There were many problems in the 1970s. The main problem was planned shrinkage. Many people lost their jobs because of this decision. These job losses were a disaster to the community of Brooklyn. A man named Roger Starr (New York City’s Administrator of Housing and Development) had something to say and do about the events that were happening in Bronx. He used a system called ‘planned shrinkage’. The proposal he conducted was to cut down the employment of public service employees. Such as: police officers, fire fighters, teachers, the people that help the city (sanitation, construction, plus other such occupations), and even the education field (teachers, and librarians). He may have helped the city become restored, but it was at a cost.
Roger Starr was someone who had an idea to fix this problems going on in the Bronx. He also had the guts to stand up about it and try to make his plan become a reality. He wanted to put in effect planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage has to do with cut-backs on jobs. It also has to do with bringing people from where they live to a new town so they can fix up the deteriorating town they once lived in. The jobs that were cut were of: police officers, the fire departments, teachers, and the people that help fix the city.
On an interview with Roger Starr, conducted by Robert Fitch, Starr talks about his concern for the city. Starr began to speak about the problem with public housing. He thought rent control was a problem. Not just that but the problems of the people who were living in those apartments. His first problem is rent control. He stated that it was “destroying private housing stock” (Starr). Starr also believes that the problem was making sure the tenants that were in the rent controlled apartments, were good tenants, that would always pay their rent and take good care of the apartments by not destroying them.
Starr talks about the different programs (FAJ 236 program, Section 8, etc…) and mentions a man named Edward Brook, who was a Massachusetts Senator. Brook a man who had created the Brook amendments. This amendment consisted of taking people who couldn’t pay rent and move them into the rental controlled apartments. This affected the state of the houses and the neighborhood. This is because the people who were now moving into these places were destructive.
That made the ‘good’ tenants move out if they could. Because of that it made the problems escalate in the 70s. Starr also mentions that people are not alike and that Brook was treating them as if they were. In the fact that some people were good tenants (paid their rent and didn’t destroy property) and some of them weren’t and did the opposite. Some of the problems which was incurring was peeing in the elevators and doing drugs on the roof. Those problems weren’t the only ones. There were financial problems as well. With this project it took a lot of the cities money.
To fix the financial problems that they had lost from relying on all people to be good tenants, Starr suggested for a planned shrinkage to come in effect. When planned shrinkage finally came in effect there were many jobs that were lost. The statistics in a newspaper article called 3,432 City Jobs Cut in a Month state: “Police 4,879…, Fire 1,926…, Sanitation 2,612…, Board of Education 11,116…, and Health and Hospital Corp[orations] 8,130. (Lombardi) With all of those cut-backs in two years and two months, the town of Brooklyn was becoming even more destructive.
The city had the idea that they were spending too much money on areas of the city where people were constantly dying. The population of the city was devastatingly decreasing. People were losing so many jobs that there was a depression going around. When a person loses their job there can be many things that a person will do. A person can be depressed and mope about in the house. Most will commit crimes to get what they want or need. Some people may steal food because they can’t afford any, with families back home. Other people can just get vengeful and destroy property.
A devastating thing was going on in the Bronx. It was part of the reason Roger Starr wanted to make a change and start the planned shrinkage process. It was the Bronx fires. With so many people dying as it is, these fires were of no help. Whoever didn’t stay in the area, tried to help themselves in their money situation to be able to move out. The city was a disaster because all of the money they took to fix the city was borrowed. That is why Roger Starr had come up with the plan for planned shrinkage.
This situation became a domino effect. First they thought that they could change the city by moving people around and away from the area, than fixing up that area. They also felt they had to get rid of jobs to save money in order to do this fixing up. By taking peoples jobs away from them it created more deaths and crime. Along with that came the fires. All because the city wanted to save as much money as they thought they could.
By taking away the cops and fire departments, the city started to crumble even more. If there were crimes already why would they take these jobs away from people, who are supposed to help the situations if there were no law enforcements. I would think that they should have brought more into the picture, not less.
Roger Starr believes that this planned shrinkage will keep happening. People will keep losing their jobs as well as people gaining jobs. He says in his interview with Robert Fitch that “stocks don’t just go up.” (Starr) There will be a drought in the employment rates but then it will pick up and it will go back and forth.
In a statement by Mayor Abraham D. Beame he mentions that the president puts stockholders above the eight million people in the city. People were dependent on their pensions, life savings, and securities. Instead of President Ford and the government giving those who needed help, actual help they got a lecture.
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