Faculty Opinion Piece.
Bill de Blasio’s message in the State of the City speech today is no doubt welcomed by many in the city. Affordable housing is crucial in keeping working families in the city and important in keeping some of the city’s most visible old time neighborhoods intact. However, it may be too little and too late for Manhattan’s Chinatown.
There is no doubt that Chinatown is slowly changing and becoming gentrified. For decades, Chinatown has been a community and home to low income immigrant Chinese families. They relied on the community as a place to work, to find work and as a place to find affordable goods and services. Yet as downtown neighborhoods change, Chinatown’s role as a low income immigrant community is threatened.
While the neighborhood is still 63% Chinese and for the most part a lively working class neighborhood, trendy stores are moving closer to the neighborhood and young professionals are slowly moving into apartments once occupied by Chinese families. From 2000-2010, the Chinese population in Chinatown decreased 15%, while the non-Hispanic White population grew.
After 9/11, during Mayor Bloomberg’s term, the entire downtown area was targeted for renewal not only to rebuild after the 9/11 attacks but to encourage upscale neighborhoods like that of today’s Tribeca, Battery Park/Financial District. Revitalization and rebuilding in the Tribeca and Battery Park/Financial District happened quickly. People and businesses moved in, as these neighborhoods became desirable and fashionable. The adjacent neighborhoods of Soho, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side became trendy, if they were not already.
Surrounded by these neighborhoods, an unintended consequence was the gentrification of Chinatown. As the garment industry slowly folded, new businesses, such as new media and start up tech firms, not always run by the Chinese, took their places. Chinese workers who used to walk to the garment factories moved out. Since they had to commute to new jobs in different industries anyway, why not live in the other boroughs? Chinese families moved out to Brooklyn and Queens to bigger homes. As Chinatown housing became available, non-hispanic whites moved into the Chinatown apartments.
Research on the ground, by my students during the Spring of 2014 indicates that gentrification is well underway. An interview with Alice Hom, the Principal of PS 124 indicated huge demographic changes in the community. The enrollment in her school dropped in the last two years. Normally there were 1000 children enrolled. This year they only had 860 children. Moreover, she believes that it is not that there are fewer children in the community but that there are fewer Chinese families. She also experienced a decrease in the enrollment of her adult ESL classes. She concluded that for some her families who left, Brooklyn and Queens may be too expensive already, and they wholly decided to leave NYC altogether.
Even non-hispanic whites are feeling the rent increases. My students also interviewed young 20ish non-Hispanic, professional whites who moved to the neighborhood because it was close to the hangouts and all the downtown places they wanted to be near. According to them, they were paying $2000/mo for 1 bedroom of an apartment share. This winter in a follow-up interview, one of them was priced out of the neighborhood, and instead moved to a space in the lower east side, which was further from the Soho neighborhood that he loved.
Thus, while Mayor DeBlasio’s plan in encouraging more affordable housing is welcome, it may be too late for Chinatown.
Margaret M. Chin is a member of the Sociology Department at Hunter College and the Graduate Center (CUNY).
