Housing
Brooklyn's Affordability Crisis Is No Accident
Rents are skyrocketing in the borough thanks to inflexible zoning rules.
Let's not bother trying to sugarcoat it: New York City is in the midst of a gentrification crisis.
What started as a germ in Greenwich Village half a century ago has come to engulf most of the island of Manhattan, and is making significant inroads in Brooklyn and Queens. The city's elite have pushed the vanguard out of their trendy Manhattan neighborhoods, and those same artists, cool kids and gays are in turn now pushing the poor and middle class out of their outer borough neighborhoods.
The city has experienced rapid urban displacement in the past, but the current crisis is different in one very important way: the housing that the poor are losing to the rich is not being replaced.