note: publication date is unclear; possibly 1967-1968 

COLUMBIA EXPANSION AND URBAN RENEWAL

WHY WILL 280 FAMILIES IN WEST HARLEM FACE EVICTION IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS?
WHY AND HOW DOES COLUMBIA SUPPORT THESE EVICTIONS?
WHY DOES COLUMBIA OPPOSE LOW-INCOME HOUSING ON MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS?

—COLUMBIA STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION

Columbia University, the other institutions on Morningside Heights, and the City of New York via its various agencies have initiated an urban renewal program for the area surrounding the University. The Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan covers the area from West 100th Street north to West 125th Street, from Central Park West-Eighth Avenue west to the River. The Renewal process will be carried out in four separate stages. Stage One of the GNRP encompasses Morningside Heights, Manhattan Valley, and one block of West Harlem (Douglass Circle North at 110th Street and Central Park West). This is the Cathedral Parkway Urban Renewal Area. The Early Acquisition Package is the first part of Stage One and is where urban renewal begins. It includes the acquisition of parcels of land and the eviction of 200 to 320 families in the near future depending on the final packages. The evictions will begin in the next several months.

The purpose of the next few pages will be to show the causes of growing community resistance to urban renewal and the reasons why students should join the movement to defeat it.

WHAT IS URBAN RENEWAL?

Ostensibly urban renewal is a means of rebuilding slums of American cities by replacing sub-standard housing with new construction and by decreasing the population densities in the core of the City. In fact, urban renewal appropriates the taxes paid by wage-earners to:

1.) Subsidize local real estate interests. The City buys a site for 1.8 times its assessed value and then sells the site back to an investor for 1/4 to 1/3 its actual value.

2.) Float bonds for financiers and to meet the needs for expansion of the local institutions in the area.

3.) Buy off local political leaders. Jobs are made available for "community" organizers and the City sets up site offices in the area where jobs are available.

4.) Drop crumbs to liberal ethnic leaders by constructing a token amount of low-rent housing.

In the end the process provides housing for upper income people at the expense of Black, Puerto Rican and white wage earners, merely moving the original residents from one slum to another.

In New York City there is an acute housing crisis which is exacerbated by urban renewal. At present there are 800,000 slum housing units in the City with 50,000 more added yearly through deterioration of existing dwellings. In 1968, only 12,000 units of low and moderate rent housing were constructed in all of the City.

On the West Side of Manhattan urban renewal has meant the removal of Black, Puerto Rican, and white working class people. The construction of Lincoln Center and Lincoln Towers to replace a working class neighborhood is one example.

The Stryckers Bay Urban Renewal Area (West 87th Street to West 97th Street) is a more blatant example. More than 10,000 units of low-rent (rent-controlled) apartments have been demolished while only 1,500 units of low-rent housing have been constructed to replace then. Columbia University fought to have only 400 units constructed as noted in a secret memo from the executive director of Morningside Heights Inc., Stanley Salinen, to the Trustees and President Kirk:

"The high hopes that the City officials had for the satisfaction of our needs were depressed by the force of the Puerto Rican and other groups during the many hearings on the West Side renewal from 37th to 97th Streets, in the course of which the optimal number of low-rent units was increased from 400...."

Why must the whole West Side be made into an institutional enclave and upper income haven at the expense of the poor people and wage earners who live there now? To the City government, real estate investors, and bankers the answer is a simple question of economics. Low-rent housing is not profitable. High-rent housing increases property values for real estate interests. Ranks can float high interest loans to finance construction of housing. Some crumbs are dropped to the City government by way of more revenue from real estate taxes, income taxes and the sales tax to temporarily save the City from bankruptcy and to insure debt service payment to the banks.

WHY HAS MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS-MANHATTAN VALLEY AND WEST HARLEM BEEN DECLARED A FEDERAL URBAN RENEWAL AREA?

The main reason is that Columbia University wants to throw out most of the Black, Puerto Rican and white working people from the neighborhood without becoming directly involved. (A few will remain to preserve Columbia's image.) This will allow Columbia to expand and to create an upper income enclave in the area. There are certainly real estate and financial interests involved, but these are more obscure.

