Stages
of Community Abandonment
Abandonment was a slow
process (from a few months to a few years) of gradual
disinvestment. Gradual disinvestment allowed an owner
of "a wasting asset" to maximize immediate
yield and minimize investment. Each stage of
disinvestment brought landlords revenues in the form
of savings that otherwise would have been expended.
Typically, the first expenses withdrawn were capital
improvements (new roofing, replacement window, etc.).
Next was the curtailment of heat, hot water and
janitorial services. At the same time, landlords quit
making mortgage and property tax payments.
The final stage was arson-for-profit.
Widely circulated images of fires and haunting
landscapes of burned-out tenements in the South Bronx,
parts of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side symbolized
the inevitability of decay and social decline of the
city in the 1970s.
Disinvestment and
abandonment overwhelmed many of the poorest sections
of the city. Disinvestment actions taken by an
individual landlord directly impacted a particular
building and, indirectly, the disposition of adjacent
properties. Given the relatively small area of
Loisaida and its proximity to the city’s midtown
and Wall Street corporate business districts, the
pervasiveness of abandonment in Loisaida was striking.
Here are some tenant responses
to the housing crisis.
Images
(click
to enlarge)
 Here is a photograph of arson-for-profit.
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 Community abandonment.
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 Firefighters attempting to
extinguish arson-for-profit fire.
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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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