In the downtown New Brunswick area, one brand new luxury residential building is just a stone’s throw away from another. The identically furnished units seen through the shiny glass-and-steel are vacant, while the number of homeless sleeping in cardboard boxes in close proximity is growing.
Housing is one of the most fundamental human needs; America’s housing inequality has always been a symptom of its systemic racism. Public policies endorsing exclusion and segregation have exacerbated racial and economic inequality. Fifty-two years after the abolishment of redlining, its aftermath has contributed to and continues to expand the wealth gap to this day.
Every state and local jurisdiction has action plans laid out for providing more affordable housing and ending homelessness, to various extents. But the efforts invested in those problems are hardly comparable to the efforts invested in profitable residential developments.
According to a 2020 Middlesex County point-in-time survey, a total of 666 individuals experience homelessness in the county, including 181 children, which represents an increase of 46 persons from 2019’s survey. The percentage of people living below the poverty line in New Brunswick is 34.3%, which is more than double the rate in New Jersey and in the tri-state area. Nonetheless, in recent years, New Brunswick residents have witnessed new developments rising from the concrete in the downtown area non-stop; one can hardly remember a time when there were no construction sites underway when taking a stroll downtown. It has been hard for New Brunswick residents to keep track of all the new developments, especially when those who are in need of housing were clearly not the target occupants of the new units.
Furthermore, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment ($1691) in New Brunswick is about 46% higher than the average fair market rent price for a one-bedroom in New Jersey ($1151). The blame for the high rent price can be placed on the mobility of the large student population, while the high poverty rate comes as no surprise considering the high number of people of color and immigrants that reside in New Brunswick.
The City of New Brunswick is not necessarily turning a blind eye to the poor and the homeless; in New Brunswick’s five-year consolidated action plan, under the clause of public housing, the New Brunswick Housing Authority promises to “focus on improving its management efficiency so as to be able to effectively operate in an environment of reduced public funding for public housing.” However, the efficiency of the plans it structured for the poor is ill-matched to the ones it placed for the city’s commercial development. For instance, multiple rental housing developments and an affordable housing project set out to proceed with construction last year. The rental buildings that predominantly catered to Rutgers students have officially welcomed their first residents this fall, whereas the affordable housing project situated at 50 Neilson St. — a five-story, 53-unit apartment building — remains a barren field enclosed by iron fences.
Being the home of Rutgers, the largest university in New Jersey, and the corporate Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick is just a miniature version of any populated metro city in the United States. Looking at the real estate and housing situation in New York City: those skinny, soulless high-rise towers have been competing against one another for redefining the city’s skyline for decades. The giant glass skyscrapers are like many-eyed monsters looking down upon the repugnant, moldy dwellings of the poor and nearly 80,000 people who are struggling to have a roof over their heads, feeling unbothered.
Imagine the developers sitting in their 80th-floor penthouses, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, taking in the panorama of the city, sipping a glass of cocktail worth 100 homeless shelters, thinking which land they should develop next — as bloodless as the glass-and-steel skyscrapers.
