Word: schwartz
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...March 1985, the apartment building at 547 Riverside Drive where Schwartz had lived since 1964 was severly damaged by a fire, leaving a dozen apartments in the building's north wing uninhabitable. And it left several tenant families--including her own--without a roof over their heads...
WHAT IS STRIKING about Schwartz's account is the contrast between the urgent needs of dozens of tenants and the glacial indifference of their monolithic landlord. Some of the tenants lost everything in the fire and were struggling just to keep their lives together. Others were evicted from undamaged apartments that were slowly deteriorating as rainwater filtered through the north wing of the building, which remained unrepaired and unroofed for almost a year after the fire...
Columbia ignored its unaffiliated tenants for obvious reasons. Housing around Morningside Heights is in very high demand and the university lacks both adequate dormitory space and housing for its own faculty members. Schwartz reports that in the six years before the fire, Columbia's housing stock in the neighborhood grew from 3000 to 4800 units. And for years, she writes, the university has tried to evict unaffiliated tenants...
...Schwartz describes a situation in which neither Columbia affiliates nor neighborhood residents have any real control over their own homes. Unaffiliated tenants are forced out, unless protected by rent control laws. Meanwhile Columbia, which has special status under housing laws, charges its affiliated tenants much higher rents and evicts them as soon as they stop working full-time for the university...
...story of Columbia's hegemonic real estate expansion is old news. Where Schwartz lends novel insight is in describing the situation in terms of people instead of issues, laws, and impersonal housing units...