Fiscal
Crisis, Local Government and Housing Abandonment
In New
York City, the capacity and the willingness of the
state to engage the increasingly severe social
problems within its poorest neighborhoods declined
tremendously during the fiscal crisis of the late
1970s. The effects of municipal contraction were not
evenly distributed across all neighborhoods; the city
chose to maintain middle-class neighborhoods and
"contain" the poorest and predominantly
minority communities. The city withdrew support for
infrastructure improvements, cut public services and
slashed housing rehabilitation funds for areas deemed
unlikely prospects for real estate capital investment.
This "triage" of state resignation from low-income
community assistance provided further incentive for
landlord disinvestment and housing abandonment.
In 1977 the city
attempted to curtail the scale of housing abandonment
through the passage of Local Law 45. The law reduced
the length of time landlords could forgo payment of
property taxes from three years to one year before
they would lose their buildings to the city. The law
was intended as a disincentive for abandonment but
its effects were to the contrary. By shortening the
time frame of gradual disinvestment, the law’s
provisions inadvertently sped up the pace and scale
of abandonment and the more deteriorated properties
ended up under the city’s stewardship (a
condition known as in rem).
Click here to learn more about
The War on Poverty.
Click here to learn more about
The National Urban Coalition.
Here are some tenant responses
to the housing crisis.
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The book upon which this
web site is based,
Selling
the Lower East Side,
is available
directly through 
or order through 
Site design © 2000:
Kurt
Reymers and Dan
Webb.
(University at Buffalo, Department of
Sociology)
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