West Farms 10460: An Overview

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we begin a New York City election year series called West Farms 10460. A residential community smack dab in the middle of the Bronx has become the epicenter of the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic in New York City. West Farms is a neighborhood of about 19,000 people. According to 2018 demographic data from the American Community Survey of the US Census, it's about 74% Latino and 23% Black, with a median household income just above $23,000 a year, compared with $61,000 citywide and $38,000 Bronx-wide.

The New York Times reports that back in June, the unemployment rate in West Farms reached 36% because of the concentration of people in the neighborhood who work in hard hit by the virus service industries. The neighborhood has also been disproportionately impacted by the virus itself. Why are we talking about one relatively small neighborhood in the Bronx? Well, in many ways, West Farms is a microcosm of a city bearing the brunt of an economic crisis unlike any other in recent history. It's also unique in the sense that it's a place where the history of disparity in New York City is so abundantly clear.

In a year at the precipice of change where conversations about racial equity and justice are happening far and wide, communities like West Farms, often overlooked, deserve star status. Of course, experiences vary and this is not by any means a story of blanket victimization. Although times are tough, this is a resilient community of hard-working people like any other who have taken it upon themselves to sustain community wellbeing. We want to center those perspectives and help them inform our conversations with mayoral hopefuls, and with candidates for City Council seat made vacant by Ritchie Torres' election to Congress.

We want to begin this series with a look back at historical and sociological overview of West Farms 10460. With me now are Gregory Jost, Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Fordham University, which is right nearby, researcher, facilitator, and organizer with expertise on the history of redlining in the Bronx, and a consultant with the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association in the South Bronx, and Wanda Salaman, a longtime activist and the Executive Director of Mothers on the Move, a member-led community organization that advocates for the wellbeing of low-income people of color in the South Bronx.

Listeners, help us report this story. We want to hear from anyone who in normal times would be taking the 2 or the 5 train to and from West Farm Square, East Tremont Avenue. If that's your stop, or if you use any of the buses around there, what would you like the city to know about West Farms if you live or work there? Or if you have family members who do have friends, what would you like the candidates running for City Council and mayor to know? You can share your demands for your next City Council member and the next mayor of the city when we have some of them on in person, or you can do it in advance right now.

You can also shout out people organizations in the community doing important work, (646) 435-7280, for you 2 and 5 train riders to the West Farms Square, East Tremont Avenue stop, or around there, (646) 435-7280. Wanda and Gregory, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us for this.

Gregory Jost: You're welcome. Glad to be here with you, Brian and Wanda.

Brian Lehrer: Wanda?

Wanda Salaman: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Gregory, I'm wondering if we can start way, way back. Why is it called West Farms? What was it west of and was the area made up of actual farms at one time?

Gregory Jost: Yes, of course, if we go back in time. Again, I'm so glad we're talking about the Bronx during Black History Month because there's really important connections into your prior segments as well, Brian. To go back even further, remember thinking that this is Indigenous land, but the early white settlers, one of the main hubs was at Westchester Square. West of that were farms that were located along the Bronx River, and this is the origins of the name West Farms.

If you go back to Revolutionary War time, there were a lot of different country estates for wealthy New Yorkers who lived down obviously in Manhattan like, the De Lancey who had their home at West Farms and such. Then we see in the early 20th century, late 19th century, the rapid urbanization of places along the early train lines, the first train line coming up to the Bronx being the Third Avenue L. A lot of the early housing stock is along there, just west of this.

When we think about East Fremont, that was a big stop. Bronx Borough Hall was on Third Avenue and East Tremont Avenue. West Farms is the neighborhood a little bit east of that. Before any of this area was ever called "the South Bronx", it was called the East Bronx because it was east of Webster Ave where there was used to be a Brook. That was an old dividing line. A lot of the neighborhood in West Farms is really interesting because of its location in between the crossroads of all of the Bronx, but it is really a great microcosm of what's happened in the Bronx over many decades.

Brian Lehrer: What's a good place for you as a historian to start for a historical and sociological overview?

Gregory Jost: Partly because it's Black History Month, let's talk about the Great Migration and how the Bronx became home to a growing number of Black families really in the 1930s, into the '40s. It was actually a place where there was a lot of racial integration and some really amazing cultural mixing, where we had a lot of music developing in nearby neighborhoods like Morrisania, you had a really strong jazz scene, both the Black jazz scene and a Latin jazz scene. You had a lot of young kids in even middle school, but high school as well, singing this new form of music called Doo-wop and having really big hits coming out of the neighborhood.

