New York City is a hotbed of messy urban politics and drastic demographic changes. Nowhere is this more apparent than the neighborhood of Clinton Hill, where a man named Hakim runs a shop called Country House Diner. Situated on the border between Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, the diner has seen it’s fair share of changes over the last 50 plus years it has been open, and it tells a story of survival.

After a long day of unsuccessful interviews, I walked into a diner with a color scheme that was mostly in blue, with arabic letters on the walls, as well as a row of paintings from a local Brooklyn artist. It was here that I met a man named Hakim, a Palestinian immigrant who came to America a little over 30 years ago, though his family has been here since the 19th century. The diner itself, which was previously owned by his father, has been around since 1962. I immediately blurted out my introduction to him, to which my partner added, “Don’t worry we’re not trying to buy your store.” Hakim responded half jokingly, “Can you please buy my store?” I could tell that the man in front of me had a comedic wit, but the situation he was in was far from funny. 

Clinton Hill is becoming a much more expensive place to live. According to Hakim, rent for a two bedroom apartment is three thousand a month, and significantly more for a brownstone. It’s even getting expensive for him to maintain his diner. His property tax has gone up almost tenfold since the 1990s, and expenditures required by the government have become overbearing, Hakim said, citing increases in worker’s compensation and insurance.

Things took a turn for the worst a year ago, when Hakim’s shop was temporarily closed down because he owed three thousand dollars to the IRS. Recently he was issued a warrant, just for owing $270. He has also had to hire more workers, which means he had to raise the prices on his menu. As he puts it, “it all trickles down to you, the customer,” a twist on the “trickle down effect” associated with Reagan-era economic policy.

According to Hakim, there is also a growing effort to change the neighborhood, which is leading to an influx of students, living in groups of 4 or 5 in the same apartment, and wealthy Europeans. Most of them, however, don’t stay long. Many just rent out rooms on sites such as Airbnb, and very few come to eat at his diner. He alleges that this trend stems from former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who, according to Hakim, wanted small mom and pop shops to be replaced by big corporations. However, 90% of his customers are loyal, he says, some coming to eat there even if they have moved to a different neighborhood. Still, the influx of newcomers has brought with it foreign eating trends to the neighborhood.

These issues beg the question, why do these problems exist, and how are regulations, rent, and demographics tied to the recent changes? To answer this question, one must look deep into the neighborhood’s history. In the 1930s, the buildings in this neighborhood housed Navy personnel, and were part of the town Fort Greene Park. In 1943, the white population was more than four times bigger than the black population. However, after the second World War, development of low cost housing complexes began, and many of the middle class white families moved out to suburban areas in what became known as the “white flight”, while poorer black families moved in. After years of neglect the neighborhood became known for it’s dangerous environment and toxic conditions. Author Patti Smith, who lived in the neighborhood in 1967, wrote of her apartment, “its aggressively seedy condition was out of my range of experience. The walls were smeared with blood and psychotic scribbling, the oven crammed with discarded syringes, and the refrigerator overrun with mold” (Besonen 2015).

However, Clinton Hill started to undergo drastic changes in the 1980s. While most buildings in the neighborhood were built before World War II, renovation and conversion of housing units began to take place during this time. This first wave of gentrification in Clinton Hill was unique in that the newcomers were an integrated mix of middle class people. Often, we think of gentrification as a socioeconomic shift that leads to the widespread displacement of black people by white people. However, this was not wholly the case in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in the 1980s, where many middle class blacks participated in the process, producing landlord-tenant dynamics that often pitted black property owners against black renters. For example, the New York Times described “a black landlord, who was trying to remove the last tenants from his eight-unit brownstone on Lafayette Avenue, (and) arranged for a local hospital to transport an 86-year old black tenant to a city shelter last March. Within a month, the service’s lawyers had the tenant back in the rooming house, but the landlord – despite $11,700 in fines levied in Housing Court – has still not provided adequate heat and hot water” (Courcy 1987).

This kind of behavior was driven by the co-op market, which became a new booming business prospect at the time. Real estate companies like Time Equities began to convert apartment buildings to co-operatives and renovations of brownstones and old decrepit buildings also became more frequent. This caused the value of homes to soar, making Clinton Hill a haven for realtors but not for the people originally living there. As described by realtors at the time, prices of brownstones appreciated “from $75,000 to $292,000, from $55,000 to $285,000, from $68,000 to $214,000, from $68,000 to $200,000, from $115,000 to $310,000. Co-ops are generally available for $45,000 to $65,000 for a studio, $70,000 to $110,000 for a one-bedroom apartment and $110,000 to $250,000 for a two-bedroom” (Courcy 1987). These kinds of drastic increases in price devastated many families living in the community. While some tenants were given fair deals to buy their newly renovated units for low prices, a large portion of them were harassed or evicted in order to make room for people who could afford to pay the higher rents. For example, the Pratt Area Council claimed at the time that they received 35 to 40 complaints about evictions a month. These kinds of evictions, unfortunately, did not end in the 80s.

In the past few years the gentrification in Clinton Hill has dramatically changed the demographics in the neighborhood. The image at left compares tracts with a black plurality (blue shade) to tracts with a white plurality (green shade) from 2000 to 2014. As you can see  the population of whites has greatly increased while the population of blacks has greatly decreased. To further quantify this change, Besonen (2015) notes that “[t]he 2010 census showed a 149 percent increase in the white population over 2000 and a decline of 29 percent in the number of blacks.” In my interviewee’s zip code area, the margin between whites and blacks is even greater with a 45.1% white population and a 25.9% black population.

With this change in demographics comes a repeat of the same housing price burdens that plagued Clinton Hill residents in the 1980s. The 2009-2013 American Community Survey reported that the median value of owned units in the neighborhood was $613,261, while the median income for families in Clinton Hill is only $76,877. This kind of financial constraint has placed a great economic burden on the residents, and Hakim told me that the same unfair evictions and harassment were still happening. Through all these changes, according to Hakim, the connection between city policy and demographic change is clear. The laws and regulations made by such organizations as the New York City Council not only affect gentrification, but are affected by it. Lawmakers are incentivized to make policy favorable to moneyed interests, spurring the displacement of poor and middle class families through economic constraint. By making it difficult to operate a business and live in the neighborhood, an environment is created ripe for gentrification.

Aside from economic concerns, another issue that has plagued the neighborhood is crime. During the 80s, when crime was more rampant, Clinton Hill was a relatively safe neighborhood and was always known as a financially stable place to live. However, with an overflow of wealth, more criminals from the surrounding areas come to Clinton Hill to commit crimes. The first time Hakim was robbed was when the neighborhood started changing. It seems that this gentrification has brought with it many unintended consequences, which put not only the residents’ homes in danger but also their lives.

In my final question to Hakim, I asked if he saw any way of reversing the damages that have occurred in this neighborhood. According to him, “the bubble is going to burst soon. It’s only a matter of time”. He told me that many of the people who used to live here were scammed out of their homes, and now they are filled with anger at seeing what the neighborhood has become. This anger he claims, might eventually erupt into violence. The prospect of more violence is concerning as Hakim has a son to think about, who recently got accepted to the Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences and wants to become a doctor. When asked if he would want his son to live in this neighborhood, he replied, with a smile, “Let him live anywhere, as long as he does not live with me.” Hakim is an example of the enduring survivors of gentrification, and no matter how hard the struggle is, I suspect he will be able to adapt to a changing economic and policy climate, and will do so with an abundance of laughs and some really good Philly cheese steaks.

References

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