In Salmen's memo mentioned above, Columbia outlines the principles under which it wants renewal to proceed:

"The University will want to cooperate with the City in every possible way, but must hold three principles in mind: 1.) no public housing between 110th and 123rd Streets; 2.) room must be available for institutional expansion; and 3.) no single room occupancy houses north of 110th Street..."

In 1959, for these and other reasons, David Rockefeller, a friend of Columbia and then Chairman of Morningside Heights Inc. and President of the Chase Manhattan Bank made a trip to Washington to ask the Urban Renewal Administration to declare this area an active federal urban renewal project area.

HOW DOES THE URBAN RENEWAL PROCESS OPERATE?

The mechanism urban renewal uses to carry out the above objectives includes:

1.) The City and the federal government in Washington agree that a certain area needs to be "renewed." The decision is based on political considerations and on guidelines set down by urban renewal legislation. The geographical boundaries are determined, and a "community" council is set up so that the appearance of community participation can be created. In the Morningside Heights Neighborhood Renewal Plan, the Morningside Renewal Council performs this function.

2.) Once the Renewal Council is established, it decides to accept federal funds to finance the renewal project. The area is surveyed, and a plan is drawn up by a planner hired by the city. For our area this is David Rosen and Associates. He has drawn up a preliminary plan for the area, but it has not been completed or approved.

3.) The Renewal Council draws up an Early Acquisition Package to designate the first sites for urban renewal. (See Map for location of sites.) The Package is then approved or rejected by the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate. The Housing and Development Administration reserves the right to modify an Early Acquisition Package either before it goes to the City Planning Commission and Board of Estimate or after. Of course, modification must be approved by the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate.  In the Cathedral Parkway Urban Renewal Area, the Housing and Development Administration has decided to ask the City Planning Commission to add five buildings along Manhattan Avenue between 110th and 111th Streets to the Early Acquisition Package.

Once the City gives its final approval to the Early Acquisition Package, it goes to Washington for approval by the Housing and Urban Development Department.  If Columbia does not like the package, it can intervene even on this level to stop it.

4.) While this process is going on the Renewal Council will recommend staged relocation and that a certain combination of low and middle income housing be constructed. (Staged relocation means that housing is constructed on vacant sites to provide relocation housing before anyone is forced to relocate.) The City planning Commission and the Board of Estimate will ignore most of these requests.

5.) The City then evicts people from their homes, forcing them into another slum, while promising them they can move back once the new housing is constructed.  High-rent housing is constructed with a few token low-rent units. Most of the people who have been forced out are not able to move back because of the high rents.  They are thus left living elsewhere in deteriorated housing at higher rents.  In addition, they have been uprooted from their neighborhood only to land in what will probably shortly become another renewal area.

WHAT IS THE MORNINGSIDE RENEWAL COUNCIL?

The Morningside Renewal Council is a government-sponsored independent corporation composed of the institutions in the area, several community and church groups, poverty agencies and various political clubs.

Altogether, there are over 60 organizations in the body.  Institutions such as Morningside Heights, Inc., Columbia University, Teachers College, and Barnard, and a few Columbia fronts* account for a bloc of 20 votes in the body.  Several other organizations exist solely on paper, e.g., Bank Street Tenants Association. The buildings this organization represents were demolished during the summer.

[*For example, the Adult Youth Association, Inc. and Morningside Junior Library are funded by Morningside Heights, Inc.]

Other organizations include the Riverside Democrats, Morningside Heights Republican Club, Port-Washington Democratic Club, and the West Side Liberal Club.

An average meeting is attended by representatives of forty groups. Justice Poole currently serves as chairman of the body. It meets on the 3rd Thursday of each month at 8:00 p.m. in 304 Barnard Hall, Broadway and West 117th Street.

The Morningside Renewal Council has a community relations office on Columbus Avenue under the direction of Eric Arroyo. They have hired several community organizers and have received two Vista volunteers from the government. It is their job to "sell" the community on the idea of urban renewal—that is, to portray urban renewal as a good thing, rather than as a mechanism for throwing people out of their homes.

HOW DOES THE MORNINGSIDE RENEWAL COUNCIL FUNCTION?