There were Italian singers in these groups too. It was a really interesting mix. I would say, really important to note, this part often gets lost is that the Bronx is home to these very important thriving cultural hubs. There was a lot of infrastructure and investment in that meeting, kids could learn instruments in school like there were all these really great music programs. There were jazz clubs that people from Harlem would come up to and visit in the South Bronx. They would come up on the 2 and the 5 train up to Prospect and to different stops along the line to come and hear jazz music.

This success, historically, we know in the country is that Black success is often seen as very threatening and is often undermined in different ways. In some ways, it's very racially explicit, like the bombings in Tulsa of Black Wall Street. It's also done very subtly and in a way that really redesigns itself into structural racism that happens, starting in the same era, in the late 1930s, through some different National Housing policies where the government gets involved in refinancing homeowners and making loans and deciding that these really explicitly racist ideas of that era, which is the Jim Crow era, are going to be now embedded into maps that create a system of valuating neighborhoods based on their racial composition.

You take a neighborhood, like Morrisania, just west of West Farms, and the same culturally vibrant neighborhood with a really diverse array of immigrants and Italians and Jews and Blacks and Puerto Ricans and Cubans is now listed as a D minus on these reports. These were created by the Homeowner Loan Corporation in the late 1930s. Literally, the reason that the neighborhoods are devalued are words like the Negro and Puerto Rican infiltration, obsolete homes. You take the combination of like older housing stock, and the fact that these are racially diverse places--

Brian Lehrer: They use those exact words, by the way, for people who perked up at that, infiltration?

Gregory Jost: Those are the exact words. Yes. Think about the late 1930s and a word like infiltration, what does it make you think of? I'm thinking about World War II and presence of enemies. From a real estate perspective and an investment perspective, because this is all about measuring risk and how does the government say whether or not an investment is safe or not, is to say that the presence of people of color, especially Black folks, but also people of color includes at this time or pre-World War II was going to include Jews and Italians who were also going to contribute to the downgrading of neighborhoods, is to say that this neighborhood is a high risk, and that the type of investment that flows into this neighborhood should be different than what's going to flow into areas that are not just all white, but the most highly rated neighborhoods are the neighborhoods that have the most restrictions, whether they are legally enforceable or not, but especially those that they think maybe they can, if you can make your neighborhood racially restrictive for whites only, you will get the best types and forms of investment. Loans, but also how the whole systems of where private sector is going to be encouraged to invest.

You'll see bank branches closing and to meet racially integrated neighborhoods and communities of color. You'll see the influx of things like check cashes and pawn shops and payday lenders. This happened all across the country. If you want to qualify for a loan, you're going to have to pay higher interest rates. You'll have the beginnings of what we call predatory lending.

Another huge piece of this, to move us forward, is that the neighborhoods that are redlined are the exact neighborhoods where urban renewal projects are going to be disproportionately located. That's in the post-World War II era where you have massive amounts of federal investment flowing into city neighborhoods, but in ways that displaced people.

That means the construction of the interstate highway system, That means the construction of performing art centers like Lincoln Center, college campuses, including forums on campus at Lincoln Center, or if you go to the central ward of Newark, there were 14 urban renewal projects packed into one small area. They divide people up, they sort people out, create hyper segregation by saying that now, let's look at San Juan Hill on the West side of Manhattan, home of West Side Story, the Jews and Italians who lived in that neighborhood and the Irish can now move into these all-white neighborhoods that are going to be, just by the mere fact that they are racially restrictive, property values are going to increase. They're going to get access to low-cost mortgages.

The formula is set up for them to build wealth over time easily with government subsidy and backing. Meanwhile, if you are a Puerto Rican, if you are Black and you're living in that neighborhood, you're going to end up in a place like the Bronx in the South Bronx. You see this huge influx of people who are displaced who have nowhere else to go. In the Bronx, of course, we have the Cross Bronx Expressway, but it's not unique. This is a story all over. It's just devastating in many ways in the Bronx because the multifamily housing stock, as a result in a place like the Bronx, doesn't get the kind of investments that it needs either.

