Expensive, Overcrowded Housing Is Deadly
Making cities more resilient against coronavirus pandemics will require taking on the landlords, real estate developers, and elected officials who prop them up. We need safe, affordable housing.
People line up at the Community Kitchen and Food Pantry on May 8, 2020 in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Stephanie Keith / Getty
Wealthy urbanites from New York to Paris hightailed it out of city centers during the coronavirus outbreak, ensconcing themselves in second homes in the Hamptons and the French countryside.
Who can blame them? The virus has hit urban areas hardest, especially neighborhoods whose poor residents have no greener pastures to escape to.
Queens and the Bronx — where New York City’s construction workers, taxi drivers, dishwashers, nannies, and cleaners live — have more cases than all of Manhattan. Elsewhere, in Chelsea, an immigrant enclave located across the Mystic River from Boston and the second most densely populated city in Massachusetts, there’s a COVID infection rate six times higher than the statewide average.
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