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Housing Polish Greenpoint: Property and Power in a Gentrifying Brooklyn Neighborhood

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Housing Polish Greenpoint: Property and Power in a Gentrifying Brooklyn Neighborhood By Filip Akira Stabrowski A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor Richard Walker, Chair Professor Michael Johns Professor Alexei Yurchak Fall 2011 Abstract Housing Polish Greenpoint: Property and Power in a Gentrifying Brooklyn Neighborhood By Filip Akira Stabrowski Doctor of Philosophy in Geography University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Walker, Chair This dissertation will examine the rise and fall of the Polish immigrant enclave of Greenpoint over the past 30 years (1980 to 2010), focusing on the changing social relations of housing within the Polish immigrant community during this time. Greenpoint today stands at the cusp of disintegration as classic immigrant enclave, with property values and residential and commercial rent levels that prohibit new immigrants from settling, while forcing out many of the old immigrants who did so years ago. The political economy of immigrant housing in Greenpoint, I will argue, was both creator and destroyer of the Polish enclave – engine of its growth and barrier to its further expansion. A central argument of this dissertation is that the housing market is a social construct, embedded within and conditioned by social relations specific to a particular place and time. Though socially-embedded, however, the immigrant housing market is never fully divorced from the wider urban housing market; it is in fact structured by this impersonal market and its imperative to realize profit. There is an ongoing tension or dialectic between two forms of housing relations –one subordinated to the social utility of housing, another driven by the profit motive – that is manifest within any socio-spatial formation. In the pages that follow I will explore this dialectic as it drives the evolving social relations of housing within the Polish immigrant enclave of Greenpoint, where the political economy of immigrant housing has undergone significant and rapid change in the face of a real estate boom, the likes of which New York City – and the country as a whole – has perhaps never seen before. 1 CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................................................iii LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... v PREFACE.................................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... xi Social Relations of Housing and the Production of an Urban Housing Market .....................................xii Immigrant Enclaves and Social Relations of Housing in the Late Nineteenth Century........................xiii The Changing Social Relations of Housing in Polish Greenpoint.......................................................... xv Organization..........................................................................................................................................xvii Research Methods................................................................................................................................xviii CHAPTER ONE: THE MAKING OF POLISH GREENPOINT............................................ 1 The Early History of Greenpoint .............................................................................................................. 1 Post-War Polish Immigration to Greenpoint ............................................................................................ 2 The Post-Solidarity Wave of Polish Immigration..................................................................................... 4 Post-Socialist Polish Immigration ............................................................................................................ 6 Consolidating the Polish Enclave ............................................................................................................. 7 European Union Expansion and the Dissolution of Polish Greenpoint.................................................. 10 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 12 CHAPTER TWO: FROM POLISH ENCLAVE TO WATERFRONT CITADEL............. 14 Industrial Greenpoint .............................................................................................................................. 14 The Macroeconomic Conditions of the Housing Bubble ....................................................................... 16 Neoliberal New York: Local Policies and the Real Estate Boom .......................................................... 17 Rezoning for Affordable Housing: The Bloomberg Approach .............................................................. 19 The Edge of Gentrification: New York’s New (Water)Frontier............................................................. 19 Reclaiming the Waterfront for the Community...................................................................................... 21 Rezoning for NYC2012: The Olympic Bid............................................................................................ 23 The 2005 Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning .................................................................... 24 Post-Rezoning Greenpoint...................................................................................................................... 26 Post-Bubble Greenpoint.......................................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER THREE: HOUSING AND THE POLISH IMMIGRANT CONDITION......... 31 Finding Housing in Polish Greenpoint ................................................................................................... 32 Housing and Work .................................................................................................................................. 35 Work and Housing .................................................................................................................................. 37 Housing and Work Processes Combined................................................................................................ 38 Housing and the Immigrant Family ........................................................................................................ 40 The Affective Bonds Between Tenants and Landlords .......................................................................... 42 Elderly Polish Tenants and Neighborhood Dependence ........................................................................ 44 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 45 CHAPTER FOUR: HOUSING INSECURITY IN THE IMMIGRANT ENCLAVE.......... 46 Gentrified Greenpoint ............................................................................................................................. 46 Polish Tenants Seeking Housing Assistance .......................................................................................... 49 Tenant Sweat, Landlord Equity .............................................................................................................. 51 Housing, Work, and the Risks of Dual-Dependence .............................................................................. 53 i Landlord Harassment.............................................................................................................................. 56 Strategies for Coping: Rental Submarkets.............................................................................................. 58 Tenant Resistance and Housing Court.................................................................................................... 59 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 61 CHAPTER FIVE: POLISH PROPERTY: THE FORMATION OF AN ETHNIC RENTIER CLASS IN GREENPOINT ..................................................................................... 62 Immigration and Homeownership in Historical Perspective .................................................................. 62 Immigrant Polish Landlords in Greenpoint ............................................................................................ 63 The Uses of Immigrant Homeownership................................................................................................ 66 Polish Landlords and the Immigrant Enclave......................................................................................... 69 From Homeowners to Homebuilders...................................................................................................... 71 Local Polish Developers ......................................................................................................................... 73 Polish Landlords and Their Polish Tenants ...........................................................................................
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