You have the more historically, let's say, responsible landlords, seeing that their investments are going down in value and they can either over time, what do you do with an investment that's going down in value and isn't going to improve? You either let it go. Maybe you sell it to a slumlord, which is the new wave of investors that come up, but no matter what, the housing stock starts to deteriorate, you've got high levels of overcrowding, and then we start to see an increase in fires.

Then by the time we get to the late 1960s at the exact moment that the fires are increasing, we're seeing at a federal level, enacted at very local levels, these policies, if your listeners are familiar with the Moynihan memo to Nixon. This is our United States Senator from New York who we're naming our new sensation after-

Brian Lehrer: Moynihan.

Gregory Jost: [unintelligible 00:13:31] basically justifying that what we really need is for the government to stop investing and trying to provide services in neighborhoods. He called it benign neglect. We're going to just basically let these neighborhoods go [unintelligible 00:13:46]. In New York City, the way that this first plays out is the cutting of fire stations and fire services in the exact same neighborhoods where there's an increase in fires. You see the devastation increased exponentially. The level of displacement increased exponentially.

The neighborhoods are ravaged and there's no help from anywhere. In fact, in the city, the housing administrator calls for this policy of plan [unintelligible 00:14:13] in the late '70s, where it's like those sick and dying neighborhoods, we'll just let them go. Maybe we should let them turn into fields then, later on, they'll be ripe for investment to come back in, which is what we actually start to see more recently is that the investment that does flow into our neighborhoods continues the cycle of wealth extraction. Even when we get good quality investment, like affordable housing, it's done in a way that builds wealth for outside investors, for outside developers.

There's very little investment that flows in to the people of the Bronx. Again, you see this in neighborhoods and across the Bronx and across the United States, how investment flows in, and we're seeing more cycles and patterns like we have for many generations.

Brian Lehrer: Which just about brings us up to some of the current policy debates. Thank you for that history of West Farms. If you're joining us just now, listeners, this is part one of a series that we're debuting on The Brian Lehrer Show today about the West Farms neighborhood of the Bronx called West Farms 10460. Gregory Jost there is Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Fordham University. I'd asked him to give us some of the history going from when they were actually farms in West Farms to recent times.

Also with us is Wanda Salaman, who is Executive Director of Mothers on the Move, a member-led community organization that advocates for the wellbeing of low-income people of color in the South Bronx. Wanda, when does your family's story start in West Farms?

Wanda Salaman: I will say in the early'80s or probably a little bit before that. My uncle used to own a house on Bailey Avenue in 178th Street. Around that time, we rented from my uncle that lived there. Then after that, we had moved to Honeywell Avenue, Vyse Avenue, a block away from the West Farms, from Lambert Houses. We lived in that area. I would say like, in the '80s all the way to probably early 2000, I lived in that neighborhood.

Brian Lehrer: No. Go ahead.

Wanda Salaman: I saw how drugs and how empty lands and empty building took over our neighborhood and also how a lot of the people that lived there for so many years, how they stood there and they fought and made sure that all those buildings and the neighborhood was back up to code. We have also a history of people fighting for their rights and not just giving up or running away from the neighborhood and moving to other places. In the neighborhood, there's people like Victor Rodriguez and Yvonne Rodriguez that they'd been taking care of the community garden on 180th Street in Vyse Avenue for so many years.

We also have Ms. Barbara Brown in the neighborhood that she works for the senior citizen in the community. She'd been doing that for a lot of years

Brian Lehrer: West Farms, just to further locate it for people who don't take the 2 or the 5 train to that stop. You might call it smackdab in the middle of the Bronx, basically just South of the Bronx Zoo, between the Cross Bronx and Southern Boulevard. Wanda, I know you live elsewhere now, but you lived in West Farms as a child, but you have family that remains in the neighborhood and you continue to work in community wellbeing there as well as elsewhere in the South Bronx. Are there areas where you still see the effects of the community disinvestment that Professor Jost was laying out in that thumbnail history?

Wanda Salaman: One of the issues also in the neighborhood is that some other Section 8 housing, so Section 8, a lot of tenants don't have Section 8, it's the building that has Section 8. Sometimes in some buildings like in--

Brian Lehrer: Just so people who aren't familiar with Section 8 program understand that a little bit, Section 8 is a housing voucher that typically goes to the individual and then they can pay the landlord with that. You're saying in some of these cases, it's the building that actually receives the Section 8 funding. Go ahead.