The Renewal Council's primary function is to involve people in the urban renewal process. Since urban renewal is bad, the Renewal Council is bad in its essence. In the Morningside area, the Council performs the additional function of drawing people into "negotiating" with Columbia and her allies rather than fighting against her. How does involvement in the urban renewal process lead people to sell-out the interests of the community, rather than to leave the Council and fight arainst the process?

The Morningside Renewal Council, when it was formed, included some people who knew the history of other urban renewal projects and the sell-out role of other renewal councils. But they honestly believed that urban renewal would be different in this neighborhood. Even today there are some people on the Council who think that it can be used as a vehicle for improving the community.

However, the ruling class has educated them with a political framework which makes community victories impossible. This framework has in the past led the honest people to defeats, and has prevented them from drawing the correct lessons from those defeats. Consequently, by the time many people start working with the Council their basic attitude towards politics is a lack of faith in the people's ability to organize and to win immediate and long-range demands. Their faith lies in the hope that there are divisions in the ruling class which can be exploited by clever tactical maneuvers—pitting one part of the ruling class against the other. The result of these attitudes is an increasing stress on legal actions through the courts, "pulling the right strings," and eventually joining the ruling the ruling class—ostensibly to be one of the "good" members of that class.

In effect, all of this amounts to avoiding the people, losing contact with the people, eventually unconsciously selling out, and finally consciously selling out. The sell-out is the inevitable result of the assumption which underlies the very nature of the Morningside Renewal Council and the negotiations which take place within it: the assumption that a community of interests exists between the trustees of Columbia, other Morningside Heights institutions, the government, and the local reform Democrats on the one hand, and the people on the other.

This false assumption denies the class nature of the Morningside Heights institutions (including Columbia) and more generally the rest of the state apparatus (electoral system and parties, courts, police, city government bureaucracy, federal legislature which appropriates urban renewal funds, etc.) The interests of the bourgeois state and those of the working class are irreconcilably opposed.

The "community" people on the Renewal Council see the City as mediating the conflict between the community and the institutions. They believe the City can be used to check institutional expansion via urban renewal, The falsity of this position can be seen in the record of a telephone conversation between Donald Elliott and Grayson Kirk on June 30, 1966. At that time Elliott, was a council to Mayor Lindsay. He is now Chairman of the City Planning Commission. The memo reads:

"He (Donald Elliott) had not even proposed to work through the Renewal Council nor had he said that the City would accept and follow the advice of the Council... However, the City was obliged to allow the Council to give advice on renewal problems, though, of course, the City was not committed to follow Council recommendations."

This memo gives an inkling of Columbia's power in the City. The people on the Renewal Council fail to realize that the interests represented on the Columbia Board of Trustees are the sane real estate and financial interests that run the city.

Since the "community" members of the Renewal Council rely on the City to protect their interests, they are constantly sold out and are themselves prone to com-promises which cost the community dearly (an example is the Early Acquisition Package).

The Renewal Council is a sop and a deception. It permits "representatives" of the community to sit down with the City, and the institutions, talk, and object to expansion, while at the same time the University and the City throw thousands of people out of their homes.

The Morningside Renewal Council, by drawing people into the Urban Renewal Process, creates the appearance of a community ratifying its own destruction.

HOW CAN WE FIGHT URBAN RENEWAL?

The Cathedral Parkway Urban Renewal Plan being sponsored by the Morningside Renewal Council is not in the interests of the people. The only road to victory is in organizing the community itself to fight the Reform Democrats, the Morningside Renewal Council, Columbia University, and the City. The Urban Renewal Plan must be stopped, starting with the Early Acquisition Package. At the same time the community must fight for construction of low-rent housing (on non-residential sites) and the renovation of existing homes for the people who live in them now.  It is crucial to initiate such a fight NOW.

Under the Rosen Plan, which was the City's preliminary plan for the Morningside Heights area, the entire block on Douglass Circle North (between W. 110th and W. 111th Streets and Manhattan Ave. and Eighth Ave.) was to be acquired and all of the eleven buildings on the block demolished. The Housing and Development Administration concurred in this recommendation.  The Morningside Renewal Council refused to include the Manhattan Ave. buildings in the Early Acquisition Package. However, at the Board of Estimate (where the Early Acquisition Package had to be approved) there was a fight over this. The Package was approved with the proviso that the Manhattan Ave. buildings could be added at a later date.

