The South Bronx – (as taken from Wikipedia)
Our church and ministry focus is in the South Bronx
The South Bronx is a region of the New York City borough of the Bronx. It strictly refers to the southwestern portion of the borough, and should not be confused with the southern Bronx. It is famous as the home of Yankee Stadium, birth place of hip hop music and culture. The neighborhoods of Tremont and University Heights are often considered part of the South Bronx. Some argue that the Soundview section is part of the South Bronx, or even its eastern neighbor, Castle Hill. The northern limit of the South Bronx is commonly set at Fordham Road, which is closer to the north end of The Bronx than the south. Poverty is sometimes considered an indicator or part of the definition, and high poverty rates span as far north as Bedford Park Blvd before becoming more pocketed. There is no official boundary; over the decades the poverty area has only expanded. The South Bronx today is the poorest congressional district in the country.
History of the Bronx… The Bronx was once considered the “Jewish Borough,” which at its peak in 1930 was 49% Jewish. Jews in South Bronx numbered 364,000 or 57.1% of the total population in the area. The term was first coined in the 1940s by a group of social workers who identified the Bronx’s first pocket of poverty, in the Port Morris section, the southernmost section of the Bronx. After World War II as white flight accelerated and migration of ethnic and racial minorities continued, South Bronx went from being 2/3 white in 1950 to being 2/3 black and Puerto Rican in 1960. Originally denoting only Mott Haven and Melrose, the South Bronx extended up to the Cross Bronx Expressway by the 1960s, encompassing Hunts Point, Morrisania, and Highbridge. In the 1970s significant poverty reached as far north as Fordham Road. Around this time, the Bronx experienced some of its worst times ever. The resultant chaos as related by the media brought the term “South Bronx” into common parlance nationwide.
Decay… The South Bronx has been, historically, a place for working class families. It was not always synonymous with the image of a destroyed, drug and poverty riddled western city; this image came in the latter part of the 20th century. There are several causes to the decay of the South Bronx: white flight, landlord abandonment, changes in economic demographics and government indifference, and also the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway. The Cross Bronx Expressway, completed in 1963, was a part of Robert Moses’s urban renewal project for New York City. The expressway is ironically thought to be a factor in the extreme urban decay seen by the borough in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cutting straight through the heart of South Bronx, the highway displaced thousands of residents from their homes, as well as several local businesses. The somewhat already poor and working-class neighborhoods were at another disadvantage: the decreased property value brought on by their proximity to the Cross Bronx Expressway. The neighborhood of East Tremont, in particular, was completely destroyed by the inception of the Cross Bronx Expressway. The combination of increasing vacancy rates and decreased property values created some rather unappealing neighborhoods, places where previous residents and new homeowners would essentially not want to live. Construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway was not the only factor in the decay of South Bronx. In the late 1960’s, population began decreasing as a result of new policies demanding that, for racial balance in schools, children to be bussed into other districts. Parents who worried about their children attending school outside their district often relocated to the suburbs, where this was not a concern. The primary reason for the decline of many middle class neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960’s was the real estate policies enacted by New York City immediately after World War II, specifically rent control. Contributing to the decreasing population was the fact that New York City’s outdated policies regarding rent control gave building owners no motivation to keep up their properties. Therefore, desirable housing options were scarce, and vacancies further increased. In the late 1960’s, by the time the city decided to consolidate welfare households in the South Bronx, the vacancy rate was already the highest of any place in the city. The phrase “The Bronx is burning” uttered by Howard Cosell during a Yankees World Series game in the 1977, refers to the arson epidemic in South Bronx during the 1970s. It was during this time that arson became popular because landlords would collect the insurance money for the building. Sometimes, prior to being set on fire, the building would be stripped of wiring, plumbing, metal fixtures, and anything else of value so as to retain some of the owner’s investments. Also, some fires in the South Bronx were simply caused because of deteriorating electrical systems or neglect on the landlord’s part as they still are today. The presence of several of these vacant, burnt-down buildings contributed to the atmosphere similar to that of a war-devastated country. Since the late 1980s parts of the South Bronx have experienced urban renewal with rehabilitated and brand new residential structures, including both subsidized multifamily town homes and apartment buildings. Many of the newer residents are of the lower income strata who been displaced from other low income sections of the city, born in the South Bronx (Due to a higher birth rate), or from immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean (Primarily Dominican and Jamaican). This is because a significant percentage of New York City’s affordable housing is being built in the South Bronx.
Although strides have been made since the days of arson, the South Bronx is still a long way from a real recovery. It is the poorest congressional district in the country, and contains over half of the Bronx’s housing projects. Almost 50% of the population lives below the poverty line. Drug trafficking, gang activity, and prostitution are all still common problems throughout the South Bronx. Its precincts record the highest violent crime rates in the city and are all NYPD “impact zones”
