AccordingĀ to Bill de Blasio, āIf you live on Park Avenue you got everything you need. Nannies and housekeepers.ā This will come as news to the tens of thousands of mostly underprivileged people who live on Park north of 96th Sštreet.
Hasnāt this mayoral candidate who laments the plight of the poor heard of the Carver, Clinton, Johnson and Lincoln houses ā all large New York City Housinš¼g Authority projects with Park Avenue addresses?
Of course he has: He even slept over at 1960 Park Ave., one of the decrepit Lincoln Houses buildings, in a Democratš„ic candidatesā publicity stunt organized by Al Sharpton in July.
šSo whyš didnāt de Blasio, he of the ātwo citiesā trope, cite a ātale of two Park Avenuesā?
True, Park Avenueās dual personality is a distinction lost on many New Yorkers. But shouldnāt he sound as if he knows more than a bus-tour guide? Isnāt the omission an insult to the community de Blasio clš¼aims to be fighting for?
In fact, his feigned amnesia served a purpose. To parse symbolic āPark Avenueā along a stark, geographic dividing line would subject his whole case to some tough critical thinking ā and render it ridiculoāus.
The boulevard de Blasio invoked to stand for a rarefied, Michael Bloomberg-blessed, upper-crust way of life is a grim, largely impoverished stretch from East 96th Street almost to East 135th Street ā fully as long as the avenueās gilded residential corridor from East 5ā9th to East 96th Street.
Itās not quite the wasteland evoked in Paul Goldbergerās classic 1978 book, āThe City Observed,ā which said of the Park-96th Street intersection: āThere is no other place in which the very rich live in such proximity to the very poor without aą¦ hint of the middle-class buffer on which they both depend.ā Since then, East Harlem has benefited from modest new investment.
Yet the upper avenue remains a bleak backwater astrideš¼ the stone railroad viaduct. A stroll in the trestleās shadow, past endless projects and tenements, brings on a suffocating gloom deepeneź¦d by the rumble of trains overhead.
Itāsą¼ŗ a useful exercise because the eyes have a way of blowing away abstractions. De Blasioās fantasy that the ārichā owe more to the āother New Yorkā than theyāre already paying crumbles when you stand at Park and 96th Street aš nd look south and north.
The disparate vistas of luxury residences and blank-faced projects might well lead you to ask:Ā Whatās the value of all the government subsidies that Park Avenue residents above 96th Street already receive? How many pay no state or city income tax? (A clue: 53 percent of all city households, meź¦aning those earning less than $30,000 a year, pay none at all, according to Crainās.)
NCYHA suffers a $100 million annual operating deficit. Of the ārichā who live on the avenue south of 96th Street, what percentage ofĀ theirĀ incomes is taxed to support the housing, medical and social needs ofš those living above it? (A clue: the cityās top 1 percent of households pay 43.2 percent of all city income taxes, again as Crainās reported).
And, most crucially: How in any event could a little moreļ·ŗ tax revenue from lower Park Avenue do any good for upper Park Avenue? Would it pay for even more ghastly government-built public-housing projects like the ones that blight most every neighborhood they touch?
The harsšhest aspect of life in the projects is their high crime rate ā due not to insufficient largesse by those living south of 96th Street, but to local predators who prey on residents overwhelmingly hard-working and law-abiding. Of course the perps will be more free to victimize without police stop-and-frisk, which de Blasio deplores as āracial profiling.ā
No wonder his fable of ātwo citiesā has room for only one Park Avenue, where nobody has to worry about a thing ā ā except for Mayor Bill de Blasio.