Wanda Salaman: Yes. We, Mothers on the Move, we work with tenants that live in some of those buildings in Bronx Park South. The tenants that live in Bronx Park South, across the street is the Bronx Zoo. Some of those tenants in those buildings are always being trying to push out from the apartment slowly by the owner because they really want these tenants to move out of those buildings. Some of those tenants been there for at least, 30, 40 years.

One of the things that we see is the lack of repairs that goes on in the community. Even buildings that are not Section 8, how slowly building owners are trying to push the tenants out of the units because the block is so close from the Bronx Zoo. It's like you just throw a rock and the rock go over the the zoo. Those are areas that are slowly coming back up. We are afraid of displacement, people being displaced from the neighborhood, and all the other stuff.

Also, if you look at the neighborhood I could just count. I was just thinking, how many supermarkets do we have in the West Farm area? One in 180th and Southern Boulevard. There's another one in [unintelligible 00:20:25] and where the 2 and the 5 train comes-- When you come out of the 2 or the 5 train, there is one on Boston Road and 178th Street, and another one in Tremont and Mapes Avenue. I can remember right now, three supermarkets and bodegas everywhere else and liquor stores. It's like that. There's not a lot of options for the people that live in the area.

They say, oh, why there's so much obesity in the area because we don't have choices. There's not a lot of choices of places to go and get food, vegetables, and all that stuff. At the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center, one of the programs that we run out of the center was like La Canasta. La Canasta is a food club. Every week we was taking vegetables and fruits to people's home and they would buy the basket in a lower price because that was the other option that we had to do in our community because of the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. That's something that the center, the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center is located in 2000 in Mapes Avenue, one block off Tremont Avenue. That's one of the things that they had to do because of the lack of fruit and vegetables in the community.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as I said at the top of the segment, we are also inviting your calls today and throughout the series, as it continues in the context of this mayoral election year, also City Council election year, there will be a special election for City Council in the West Farms area next month, because the previous Councilman, Ritchie Torres, just got elected to Congress, so that seat is open. We are inviting you to start calling in even today, as well as when we have the candidates on in the future to talk about what the neighborhood needs from the city.

Delores in West Farms is calling in right now. Delores, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling.

Delores: No, thank you for taking my call, and what a pleasure and an honor. I listen to you often, you have one of these voices that I just love to hear. You're so compassionate.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, ma'am.

Delores: What I would like to start with is that I have been a resident over on this side for over 20 years. I used to be on the Park Chester side, but I get off at the West Farm Square. West Farm, as you know Brian, is that the trains run top side. We're not underground. You know that, right?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes. The L Train.

Delores: Okay, so now, what my problem is with that, it's a beautiful station yet, but it's 72 steps. I've counted them every morning that I had to walk. There's an escalator. When it's working and not working often, and you get so far now where the token booth is, granted now you got the remainder of the steps to get up. Mothers with strollers have to get up those steps with their babies in these strollers, plus a toddler. I've seen it several mornings in trying to help some of them.

If your train is [unintelligible 00:23:49] in and people are pushing you every which way-- I was wondering why in the heck, maybe a construction, whatever, I don't know, but is there anything someone could do about that situation? Because mind you, if it's snowing, you're outside now and the snow is beating down on all those steps and it's icy, and they have not put any salt down. It has been hazardous, that's one issue. May I go on to the next issue?

Brian Lehrer: Please, I will just reinforce one thing because somebody on Twitter is also complaining about that escalator and my producer, Carl, who lives in the neighborhood, says the escalator never works. Yes, with that context, please go on to issue number two.

Delores: Well, I'm going to give them a little tip. There's a little button on the side sometimes and for whatever reason, it's turned off or whatever, I've seen someone turn it on. I got in the habit of clicking it on myself. I'm a 60-year-old woman, so you know, hey. Anyway, next thing is, and this is a safety, as you know, still talking about the L. If you're waiting for the bus, not at West Farms, but if you're on we're coming up to West Farms and you get off at Freeman or any of those other stops, the bus stop is not where it pulls up to the curb for you. It's literally in the street. You know about that, Brian? You've seen those kinds of stops?

Brian Lehrer: I do, like the express service buses, select service buses?

Delores: Regular bus, like if you're driving. For example, you're driving in your car, you, Brian, you're driving your big luxurious car- [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, which I don't own one but go ahead.

