Burn baby burn: Fire service cuts as a tool of urban renewal & 'planned shrinkage', 1975 & today

Hannah Bell

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Tue Sep-21-10 06:11 AM
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Burn baby burn: Fire service cuts as a tool of urban renewal & 'planned shrinkage', 1975 & today

Edited on Tue Sep-21-10 06:29 AM by Hannah Bell

THE 1975 NYC FISCAL CRISIS

A. The Official History of the Crisis:

"In the 60s, the city began to live beyond its means, offering generous wage and benefit packages to unionized workers, and spending too much on welfare and other public services. Its coffers drained, the city by the early 70s had turned to the short-term bond market to cover everyday expenses. Sensing trouble, Wall Street cut the city off... The banker Felix Rohatyn and other civic-minded business leaders stepped to help the city put out the fire now known as the Fiscal Crisis of �75. ...Rohatyn and company cut social spending and reined in the unions....the city started to get back on its feet."

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/06/express/the-greening-of-new-york-city

According to author Kim Moody, the official history is false.

B. The Real Causes of NYC's Fiscal Crisis:

1. Loss of tax base due to deindustrialization, a drop in federal aid to cities, & developer lobbying that exempted 40% of city properties from any property tax at all.

2. Overbuilding 1967-1973 (including the Twin Towers) that added 67 million square feet of office space to the city, �highly vertical sunk capital, much of it tax-exempt" & made the city vulnerable to global downturns. When the oil shock produced such a slump in 1974-75, "vacancies shot up, construction slowed, and jobs and tax revenue were lost."

3. Overexposure of NYC banks in the global & local market (i.e. debt & speculation).

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

C. Social Spending & Public Workers' Salaries Didn't Cause the Fiscal Crisis:

"While it�s true that city public employment rose significantly through the 60s, it did so at practically half the nationwide rate, and came to crawl between 1971 and 1975. It also turns out that welfare spending growth, while indeed substantial, was relatively slow in the first half of the 70s. Public hospitals were funded in large part by the state and the feds, and, yes, CUNY costs were rising. But in 1975, such costs comprised just 4.6 percent of the city budget. So much for the great sucking sounds of liberal extravagance..."

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/06/express/the-greening-of-new-york-city

THE CONTEXT OF THE TIMES

The 1970's were the beginning of capital's push-back against the New Deal & the 60s. The infamous "Powell Memo" was written in 1971:

DATE: August 23, 1971
TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

This memorandum is submitted at your request as a basis for the discussion on August 24 with Mr. Booth (executive vice president) and others at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The purpose is to identify the problem, and suggest possible avenues of action for further consideration.

No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.

There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy...

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html

"In an extraordinary prefiguring of the social goals of business that would be felt over the next three decades, Powell set his main goal: changing how individuals and society think about the corporation, the government, the law, the culture, and the individual. Shaping public opinion on these topics became, and would remain, a major goal of business."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell,_Jr.

David Rockefeller expressed similar sentiments at the time: �It�s clear to me,� he in a Chase Manhattan Bank report, �that the entire structure of our society is being challenged.�"

The 70s also saw a global surge of state terrorism to further the same goals. See Gladio in Europe, Italy's Strategy of Tension, Operation Condor in Latin America, Counter-Guerilla in Turkey. Thatcher & Reagan were the real end of the 60s & the beginning of the new era.

PUBLIC SERVICES IN THE FISCAL CRISIS ERA

In 1974 NYC was facing a budget shortfall & the big banks and federal government refused to lend to the city.

"So the New York state government stepped in with the Municipal Assistance Corporation. Known as "Big Mac," it was run by a nine-person board that included six top officials of banks, brokerage houses, and other businesses...As a condition for these loans, Big Mac demanded "sacrifice." The government launched a campaign to slash city services..."

It was, to quote Ken Auletta, "fiscal martial law". The city government essentially lost control of its budget process to this unelected elite body.

"As the Militant pointed out in its June 27, 1975, issue, 'The financial crisis of New York is an elaborate fraud perpetrated to enable the city to fire workers. What Big Mac�s creation actually proves is that the money was there all along--it was just a question of what conditions the banks demanded to make the loans.'"

http://www.themilitant.com/2002/6646/664665.html

Which brings us to "planned shrinkage".

A. Planned Shrinkage

"The policy was sketched out BEFORE (emphasis added) New York City's mid-70's financial crisis by former City Housing Commissioner Roger Starr, now on the editorial board of the New York Times. 'Planned Shrinkage' was a sort of urban 'triage', aimed at withdrawing essential city services--police patrols, garbage removal, street repairs, and fire services--from neighborhoods suffering from deep population losses, decay and deemed to be 'unsalvageable'.

In short, like a Latin American country squeezed by its bankers, the City tried to cope with the fiscal squeeze and keep-up its debt ratings by writing off so-called marginal neighborhoods. It was a plan to concentrate services on 'salvageable' neighborhoods that might otherwise sink into the spiral decay that was already engulfing Brownsville, Brooklyn and the South Bronx. By no coincidence, those neighborhoods chosen for 'shrinkage' (abandonment) were overwhelmingly black, poor or Hispanic."

http://mediafilter.org/mff/s.35.burn.html.

