Interesting New York Times Article On “Newcomers Try to Fit In”

The article is about Harlem but I think some folks in our neighborhoods may be able to relate. The article starts:

“In the past few years, the “Village of Harlem,” as older residents still call it, has become a 21st-century laboratory for integration. Class and money and race are at the center of the changes in the neighborhood. Lured by stately century-old brownstones and relatively modest rents, new faces are moving in and making older residents feel that they are being pushed out. There have been protests, and anger directed as much at the idea of the newcomers as at them personally.

Through it all, the voices of those newcomers have often gone unheard, at least publicly. But to listen to them is to hear the story of a neighborhood in transition from a different perspective. For some, it is a daily struggle to fit in or an extra effort to develop a defense for the occasional flare-ups of anger they encounter. Others are charmed by Harlem’s quaint formalities and distinct sense of its history — qualities they say are missing in neighborhoods in the rest of the city.”

Read the full article here.

For more interesting reading from the Times there is also an interesting article about a guy who “spent the summer building an 80-square-foot “tiny house” out of free stuff he found on Craigslist”.