East New York is a residential neighborhood located in the Eastern section of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, United States. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 5.[1] Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Cypress Hills Cemetery to the north, the Borough of Queens to the east, Jamaica Bay to the south, and the railway tracks next to Van Sinderen Avenue to the west. Linden Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue are the primary thoroughfares through East New York. ZIP codes include 11207, 11208, and 11239. The area is patrolled by the 75th Precinct located at 1000 Sutter Avenue. New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) property in the area is patrolled by P.S.A. 2. During the latter part of the twentieth century East New York came to be a commuter town predominantly inhabited by African Americans and Hispanics.
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East New York has a population around 90,000. Over half the population lives below the poverty line and receives public assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF], Home Relief, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicaid). East New York is predominantly African American with a significant Puerto Rican and Dominican population as well.[2]
East New York consists of mixed properties but primarily semi-detached homes, 2-4 family houses and multi-unit apartment buildings including condominiums and co-ops. The area is also home to the East Brooklyn Industrial Park. Public housing developments of various type and a smaller number of tenements populate the area. The total land area is one square mile.
In 1980, the forty-four block East Brooklyn Industrial Park was established by the New York City Public Development Corporation in the northwest quadrant of East New York, Brooklyn. Bounded by Atlantic Avenue, Sheffield Avenue, Sutter Avenue and Powell Street.
City Line is a subsection of East New York. The Brooklyn-Queens border to the east, Fountain Avenue to the west. Salem Fields Cemetery to the north and Jamaica bay to the south.
New Lots is often included in East New York. The boundaries of New Lots, starting from the south and moving counterclockwise, are: Linden Blvd to the south, Fountain Avenue to the east, Sutter Avenue to the north, and Van Sinderen Avenue to the west.
Spring Creek is the southeastern part of the former Town of New Lots, and is often included in East New York. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Linden Blvd to the north, the Fountain Avenue border to the east, Gateway National Recreation Area to the south, and Schenck Avenue to the west. Spring Creek includes the well kept Starrett City apartment complex, the Gateway Plaza Mall, and is currently under development.
Cypress Hills is a subsection north of New Lots. The Cypress Hills housing project is not in Cypress Hills, it is in the City Line subsection of East New York. Van Sinderen Avenue to the west & Eldert Lane, Drew Street, 75th Street, Dumont Avenue,78th Street and 155th Avenue to the east. It is located north of Sutter Avenue and south of Highland Park & the Cypress Hills Cemetery.
Starrett City is a large subsidized apartment complex. Each building has between 11 and 20 floors. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Flatlands Avenue to the north, Hendrix Avenue to the east, Jamaica Bay to the south, and the Fresh Creek Basin to the west.
A chain of hills, geologically a terminal moraine, separates northwestern Long Island from Jamaica and the Hempstead Plains, the main part of Long Island's fertile outwash plain. Through one low spot in the chain passed a few 18th Century roads, including the ferry road or Jamaica Turnpike from Brooklyn to Jamaica, hence it was called "Jamaica Pass". During the American Revolutionary War invading British and Hessian soldiers ended an all-night march at this pass in August 1776 to surprise and flank General George Washington and the Continental Army, to win the Battle of Long Island.
In the middle 19th century the road between Brooklyn and Jamaica became the Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank Road. The New York and Manhattan Beach Railway (1877) and the Long Island Rail Road (1878) were also built through the pass. The point where they met was called Broadway Junction. As often happened at 19th century railroad junctions, a railway town arose. Sprawling development into recently rustic northern part of the Town of New Lots followed the reach of elevated transit lines into the area: the Jamaica Avenue Line in 1885 and the Fulton Street Line in 1889. The road to Brooklyn was renamed Fulton Street, the one to Jamaica, Jamaica Avenue and the one to Williamsburg, Broadway.
East New York was annexed as the 26th Ward of the rapidly growing City of Brooklyn; in 1897 it was brought into New York City as a whole with the consolidation of Brooklyn and other boroughs into a single city. In the 20th century its name came to be applied to much of the former township.
In 1939, the Works Progress Administration Guide to New York City [1] wrote:
“ The development of East New York began in 1835 through the enterprise of John R. Pitkin, a wealthy Connecticut merchant who visualized it as a great city rivaling New York. The Panic of 1837 smashed his hopes. After 1853, a modest development began. By the 1930s, the residents were chiefly Italians, Jewish, Germans, and Russians who moved in from Brownsville, Bushwick, and other near-by crowded localities. Many of the Slavic families continue to burn candles before icons, and observe religious fetes according to the old calendar... ”
After World War II, thousands of manufacturing jobs left New York City thereby increasing the importance of the remaining jobs to those with limited education and job skills. During this same period, large numbers of Puerto Ricans and African-Americans emigrated to New York City looking for employment. East New York, no longer replete with the jobs the new residents had come for, was thereby faced with a host of new socioeconomic problems, including widespread unemployment and crime.
Walter Thabit, a city planner for East New York, chronicled in his book, How East New York Became a Ghetto, the change in population from mostly working class Italians and Jewish residents to residents of Puerto Rican and African descent. Thabit argues that landlords and real estate agents played a significant role in the downturn of the area. Puerto Ricans were moving in masses to New York City in the late 1950s, at a time when unemployment rates in Puerto Rico soared to 25 percent, and left Puerto Rico on the brink of poverty.
Thabit also describes how the construction of public housing projects in East New York further contributed to its decline, noting that many of the developments were built by corrupt managers and contractors. He argues that the city government largely ignored the community when it could have helped turn it around.
