No confidence: The untold story and struggle of Ithaca’s gentrification

The campus of Ithaca College was teeming with protest and confrontation this fall, making national news and eventually leading to the resignation of the College’s president Tom Rochon. Regardless of how you may feel about the commotion up on the hill overlooking the City of Ithaca, from cozy dorms or looking out from sleek and glossy library windows, a much more tangible battle is going on downtown that has gone largely unnoticed by the Ithaca College student population. Getting rid of Tom Rochon was a big achievement but this a very small piece of a much more complicated puzzle.

Snapshot of the new and improved Commons, with a little help from Merrill Lynch (an enormous financial institution).

The Ithaca Commons have undergone a $15.3 Million Dollar make over, and there are a dizzying amount of land development projects either in progress or under review that, after heavy investigation, seem to be inattentive (to say the least) to the problem of gentrification. This enormous influx of money  has been allotted almost exclusively for the development of residential housing (most of which appear to ignore the situation for low income families), and all of these projects encircle the already disturbingly concentrated location of low-income housing and the African-American population of Ithaca.

This image illustrates the concentration of minorities in Ithaca. The areas with the highest concentration of minorities also happen to be almost entirely low income households. Photo Credit to: http://ithacavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Screen-Shot-2015-09-23-at-5.12.13-PM.png

Svante Myrick, the Mayor of Ithaca, has been extremely vocal about the issue of rising rent prices and it’s disproportionate effect on low-income residents, along with Leslyn McBean-Clairborne a member of the Tompkins County Legislature and Fabina Colon the Director of Ithaca’s Multicultural Resource Center. Their concerns are valid, because the economic rebounds from these sprawling construction projects will inevitably have fiscal repercussions that will hit impoverished Ithacans the hardest.

To counterbalance this enormous growth, how much money has been spent on improving and expanding affordable housing in Ithaca? Well, it isn’t that simple. The Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency (IURA), led by Svante Myrick, has been working hard to get grants to combat this clear trend of gentrification. The IURA is, in part, responsible for “the sale of land for public/private partnership urban renewal projects and issuance of loans for affordable housing and business job creation,” and it is unclear how effective they have been at keeping this goal in mind.

Although some of the projects appear to be conscious of their impact, even these seem suspiciously isolating and also require lots of legal legwork that may prevent them from even happening. In contrast the projects that appear to be marketed towards a wealthier demographic have been finding it easier to meet the approval process (a self described “urban oasis”, $38 Million Apartment Complex, another project that would love to “improve on this unique character “ of downtown Ithaca).

Red represents private investment, blue represents public investment and green indicates non-profit investments. Photo taken from: https://brancra.wordpress.com/ithaca-project-map/

Their (the IURA) most recent success has been to implement and continue the HUD Entitlement Grant Program (Federally funded), which appears to have been granted approximately $150,000 for LMI (Low-Moderate – Income) housing. For the purpose of clarity this is one thousand times less than the money put into renovating the Commons alone. To add insult to injury, Tompkins County allotted $1.4 Million Dollars to renovate the Public Library.

Overall, this issue is extremely complicated. The Mayor of Ithaca has very little influence on the choices made by Tompkins county, but he is part of the IURA which sold the land to these private developers. In addition, private developers can spend as much money as they want, but ethically I believe there needs to be some accountability for the consequences of this unprecedented growth for the city. All that can be said objectively is that enormous parcels of land are being used to build residential housing that will most likely not be marketed for low-income families.

Real Estate Firms and Corporate Interests that are involved with most of the land development.

On the flip side, the money being invested in trying to help the LMI families is a complete farce. Tompkins County could easily have invested in providing affordable housing instead of renovating an already impressive library and could have spent a little less on the Commons reconstruction and a little more on building affordable housing/renovating the pre-existing LMI housing. The money that the IURA and the INHS have raised and spent is a start, but I find it hard to believe that this will be enough, this is why I have no confidence.

Businesses in the Commons are already closing because of the economic repercussions due to the enormous renovation. Makes me wonder what kinds of new storefronts will take their place.

I’m not trying to point any fingers – I’m just trying to paint a picture of what is happening and the picture looks pretty bleak. We can argue all we want about micro-aggressions and the racial tensions at Ithaca College, but while we discuss these issues (which are obviously also important) businesses are closing and whole communities are being threatened to be pushed out of their own homes. This is why I have NO CONFIDENCE.