5. Urban Decay in the South Bronx
While cities as a whole suffered from economic challenges, the problems tended to be especially stark in deindustrialized neighborhoods populated by impoverished people of color. Perhaps the most prominent example of urban decay was the South Bronx section of New York City. By many accounts, this was the poorest area in the country. According to author Jeff Chang, by the late 1970s, the per capita income was 40% below the national average and the official youth unemployment rate was 60%. The urban decay was tangible: Buildings were abandoned, collapsed, or in a state of disrepair. Arson became a commonplace fact of life, with thousands of buildings set ablaze in the 1970s. The fires were set by various parties: frustrated tenants, landlords who viewed insurance payouts as more lucrative than collecting rent, and neighborhood residents when a 1977 blackout led to a night of looting and unrest. The South Bronx provided an extreme example of the problems facing cities across the country, having suffered from deindustrialization (the Bronx lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs in the decades after World War II) and white, middle-class suburban flight. As one New York official sardonically noted, “In a marvelous, sad way, the South Bronx is an enormous success story. Over 750,000 people have left in the past twenty years for middle-class success in the suburbs.” However, the impoverished Black and Latino people who were stuck in the decaying community enjoyed no such success. This clip from a 1980 episode of Bill Moyers Journal, entitled “The Fire Next Door,” documents the miserable living conditions endured by the remaining residents of the South Bronx.
5. Urban Decay in the South Bronx
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20:46 - 20:56
Fires were ubiquitous in the South Bronx in this era. According to Mrill Ingram of Progressive Magazine, “Buildings burned almost continuously from an estimated forty fires a day in the South Bronx that destroyed 80 percent of area housing stock and displaced a quarter-million residents in the late 1960s and 1970s.”
21:54 - 22:04
The interviewee is a “squatter” who stayed in an empty apartment without paying rent. “Squatting” was common in the South Bronx in the late 1970s. With so many abandoned, burned-out apartments, there were many places for poor people to live if they were willing to live without heat, water, and electricity. According to a 2015 Time Magazine article, the police were far more concerned with more serious crime, and generally made little effort to evict people from abandoned buildings.
22:52 - 22:58
Sometimes landlords were the culprits in the rash of arsons in the South Bronx in the late 1970s because an insurance settlement paid better than collecting rent. According to Moyers’ narration in a different section, “You can buy a large occupied apartment house in the Bronx for less than a thousand dollars. By taking advantage of the city's three-year tax moratorium, you can collect several thousand a month while paying no taxes; provide heat and services infrequently and only under duress; no maintenance. A few promises will keep the rents coming in until the tenants give up in disgust. Then $200 will buy you a first-class arson job. Federally- subsidized fire insurance is required by law. A quick settlement, with few questions, puts you ahead by $70- or $80,000.”
24:01 - 24:19
Sometimes residents set these fires. Naturally, some fires were accidental, but others were deliberate. Earlier in the documentary, Moyers explains that there were long waiting lists for public housing but people whose apartments were burned down received higher priority—thus creating an incentive to burn your own residence if you were already living in poor conditions. Additionally, Moyers’ reporting describes a family who “received a little over $2,000 for new clothing and furniture and were moved to a new apartment at public expense.” According to a police detective he interviewed, this policy encouraged families to burn their own homes to make money. In Moyers’ words, “Arson is now a way of doing business in the South Bronx, encouraged and made profitable by well-intentioned public law.” Additionally, some fires were far less purposeful. According to Moyers, “Kids start a lot of the fires. They burn vacant buildings for the hell of it. A nine-year-old told me, “If you don't take my picture, I'll burn the building down." He meant it.”
Bill Moyers Journal; 705; The Fire Next Door (CBS REPORTS Update) | Public Affairs Television & Doctoroff Media Group | December 5, 1980 This video clip appears from 21:38 - 26:13 in the full record.