My neighborhood is East Harlem, also commonly referred as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio. East Harlem shares the zip codes 10029, and 10035. The area I will be focusing on is the zip code 10029 which is roughly from East 97th street to East 116th street and 1st avenue to 5th avenue. There are an estimated 134,300 residents (DiNapoli, 2017), (https://www.osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt9-2018.pdf) which 50% identify as Hispanic, 31% identify as Black, 12% identify as White, and 6% identify as Asian (NYC Health, 2015). (https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/data/2015chp-mn11.pdf) East Harlem is in New York’s 13th Congressional District and is represented by Adriano Espaillat.
The 2017 Neighborhood Economic Profile done by New York City Comptroller, Scott M. Stringer reported that the median household income is $27,000, and an unemployment rate of 12.2%. According to the Community Health Profile of East Harlem in 2015, 31% of the residents were below the poverty line. There are 89 public schools, 4 libraries, 54 hospitals and clinics, and plenty of open space that makes up 36 parks (NYC Planning). (https://communityprofiles.planning.nyc.gov/manhattan/11) The life expectancy of the residents of East Harlem is 76 years (NYC Health, 2015). (https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/data/2015chp-mn11.pdf)
A leading health problem in East Harlem among children and adults is Asthma. NYC Health reported that “East Harlem has the sixth-highest asthma hospitalization rate among 5 to 14 in the city, which is more than twice the citywide rate” (NYC Health, 2015). The socioeconomic status in East Harlem has proven to take a toll on resident’s health. A community Health Profile reported that the cause for unemployment and unaffordable housing in East Harlem is closely related to their neighborhood’s poverty status and poor health (NYC Health, 2015). Due to this many East Harlem residents are familiar with the social welfare institutions and are recipients of welfare programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and Medicare. In order to release some of the stresses caused by living in East Harlem, residents can visit one of the many green spaces in the neighborhood. East Harlem has prided itself in restoring green spaces. A prime example of this is Randall’s Island. It is an island just a foot bridge away. Randall’s island is filed with things to do, from playing baseball on one of their many fields, playing tennis in their indoor or outdoor courts, or simply running along the water and passing by their beautiful gardens. East Harlem is also filled with culture. The Hispanic heritage of the community is felt all throughout the neighborhood with many art pieces showing Latinx pride. Recently, the culture and communities of East Harlem were threatened when a plan to rezone East Harlem was proposed and eventually passed. Many in the neighborhood were against it, in fear of gentrification and native residents being pushed out because of increased rent. Many community members came together and brought their own demands to the rezoning proposition which they called the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan. Organizations in the community such as Community Voices Heard, an organization that fights against inequality “though grassroot organizing, leadership development, policy changes, and creating new models of direct democracy” (cvhaction, n.d). organized people in the community who wanted to see a change in their community that would benefit those already living there. Although the rezoning was passed and may demands from the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan were rejected, the community came together to fight for what they believed in and the rezoning is required to implement at least 20% to affordable housing.
A prominent biological problem residents of East Harlem face is Asthma. Asthma is a chronic condition that causes airways to contract and swell while producing extra mucus. This makes breathing difficult and usually comes along with coughing, wheezing, and tightness of the chest (Mayo Clinic, n.d). Asthma is thought to be prevalent in this community due to the high likelihood to be exposed to mold and cockroach waste. Out of 10,000 children in East Harlem from the ages 5-14, 75 are likely to be hospitalized due to asthma, compared to only 33 in all of Manhattan (The New York Academy of Medicine’s Health Impact Assessment, 2016). A leading cause of asthma in East Harlem is believed to be the poor conditions in apartments. A study done by Ray López et al and LSA Family Health Service, a community organization worked on reducing childhood asthma triggers in public housing developments. The study began with an in-home health and housing assessment which documented all possible triggers. The triggers were dust on surfaces, household clutter, mold, mice, and cockroaches (López et al, 2015). After the initial assessment, the community health workers worked together with the family to help correct the problems they say and even offered “hands on training that helped the families recognize and eliminate household hazards” (López et al, 2015). The community health workers helped the families with any repairs and those that they couldn’t fix, they then helped the families report them to NYCHA for repair. After a year the community health workers did another visit to the home and saw a significant decrease in the conditions they saw before.
