Shady Greenpoint Loft Proves Gentrification Really Can Ruin Brooklyn
- Property Shark
There were red flags, sure. The Craigslist title of “Rustic House,” the $3,800/month pricetag on a damn loft, the fact that a group of four, disparate, 30-something foreigners were able to rent the place sight-unseen. I don’t really know how much of a drawback that last bit actually is to landlords, but I do know that if I still have to live with three roommates who aren’t cats and/or spouse(s) by the time I’m 35, well, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot with any “I’ll move to CANADA” promises, but whatever happens, it will be bad.
In any case, the loft spaces for rent on 239 Banker Street in Greenpoint definitely seem like a sketch real estate proposition to all but the least trained eye, but that doesn’t mean people like Oliver Fiegel, 35, who came all the way from Germany to “experience Brooklyn loft life” deserve the totally unsafe shithole they found upon moving in. Or, that a neighborhood actively fighting to keep local jobs deserves to have its factory spaces filled with slapped-together lofts just because the city hasn’t found a way to shut them down, which is how things are going right now.
“It’s not crime and disinvestment that’s the enemy of the working-class jobs here anymore,” an official from the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corporation told the New York Times. “It’s gentrification that’s become they enemy.”
