A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board
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DO THE HUSTLE: MUNICIPAL REGULATION OF NEW YORK CITY'S UNDERGROUND ECONOMY, 1965 TO THE PRESENT A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Jessica Bird December 2018 Examining Committee Members: Bryant Simon, Advisory Chair, History Lila Berman, History Harvey Neptune, History Kim Phillips-Fein, New York University, History ABSTRACT Beginning in the late 1960s officials in New York City faced a growing financial problem. Revenues collected did not add up to meet the city’s budget. In 1975, that problem became a crisis when the city could no longer meet its debt obligations. On the precipice of bankruptcy, a city once known for its generous welfare state, adopted austerity and structural readjustment in order to access federal aid and stave off collapse. Historians have examined the political and economic causes and social consequences of the fiscal crisis as well as the ways in which the city rebuilt itself as a playground for visitors and through the actions of the city’s financial elite. Do the Hustle: Municipal Regulation of New York City’s Underground Economy, 1965 to the Present, examines the ways in which officials rebuilt and reorganized New York City through revenue. Using New York City as a case study of state development I argue that the state rebuilt and reoriented itself around extracting and protecting revenues through regulation in the final decades of the twentieth-century. City officials rebuilt New York by creating new licensing requirements, offering generous tax incentives to businesses, and instituting regulations that protected what officials considered to be the most important sources of revenue – the financial industry, real estate, and tourism. Beginning with the Lindsay administration and ending with Giuliani’s two terms as mayor, this project traces the ways in which city officials attempted to extract new revenues from previously untapped sources in the city’s informal and semi-formal sectors while simultaneously working to protect revenues generated by finance, development, and tourism from nuisance businesses that might affect their bottom line and thus, municipal revenues. In ii their pursuit of revenue, officials actively constructed a new New York City that courted business at the expense of average citizens. That transformation has not been limited to New York as other municipalities have also shifted focus to revenue extraction and protection. By the twenty-first century, the extraction and protection of revenue through regulation had resulted in high levels of income inequality, aggressive policing, and a growing homeless population in cities across the country. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been in a solitary conversation with New York City for the past 7.5 years now, but in reality, for much longer. It probably began more than a decade ago, late one fall evening, as I walked past the fields along Berry Street where a Hasidic softball team played against a Dominican team on Sundays. This was before the giant hotels and condos went up along the North Williamsburg waterfront, when they were just empty pits gathering water behind plywood boards. Back then you still had an uninterrupted view of the Manhattan skyline. Without sounding contrived, it was magical, akin to the first time I really saw the night sky without the dulling effect of light pollution. For a moment you could believe this was just for you to see. Graduate school is sort of like New York for me – at certain moments majestic, at others exhausting, crowded with many voices, yet also, full of solitude. Writing a dissertation is a private endeavor, an internal conversation spread over many years, made tolerable by the many people working and waiting in the wings. It is with great pleasure that I now get to thank all of them. Susan Tracy first taught me how to be a historian as an undergraduate at Hampshire College. As my Division III advisor she gave me many of the skills that made this project possible. She also served as a model of the kind of scholar-teacher I continue to aspire to be and I fondly recall our weekly discussions. Laurie Nisonoff and Ernie Alleva also started me on this path and in their own ways kept me going. It was in Laurie’s class on Poverty and Wealth as a first-year student that I began to think about many of the questions I took up in this project and Ernie first showed me how to “live the life of the mind” and how to be an engaged teacher. At a critical juncture when I thought iv I might take a different path, Sam Roberts asked me to be his research assistant. Because of this I not only applied to graduate school, but also gained a wealth of knowledge about the history of New York City, in particular its politics. Bryant Simon has supported this project since he gave his blessing to head off into the archives with a broad interest into what was happening in New York City in the 1980s. He asked the hard questions and made me think about this project in new ways while also advocating for me and sending me off to share this project across the globe. Heather Thompson suggested I look for the crisis moments when the city responded to issues with the underground economy. She has continued to be generous with her time, writing me countless recommendations after she left Temple and I am so thankful. David Farber told me to think about revenue and even though he too has left, his suggestion remained to the end. Lila Berman joined my committee towards the end and what a turn of luck that has been. She is an excellent editor and advice giver, in addition to being incredibly smart and kind. Harvey Neptune was the last addition and has pushed me to think about this project’s global implications. I always look forward to his questions. Kim Phillips-Fein has also shared her time generously – offering feedback, suggesting venues to present my work in, and meeting for coffee to talk about New York. Whenever I spoke with incoming graduate students I emphasized the need to find their people, the ones who they could share this experience and all its highs and lows with. Many thanks to Melanie Newport for all her tips in my first year and to my truly collegial cohort, Tom Reinstein, Tommy Richards, David Thomas, Kaete O’Connell, and Seth Tannenbaum. John Worsencroft and Minju Bae have read this dissertation in its v entirety as it took shape over the years, I thank them for their time, comments, and above all, their friendship. Tom, David, and Carly Goodman have also read and commented on various pieces of this project. Thanks also to my “friend across the river,” Smita Ghosh, whose insightful comments on parts of Chapter Four proved particularly helpful. Time, and the kindness of various people in using their free time to help me, is really a theme of these acknowledgements. This project benefited greatly from the assistance of various librarians and archivists without whom none of this could exist. Thank you to Nick Reynolds at Temple University who went through ILL to bring boxes of microfilm down from the Municipal Archives for me to read on campus. Thank you to Barbara Hibbert who has helped me order offsite material at the NYC Municipal Archives for over a decade now. Thanks also to Monica Blank and Tom Rosenbaum at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Tom has asked me great questions about this project each time I have visited and suggested helpful sources. Nick, Barbara, Monica, Tom, and everyone else at the various archives and libraries I have utilized made this project possible. Over the years many old friends have supported this project in ways obvious and less so. Even when they were unsure of what exactly it was I did they offered much needed breaks and laughter. Thanks to Ab, Bevers, Jaime, Lindiwe, and Mariana for all the catch-ups when I came into the city, and extra thanks to Jaime for letting not only me, but my husband live with him for extended periods of time. Danya Shneyer has been a third support system for this dissertation, opening her home to me, and just generally being an amazing person that I count myself lucky to know. Our other coven-mate, vi Sophie Woodruff, is equally incredible and our trips together over the years have served as a welcome break. Beryl Filton and Astrid Wood were some of the few to know what it was I’ve been up to all these years and Yader Lanuza has continued to push me along the way. Laura Feinstein welcomed me back to New York and joined me in many of the kooky extracurricular activities that powered me through the end of this project. I have had innumerable conversations about this project at Fort Tilden. A dissertation is not the first topic of conversation you’d want to engage in while relaxing at the beach, but nevertheless I found myself explaining the underground economy to very interested parties. Their questions helped me break free of jargon and it is my friends outside academe that I have imagined as readers. Hopefully they won’t be disappointed. I was able to finish this project in New York thanks to an ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Heloise Affreux told me about the library at the Poet’s House and in doing so contributed to the completion of this project by recommending a quiet space where I could look out over the Hudson River, merci! Comments from participants in the Doshisha Summer Institute and the Heidelberg Spring Academy, early and late in the project, helped my framing and let me know I was on the right track.