Writing in the New York Press, Michael Manville accused Thabit of poor research, sweeping generalizations, and a failure to distinguish the actions of racist individuals from the effects of a racist capitalist system, and contends that much of the urban renewal and public housing efforts of the period were in fact well-intentioned, if ill-considered and hubristic.[4]
New developments are rising in the area, including the Gateway Center,[5] located on what was once part of a landfill near Jamaica Bay. The Gateway shopping mall in Starrett City near East New York is suburban-style, and is home to retailers that include Bed Bath & Beyond, Staples, Marshalls, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Boulder Creek Steakhouse, Target, The Home Depot, and BJ's Wholesale Club. The development was welcomed by many in the neighborhood for the jobs it would provide and is frequented by people from all over Southern Queens and Southern Brooklyn, bringing business into the neighborhood. Unfortunately, that promise has been elusive, as the low-wage, high turnover positions which comprise the majority of jobs there do little to generate higher wealth in the community.
East New York was devastated by "blockbusting" in the course of an FHA Mortgage scandal that left the neighborhood virtually abandoned, a wasteland by the early 70's. A Federal Court ordered that an Environmental Impact Statement be prepared for East New York and through that EIS done by the Brooklyn Office of the New York City Department of City Planning, the history of the FHA Mortgage Scandal and its unfolding in East New York was documented.
The EIS found that what happened in East New York and inner City communities across America was a result of the FHA's inability to respond to its new mandate to include inner city neighborhoods in the FHA single family mortgage insurance program. The FHA was created to build the suburbs of America and all of its policies, underwriting standards, appraisal standards were built from and geared to newly constructed suburban homes. The agency apparently interpreted its mandate to now produce specific target volumes of inner city loans as a directive to abandon its underwriting and appraisal and produce as many inner city loans as possible to mostly black first time homeowners. Block by block unscrupulous mortgage originators scared the elderly Jewish homeowners in these tiny modest one family homes into selling below market for fear their homes would be worth nothing at all as the blacks moved in, displaced by clearance for urban renewal in neighboring Brownsville. These same block busting brokers then resold these homes at greatly inflated prices to first time black homeowners who believed their American dream had come true. The brokers provided fraudulent documentation on the loans which were all beyond the ability of the new homeowners to pay given their modest incomes. In no time the neighborhood went from 100% elderly Jewish to 100% black & Hispanic and in no time the new homeowners were behind on mortgage payments and losing their homes to foreclosure. When the Brooklyn Office of City Planning began its court mandated EIS East New York was a wasteland, row after row of vacant homes in poor condition and a central 4 or 6 block area of vacant land where houses had once stood.The dilapidated homes and streetscapes served as the fictional setting for the film Death Wish 3.
The court directive to prepare the EIS on East New York required recommendations as well as findings. The recommendations were then expanded into a Master Plan For East New York which included the entire Community Planning Board. Simultaneously the Brooklyn office developed a more specific plan for the rehabilitation and resale of the FHA foreclosure to qualified low income buyers. The plan was to was to rehabilitate these homes through non profit community sponsors and resell them at affordable prices to pre-qualified low income homeowners. The program, called SHIP, Small Home Improvement Program),. A $1 million loan pool commitment was secured from the East New York Savings Bank for the SHIP program. The program was then turned over to the City's Housing agency for implementation and administration.
The SHIP program was modeled on a program developed the Sunset Park Redevelopment Committee then operating in Sunset Park with funding from the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation was also funding other pioneering innovative housing programs, including in nearby Bedford-Stuyvesant through the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. SHIP was the first effort at low income home ownership by the City of New York and ran into some initial difficulties due to limitations in the State constitution on "gifts and loans" (The discounted sales price to new homeowners was considered "a gift"). At least the first 100 houses were eventually renovated under the program before it was abandoned.
Later most of these 1000 FHA foreclosed were torn town and replaced with new construction and much later some privately financed infill housing.Also many subsidized multi-unit townhouses and newly constructed apartment buildings have been or are being built on vacant lots across the neighborhood. It is important to note that because of the restrictions placed by the rent-stabilization code on many of the redeveloped multi-family buildings, a significant number of these properties have fallen into disrepair and are at risk of landlord abandonment.
In 2006 Mayor Bloomberg announced a Nehemiah Program of new town houses in the southern part of East New York also targeted to low and middle income homeowners. The East Brooklyn Clergy, sponsors of Nehemiah Housing, have always been a strong effective voice for reclamation of Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The United Homes Scandal which broke in the summer of 2011 with a $1 million award to victimized homeowners was a repeat of the original FHA Mortgage Scandal. While mostly focused in other East Brooklyn communities, homeowners in East New York who have now won the support and attention of Occupy Housing were most likely also victims of United Housing (http://www.nycommunities.org/node/1133._)
East New York has the following public transportation services:
East New York is patrolled by the NYPD's 75th and the Brooklyn North Task Force as well has Transit District 33 and Police Service Area 2[6] Precinct.
All areas of New York City are within the New York City Department of Education school district. East New York high schools suffer from high dropout rates. As with many NYC schools, gang violence is a common problem found in the local schools.
One of the neighborhood's local public high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School, shut down in June 2007 due to extremely low academic performance: a graduation rate of 29%, with only 2% entering the school at grade level in math and 10% entering at grade level in in reading). The school was known for its ROTC program. Four new high schools were organized in the old building.[7]