which would be about $104,000 today, adjusted for inflation. Today, the median home price in Seattle is more than $700,000, according to Zillow. It’s little wonder that homelessness is a serious problem there.

With its role in Seattle’s destruction, the gladiatorial death match of tax breaks Amazon extracted from cities as they begged, Oliver-Twist-like, for HQ2’s bestowal before naming New York and Virginia is understandable, but no less repulsive. Gov. Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and others tout HQ2 as a godsend that will create tens of thousands of jobs.

But most New Yorkers won’t likely qualify for Amazon positions, and most jobs created through the ripple effect of HQ2’s presence will likely be low-wage or short-term. More than $1.5 billion from taxpayers well-spent, this was not — certainly not with the embarrassing disrepair of our subways, which will now be even more strained.

To be sure, just as Amazon isn’t solely responsible for Seattle’s sterilization, what writer Jeremiah Moss calls New York’s “hypergentrification” was already underway, thanks to wealth, the inequality it engenders and policies that prioritize it over the public interest. And to be sure, New York is a large economy, better capable of absorbing 25,000 to 40,000 jobs without being rendered unrecognizable than Seattle was.

But HQ2 and a sudden influx of rich tech workers will greatly exacerbate problems like lack of affordable housing and the high-rent blight of empty storefronts owned by greedy landlords holding out for chains to replace the former small businesses.

After 14 years, Toys “R” Us flagship store in Times Square says goodbye tomorrow on December 30.

After 14 years at the crossroads of the world in New York City, Toys “R” Us will shut its doors for good at their 100,000+ square foot  flagship at Times Square.

According to YIMBY, the price per square foot in the area has doubled and sits at $2,500 per square foot.

This is a problem we’re seeing…