According to the Community Health Profile on East Harlem, East Harlem has the highest rate of psychiatric hospitalizations among adults in New York City. This could be directly linked to the socioeconomic status of the residents in this neighborhood. Thirty percent of East Harlem residents are living below the poverty line. Many studies have linked mental health problems to one’s low socioeconomic status. In a study done by students in Brooklyn College, they studied the effects of household income and the mental health issues in children. They compared children in East Harlem, and children in a neighborhood a few blocks away, the Upper East Side. The students indicated that the poverty level of East Harlem was nearly five times greater than the Upper East Side (Dhallu, Donaldson, Eliezer, 2016). They then compared the percent of residents suffering from serious psychological distress. They indicated that one in four teens (26%) reported feeling depressed, compared to teens in the Upper East Side which was 7%. People who face poverty and have a low socioeconomic status deal with chronic stress which leads to many health problems. Another major reason for the high rates in psychiatric needs in East Harlem is the lack of mental health resources in East Harlem. Many are uninsured and do not have access to a primary care doctor.
Social institutions are established by people in power to help support the survival and well-being of those in need (Hutchinson, 2015). A social institution many East Harlem residents are familiar with is the social welfare institution. This institution makes sure those who need certain necessities, such as access to food and health care, have access to it. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, in 2016 86,778 households were receiving SNAP benefits (USDA, 2018). Budget cuts to SNAP have long affected residents of East Harlem. Forty-five percent of SNAP recipients are disabled or have a disabled family member. It was reported in 2015 that half of the East Harlem residents received Medicaid benefits (DiNapoli, 2017). The budget cuts wanting to be made to both these benefits by the new administration will especially have a big effect on East Harlem residents.
East Harlem is home to many parks and gardens and a popular one is Randall’s and Wards Island. It is accessible through a car, bus, or simply walking the foot bridge on 102nd street. Randall’s Island has recently gone through some restoration over the past few years and is even more frequently visited. There is an abundance of sports activities such as baseball fields, soccer fields, tennis courts, and even golf. There are paths along the water to take a stroll, go running or biking. There are also many lawns and benches to just sit down and relax alongside the waterfront. A new project is the gardens along the park. It is important to have spaces like Randall’s Island because it is a place residents or visitors can come to relax and destress from their everyday problems. Studies have shown that exposure to nature can help people destress. “Attention restoration theory suggests that being exposed to nature restores depleted cognitive resources” (Hutchinson, 2015). With the high rates of chronic stress and mental health problems in East Harlem, places like Randall’s Island are necessary.
Another form of lifting people’s spirit is art. East Harlem is filled with beautiful art and murals all over the neighborhood. Art is a big part of East Harlem’s culture and defines who the people in East Harlem. Recently a project took over the gates of many storefronts in the neighborhood, it is called The100 Gates Project. This initiative connected artists and local merchants to create an original piece of art that reflected the merchant’s business and the artists creative style. The murals are seen all throughout East Harlem but are heavily concentrated throughout 116th street. This area is locally known as “little Mexico”, because a lot of Mexican shops are located throughout 116th and 115th street between 2nd avenue and Lexington avenue. You’ll see brilliant and vibrantly colored paintings of Mexican hero Frida Kahlo and Calaveritas, which are brightly colored sugar skulls made to represent passed family members. With the rezoning of East Harlem, many residents felt that their heritage will be lost as the neighborhood gentrifies. To combat this The East Harlem Neighborhood Plan made a total of six demands. some were to create affordable housing for artists and create new spaces for community organizations such as a dance hall or movie theater (East Harlem Neighborhood Plan, pg 30). Another demand was to “preserve the unique cultural history of East Harlem by harnessing historic landmarks” (East Harlem Neighborhood Plan, pg 31). Overall, the community believed that if rezoning was going to bring along new people into the community, they should be aware of the years of culture already established in this neighborhood.
The rezoning brought many members of East Harlem together and finally gave them a voice to speak on what they loved about their neighborhood, and what needed to be fixed. The reason for the rezoning of East Harlem was to bring new developers and be able to build high rising residential buildings, which is not normal in East Harlem. The problem with this is that these new developments will be luxury apartments that the majority of East Harlem residents can’t afford. This angered the residents of East Harlem for a variety of reasons. This was a community that was long forgotten and made to deal with the poor upkeep of their neighborhood. Although a rezoning may bring more job opportunities and beautification of the neighborhood, many residents won’t be able to reap the benefits because they will no longer be able to afford to love in the neighborhood. The East Harlem Neighborhood Plan was a social movement in many ways. People organized and rallied for fair treatment. They created meetings to come to a consensus of what was best for the people of their community, and they attended city council meetings where voting for the rezoning would occur. Although many demands have yet to be fulfilled, new developers have agreed to make a portion of their apartments affordable for residents in the neighborhood.