Doctors Rodrick and Deborah Wallace studied fire service cuts during this period & produced a number of papers & a book, "A Plague on Your Houses: How New York was Burned Down & National Public Health Crumbled."

http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Your-Houses-Haymarket/dp/1859842534

http://books.google.com/books?id=WqxzT1nM12wC&dq=fires+%22new+york+city%22+%22fiscal+crisis%22++wallace&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=41KYTPOMCIacsQOYotiIDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12&ved=0CEUQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q&f=false

They showed how the financiers' decisions to close fire stations & cut firefighters in low-income neighborhoods -- most notably, the South Bronx -- pushed them over the edge, and the cascade effect this had, including a spreading pattern of urban blight and consequences for public health.

All quotes on fire department cuts & their effects are from this paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1809782/pdf/bullnyacadmed00016-0019.pdf

B. The History and Consequences of Fire Service Cuts in NYC 1972-1976

At least three Fire Department analyses had been done before 1971 identifying two factors which predicted increased fire risk: population density & abandoned properties.

The March 1970 analysis of Deputy Fire Chief Charles Kirby, for example, "accurately predicted the spread of fire and abandonment from the South Central to the West and then the Northwest Bronx in following years, and implied an associated large-scale migration of the population" absent increased fire service in the high-risk South Bronx. "After years of fire experience, fire prevention, and fire investigation, I feel that...rather than being accidental, fire is largely a social problem and the Bronx has and will have its share of such problems."

The fire service unions had fought to open substations in high-risk areas in 1969 and won, and fire damage declined -- until 1972.

But between 1972 and 1976, 50 fire companies in the same high-risk areas were shut down -- including those in the South Bronx. The number of firemen per company was cut at least 20%. The number of fire companies responding to an initial call was cut, and 4500 total personnel were cut from the Fire Department.

The cuts were justified by a model developed by the RAND Corporation.

The results?

Nearly exactly what Fire Chief Kirby had described in 1970 -- down to the very neighborhoods affected, and the order in which they were affected. The Central and South Bronx burned & its residents migrated to other low-income neighborhoods, often doubling up with relatives or friends.

Increased density in those neighborhoods increased the fire risk & the cycle continued. Within a matter of years affecting neighborhoods that weren't high-fire-risk or low-income, such as the West Bronx.

How complete the devastation in some areas was is shown by the outcome for the police station once known as "Fort Apache":

"NYPD's 41st Precinct Station House at 1086 Simpson Street became famously known as 'Fort Apache, The Bronx' as it struggled to deal with the overwhelming surge of crime. By 1980, the 41st's station had been renamed 'The Little House on the Prairie', as fully 2/3rds of the precinct's 94,000 residents had fled and left the station house as the only building on the block that had not been abandoned, burnt by arson, or both."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bronx,_Bronx

That reference to "arson," however, is part of the official story, which attributed the burning of the Bronx to its arsonous, criminal residents -- or sometimes its landlords. Arson certainly occurred -- but it was not the main factor in the destruction of the South Bronx or similarly affected neighborhoods. Fire risk is always & predictably higher in high density, poorly maintained housing and in areas where abandoned buildings attract homeless people, children, or others who may start fires without intending arson.

C. Social Breakdown and Its Consequences

The Wallaces document a host of social and health indices deteriorated in the same period, & followed the pattern of fire and migration.

For example, life expectancy of black New Yorkers over 60, previously higher than that of white New Yorkers, declined precipitously, while black infant mortality, previously declining, spiked. The Wallaces relate these changes in trend to the disruption of social support networks and life patterns.

Patterns of crime, drug use, AIDS & tuberculosis infection & -- unsurprisingly -- homelessness -- also mapped onto the fire contagion pattern. Low-income communities typically have higher levels of social problems, but these patterns were more akin to the spread of disease -- or the effects of war -- which brings the same social ills.

D. 1978 Task Force

In 1978 a Task Force found that the Fire Department falsified records of fire statistics in the 1970's and didn't publish its annual report during the fiscal crisis, resulting in "the suppression of information vital to public understanding." The Task Force also found:

"There...are indications that the City Planning Commission and other agencies condoned such force reductions in the context of a 'planned shrinkage'policy...

In many cases there is evidence that the current policies have resulted in less coverage and protection for communities which exhibit a higher than average incidence of fires and fire-related
deaths...

There is strong evidence that these actions have resulted in the unwarranted loss of life and destruction of city neighborhoods....

There is strong indication that as neighborhoods deteriorated, the fire department redlined ...further hastening deterioration and causing the fire blight to spread to previously viable neighborhoods..."

TODAY:

It appears that Detroit's cuts in fire services serve the same goal of "planned shrinkage" -- as the city's desire to achieve what they now term "downsizing" has already been publicly announced.

One of the interesting things that came up in the Wallace analysis was the interest of developers in land in the Bronx, the fact that the West Bronx was "middle-class" when Chief Kirby's report was written but quickly became low-income & fire-prone because it lay in the path of contagion that spread from the Central South Bronx when fire service was cut -- and that the new Yankee Stadium was built in the Southwest Bronx.

The neighborhood burning in this video of the recent Detroit fires looks fairly well-kept, and not abandoned -- but the damage to five or more houses may start it down that path.

The city announced that 71 of the fire-damaged homes will be demolished. 29 of the 71 were occupied. Six have already been demolished & the rest will follow within 30 days. Fire service is slow in detroit but demolitions are speedy lately.

"Creative destruction" -- at least according to the PTB: "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate� it will purge the rottenness out of the system! High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people." (Andrew Mellon, banker & secretary of treasury: ancestor of Richard Mellon Scaife)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9172149