Thus, the Early Acquisition Package as regards Douglass Circle North, includes only the six buildings on West 111th Street. The addition of the remaining five buildings on Manhattan Avenue is to be voted on by the City Planning Commission on February 19, 1969.

The Morningside Renewal Council as it has done in the past, opposes the inclusion of the five Manhattan Avenue buildings in the Early Acquisition Package.

(1) While the Council opposes the inclusion of the five buildings, it supports the Early Acquisition Package as it stands now.  It views renewal as a means of rebuilding the neighborhood and checking expansion rather than as a mechanism for throwing people out of their homes, although the members of the Renewal Council believe that there are some bad aspects to urban renewal which must be fought.

(2) The attempt to save the five buildings on Manhattan Ave. by themselves is also wrong. Separated from the rest of the block and from other tenants in the area, the tenants of these five buildings, no matter how well organized they are, cannot hope to save their buildings for long. If the rest of the block is destroyed, then it is certain that these five Manhattan Ave. buildings will go too. To the extent that the Manhattan Avenue tenants are isolated from others on the block, the community will be defeated. The people on this block can only win if they unite and fight the whole urban renewal scheme, in particular the Early Acquisition Package.

They must demand:

(1) Defeat of the proposal to include the five buildings along Manhattan Avenue in the Early Acquisition Package. This will have the effect of saving the buildings on Manhattan Avenue from demolitions in the near future.

(2) Halt the entire Early Acquisition Package, which has been approved by the Morningside Renewal Council, the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate. This will end the initial threat of urban renewal in our area. It will save the buildings on West 111th Street from demolition and prevent 160 evictions.

(3) Close the Cathedral Parkway Urban Renewal site office, which will eventually serve as an eviction office. There is no need for an eviction office if there are to be no evictions.

(4) Abolish the Morningside Renewal Council, which initiated urban renewal and which is controlled by Columbia and the Reform Democrats. This will prevent them from selling out the community under some other plan.

(5) Renovate the existing buildings for the people who live there now by using the $5.3 million allocated for Early Acquisition. This money should also be used to construct low-rent housing on vacant and commercial sites. This would be genuine renewal of the community, not removal of its residents.

Beyond the problem of uniting the people of Douglass Circle North is the problem of uniting the community to fight urban renewal and Columbia expansion. Many of the white people on the Heights perceive their interests to be in contradiction to the interests of the Black and Puerto Rican community in West Harlem and Morningside Heights. They see the deteriorated housing Blacks and Puerto Ricans inhabit as eroding the quality of the neighborhood. They blame the rising crime rates in the area on Black and Puerto Rican people. To the extent that white people place the blame for the problems of the community on Blacks and Puerto Ricans they weaken their own fight against removal by permitting Columbia and the city to exploit divisions within the community. To defeat racism, the community and students as well must realize that. Black, Puerto Rican and white working people do have a common material interest in fighting Columbia expansion and urban renewal. They can only win if they unite around a set of class demands.

Columbia and the City are attacking Douglass Circle first because of its prime geographic location and its size. Since the north side of the block is occupied totally by Blacks, the City and Columbia will use racism to isolate the block from the rest of the community and destroy the block. In response to this attack, Black people on the block will take the lead in the fight against urban renewal. Students, both Black and white, must unite behind these Black working people to defeat urban renewal.

WE MUST see that this is the first step in a plan that will hurt all Morningside Heights residents- some through evictions in the future and many others by accelerating rent increases.. We must take the offensive NOW to halt the plan, BEFORE the evictions begin.

WE MUST talk to other people to show them the interests Urban Renewal really serves-not those of the community but those of the various real estate interests, construction firms, New York banks, and Morningside Heights Institutions.

WE MUST unite now, with this block and others in the community to fight the Reform Democrats, the Morningside Renewal Council, Columbia University and the City to stop Urban Renewal and in particular the Early Acquisition Package. At the same time we must demand renovation of our homes and construction of low-rent housing on non-residential sites in the area.

Columbia SDS

Morningside Housing Committee