East Harlem has been my home for 23 years. My parents, like many others in this neighborhood migrated from another country and ended up in East Harlem. All my schools in my adolescence were in East Harlem, and I’ve truly seen the neighborhood transform. I feel very lucky that I get to spend my Graduate school years in my own neighborhood because my neighbors are the population I want to eventually serve as a social worker. The reason I chose to talk about Randall’s Island is because of my own love for it. As a child I remember always going there with my family to have a BBQ, and it is a tradition we still share today. Randall’s Island is also my happy place, I go there when I need to destress and or to stay active, by running along the water, although I believe those go hand in hand. I think it is so important to have access to open air in times of stress because for me, it feels liberating. This is an example of stimulation theory, “which focuses on the physical environment and the effect sensory information does to a human’s well-being” (Hutchinson, 2016). I an article written by Stephan Kaplan, titled A Model of Person-Environment Compatibility Kaplan explains the importance of a restorative environment. A restorative environment is an environment that helps one recover from stress. The author explains that a restorative environment doesn’t necessarily give an individual complete control, but instead gives the individual the opportunity to achieve their goals (Kaplan, pg. 323). When I go out to run, I often do it so stay active and I usually have a goal that I want to meet, whether it’s a certain amount of time to beat or miles to achieve. When I am able to achieve that goal I feel good, and any stress I had from that day is momentarily at least forgotten.
I had the opportunity to intern at a non-profit organization called Community Voices Heard. This organization was a leading group in the fight against the East Harlem rezoning and played a prominent role in the organzing of the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan. Before interning at Community Voices Heard, I had no idea what a rezoning was but I was aware of the new business opening up and long standing “mom and pop shops” closing down. I also noticed a lot of condos were being build and white people were starting to move into the neighborhood. This was probably the biggest shock for me, because growing up I always noticed that once I passed 96 street the amount of white people in the street was much less, and while riding the train, they almost never got off any stop after 96th street on the 6 train. During my time at Community Voices Heard I learned that with the rezoning, many people form the neighborhood would be displaced because of landlords selling their building to big developers. This made me really angry because I didn’t think it was fair that people that have been here for years were being pushed out so people who could afford luxury apartments could move in. On the other hand I was conflicted because I enjoyed the new business opening and the fact that there were more police around which at times made the neighborhood feel safer. I think what I and many of my neighbors were feeling was a sense of territoriality, which is a control theory. Control theories usually deal with people wanting to have a control of their physical environment. The main fear of the East Harlem rezoning was gentrification, which we had been slowly seeing happen before the proposed plan. I often heard many members affiliated with Community Voices Heard speak about how angry they were about being forced to leave an apartment they have been living in for years because new people would be moving in and they had the means to pay much more.
I believe Community Voices Heard used a humanistic perspective when working and organizing members of the community. The humanistic perspective focuses on empowering the individual to come to a decision based on their needs and wants. The leaders at community voices heard were giving the residents of East Harlem the tools and encouragement to fight for what they believed in. In order to do this, they organized a group of people with similar intentions and just listened to them speak about what was bothering them and then they asked them what it was they wanted to do about it. Throughout this process the leaders at Community Voices Heard made some members in charge of certain things and would only be there for support if they were needed. In an article titled Support and Assist: approaches to mentoring in a yearlong teacher residency, the author talks about three perspectives used when mentoring. When they used the humanistic perspective, the mentors focused on building the mentee’s self-esteem and providing positive reinforcement when needed (Roegman, 2016). I think a humanistic approach is most useful in this situation because the humanistic perspective focuses on the power and value an individual has. Once an individual is able to see that, they may be more motivated to push what they believe in. Many people of this neighborhood may have felt forgotten by the city, and now they had a chance to use their voice to make a change.
When trying to understand why so much of the population in East Harlem is below the poverty line in this neighborhood, I would use a social behavior perspective. The social behavior perspective believes that all human behavior is learned. To understand why there is generational poverty one may say that it is a learned behavior. One reason for why so many East Harlem residents receive SNAP benefits is because their family and friends receive it too, and they learned that receiving aid is easier than having to work and pay for someone to watch the kids.
If a child grew up in a poor environment, the likelihood of them getting out of that poverty is not a high percentage. An article written by Isabel V. Sawhill titled The behavioral aspects of poverty, the author says that not all parents teach their kids to do well in school so they can get a good, well-paying job, perhaps because the parent themselves did not have a high education, or a job (Sawhill, 2003). This is then translated to the child as learned behavior.
A reason for this is that poor people do not have the same resources or knowledge to know how to succeed in a completive work environment, therefore their child then learns what they see from their parents and it turns into a cycle that is hard to get out of.
East Harlem may be rich in culture, however plenty of data shows where the neighborhood is lacking. East Harlem was once a forgotten neighborhood where many suffered silently but with the rezoning the neighborhood has potential to grow as a new spotlight is on it. The downside of that is many people will unfortunately be displaced. I hope that through the rezoning, East Harlem is able to keep its character and be able to integrate newcomers in a positive way that helps everyone.
