“A friend of mine brought up ‘Urban Renewal’ the other day and I think we both cried… We’ve suffered collectively for the downtown development disaster of almost a half century ago. And we’re still recovering from it… They literally nuked downtown on us.”
John D’Onofrio, a reporter for the Lockport Union Sun & Journal, wrote this in 2016, and his remarks prompt us to reflect on the lasting impact of Urban Renewal around the state. The postwar urban crisis was real. Downtown stores were losing business to suburban shopping centers. Property and sales tax collections in cities were declining. Housing conditions for many inner-city residents, particularly the poor and people of color, were objectively bad.
At the time, Urban Renewal seemed necessary. In the short term, Urban Renewal projects did improve downtown retail activity and the tax base. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated in 1974 that Urban Renewal had more than tripled total tax assessments in project areas.
Urban Renewal projects improved housing conditions for tens of thousands of New Yorkers, because Federal regulations required that municipalities accepting urban renewal funds had to adopt modern building and housing codes. Today’s “standard” apartment, one that includes a private bathroom, kitchen with stove and refrigerator, hot and cold running water, and central heating, is a legacy of urban renewal.
On the other hand, Urban Renewal disproportionately upended the lives of African American and Puerto Rican residents. These two groups made up 60% of those displaced, and 3/4 were renters. The Urban Renewal projects in Newburgh and Rockville Centre deliberately targeted African American residents for removal.
In Newburgh, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and many other places, this targeting has shaped the collective memory of Urban Renewal, particularly among community elders. Decades after the demolition of Syracuse’s mostly Black 15th Ward, displaced residents still gather for twice-yearly reunions. Residents of Rochester’s demolished Clarissa Street (part of the Third Ward Urban Renewal project) also hold an annual reunion. They recently launched a documentary film and oral history project where high school students interview their elders. Even in almost entirely white Ilion and Little Falls, anthropologist Dimitra Doukas discovered that the legacy of Urban Renewal still “drove a wedge of distrust between citizens and local government” into the 21st century.
For many displaced tenants, property owners, and businesspeople, financial losses were real and made it harder to build intergenerational wealth. Consider 254 Montgomery Street in Newburgh, New York, home to three families in the late 1960s. The owners had bought it for $9,500 in 1955, but the city appraised it at a value of $6,000 in 1966 and estimated the cost of rehabilitating the building at between $11,000 and $16,000. The owners refused to take on this cost, and the city acquired the building and later sold it to rehabbers. In the summer of 2024, it was sold for $675,000.
This story of one particular building shows how Urban Renewal damaged the ability of displaced residents to pass their savings onto their children. What if the 1966 owners of 254 Montgomery Street in Newburgh were able to retain ownership? Urban renewal also imposed financial losses on tenants and small business owners. Should their descendants be compensated for these losses? If so, how?
Local and state officials have begun to consider these questions. In 2023 Saratoga Springs mayor Ron Kim acknowledged that “Urban Renewal decimated whole swaths of Saratoga Springs and largely that was based on race.” He called for legislation to set up a Restorative Justice Panel to investigate the harms done.
In Newburgh, descendants of people displaced by Urban Renewal have called for a “right to return” that would give them a voice in determining how the city disposes of its vacant Urban Renewal land.
Finally, in 2024, the state empaneled a Community Commission on Reparations Remedies. Included in its charge is to investigate the legacy of “segregationist urban planning.”
Ms. Frederica Warner describes how urban renewal programs introduced in the 1960s were unsuccessful in Newburgh with ramifications that lasted until present day.
Courtesy of the Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley