The
Social Consequences of Abandonment for Loisaida
As a result of real
estate disinvestment and housing abandonment, almost
half of the private apartments east of Avenue B
disappeared from the landscape between 1970 and 1980.
The population of Loisaida declined 40% over the
decade compared to a 27% drop for the entire East
Village and a 7.2% decrease for Manhattan.
In 1970 the percentage of
non-Latinos and Latinos of the area’s total
population was 58% and 42%, respectively. Although
both populations decreased over the 1970s their rates
of decline differed. By 1980 Loisaida housed fewer
Latinos but was proportionately more Latino than it
was a decade earlier. Non-Latinos made up 42% of
Loisaida’s tenement population while Latinos
comprised 57%. The ethnic comparison is significant
for understanding the dominant but nonetheless
erroneous perception among media, politicians and the
real estate industry that more Puerto Ricans
had moved into Loisaida. Latinos had increased
only in proportion to other groups because their
rate of population decline was lower than that for
non-Latinos.
The social
consequences of disinvestment and abandonment also
included a considerably diminished quality of life
for remaining residents. The rise of a robust
underground economy of heroin and cocaine sales and
consumption gave Loisaida the reputation as a premier-buying
site for the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut
region.
Images
(click
to enlarge)
 An abandoned Loisaida.
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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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