Delores: -and you're stopping and you're driving in now, you're at a stoplight. Right where you have stopped at Freeman, there's a bus sign that the bus stops. That means, me as a woman or a child, we're religiously waiting in the street next side of a car for our bus to come. Hopefully, the compassionate driver that is behind the bus, he will wait his turn. No, they drive around the bus on the passenger side, as we're getting off or getting on the bus and almost get hit. I have saved several children from almost being hit by these people.

Brian Lehrer: Amazing. Delores, I'm going to leave it there for today. Please call back when we have the candidates on and reinforce these things. I promise to bring up those transit issues as well, even though technically, the state controls the MTA, but you know that a mayor and the City Council member have to raise their voices to those in power at the MTA to get those kinds of things fixed. Yes, a voice in my ear who knows the neighborhood better than I do says "Yes, it's ridiculous. The bus stop is literally in the middle of the street. She's not exaggerating."

We're going to run out of time in this segment in just a minute. Let me get one more thought from each of our guests. Wanda, first of all, for you as an activist in the neighborhood, what would you say to Delores about what can be done about the transit situation? I'm going to have to ask you to keep it brief for now, but of course, this is just the first episode of this series, West Farms 10460, but Wanda to Delores.

Wanda Salaman: I will say to join with some neighborhood residents and bring that up to the MTA. That will be good. Maybe the first start is just called the community board number six, and they could probably guide you to the best way to go about that.

Brian Lehrer: One more piece of history, Gregory Jost, the Cross Bronx Expressway, which you mentioned briefly in your initial thumbnail, it's ubiquitous in the neighborhood. I'll reveal that I have some roots in the neighborhood. My parents both grew up near there. My father grew up at 1888 Crotona Parkway, which no longer exists because it's now part of the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Even if you can't see it or hear it from where you are, it's fair to say it pollutes the whole area, and studies suggest exposure to air pollution is associated even with higher COVID-19 death rates. That might be a factor in the COVID death rates in the area, which is so high, but how does construction of the Cross Bronx and the decisions around where and how to build it shape the history of West Farms in our last two minutes?

Gregory Jost: I didn't know you grew up, you had family roots there Brian. That's really great to know

Brian Lehrer: My dad on Crotona Parkway, my mom on Longfellow Avenue, just South of what is now the Cross Bronx, but go ahead.

Gregory Jost: Of course, when you put something in that's going to contribute to the erasure of so many important elements to a neighborhood, to tear up the social fabric of a neighborhood, the social capital, that value that there is to people knowing each other, being able to, the informal economy, mutual aid, these terms we use now, those all existed without even calling them that back then, that gets torn up as well. When you throw in something that's so environmentally detrimentally impacting to a neighborhood, those who can afford to leave will mostly leave.

We have our concentrations, I don't want to say just concentrations of poverty, but we have a lot of exodus from the neighborhood and that continues. I want to honor also folks like Wanda and Delores who was on the call too, and just people who stayed and fought for their neighborhood for so long and just highlight that over the decades following and continuing to this day, the Bronx is home to amazing community organizations, community organizing activism.

There's a whole network of Bronx orgs right now who are coming together to make a Bronx wide platform for the city races this year and into the future. These are the types of issues that we want people to be involved in and to push back on, and environmental racism is a huge part of it. We see the same thing in Hunts Point along the Bruckner Expressway.

Of course, we're like, how do we do this? How could we also remedy? Can we top over the Cross Bronx Expressway and build Parkland? How do we invest in different ways, but do it in a way that builds wealth for neighborhood residents, centering community control, community ownership? That has to be done in a certain way, not that we make neighborhoods so much better, but in a way that pushes people who've been there this whole time out of the neighborhood. There are strategies that we can take to remedy some of the environmental impacts and the environmental racism, but we have to rethink the whole process for how we do it.

Brian Lehrer: That is where we will go in future episodes of this series. West Farms 10460. Gregory Jost, Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Fordham, with an expertise in the history of redlining in the Bronx, thank you so much for some of the history. Wanda Solomon, longtime activist and Executive Director of Mothers on the Move, a member-led community organization in the South Bronx, thank you so much for coming on today and helping kick off this series. We really, really appreciate it with both of you. Thanks so much.

Gregory Jost: You're welcome. Brian.

Wanda Salaman: Thank you.

 

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