In a Changing Manhattan, the Lower East Side Struggles to Preserve its Identity

As buildings shoot up in the Lower East Side, so does the cost of living (taken from Joel Raskin via flickr.com)

BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON:

Julio Huertas migrated to Manhattan’s Lower East Side more than 50 years ago.  He shuffled his family around the neighborhood before deciding that he wanted to move his wife and three children into a better apartment. Huertas applied for several housing co-ops, but realized that his application kept getting lost.

“The reason [the landlords] couldn’t find it was because they were turning it away because I was Puerto Rican,” says Huertas.

Realizing that he was being discriminated against, Huertas and others were involved in a class action lawsuit which they won. The retired community activist and New York City Housing Authority employee has lived in the same co-op on Grand Street since. It was all that he could afford, and a good place to raise his family, despite being in a rough part of town.  In recent years, however, gentrification has swept through, washing away the grit which once defined this man’s neighborhood.