The problem with Eric Dinowitz

To the editor:

We Bronxites and people in Council District 11 endure great suffering because of the housing famine. The continuing disappearance of existing housing intensifies this famine.

Some months ago, we made a presentation to Council Member Dinowitz about historic and present discriminatory public policies on housing (redlining, urban renewal, and planned shrinkage) in the Bronx and their devastating effects into the present. We are internationally known urban public health scientists who for half a century have studied the cascade of disasters from the 1970's cuts in fire service. Our presentation demonstrated the continuing impacts on all Bronx community districts. The present housing famine arose from these policies. Planned shrinkage still dictates fire service allocation.

Council Member Dinowitz co-chairs the Bronx delegation to the City Council. We appealed to him for a chance to make this presentation to the whole delegation so that they can act to protect the Bronx. He said that he would consider the request.

The Bronx and all its council districts show severe erosion of living conditions. In 2005, HPD registered roughly 19,000 housing violations in the Bronx; in 2024, that number had ballooned to roughly 330,000. The Bronx suffers a much higher incidence of large fires per unit population (fires to which six or more engine companies are assigned) than any other borough. 

The 1970 Census estimated that 1.47 million people lived in the Bronx. The most recent census (2020) estimated that 1.47 million people live in the Bronx. In 1970, the Bronx had 35 engine companies, 29 ladder companies, and 3 squads. We now have 30 engine companies, 27 ladder companies, and 2 squads, and each company is understaffed with one less firefighter than in 1970. In fire service, what you see is what you get. If you see scorched boarded up housing units and burned-out stores, you are witnessing inadequate fire service. The Bronx has lost 102 firefighters per shift from the 1970 count: 43 from closed companies and one each taken from the remaining ones. This number does not even include the fire officers from the closed companies.

The residents of his council district and of the entire Bronx have a problem with Eric Dinowitz. Where is his urgent leadership to preserve existing housing and thereby blunt the housing famine's deepening? As Bronx rents and violations surged, birth rates plummeted. People who wanted children couldn't afford them. Other public health markers also suffered impacts (percent low-weight births, drug death rates, mortality rates of chronic lower respiratory disease and of heart disease.) Calls to 911 for ambulances soared. Homelessness and extreme housing overcrowding increased. You would think that the co-chair of the Bronx delegation would spring into action to cut the roots of these afflictions. 

The FIRE industries (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) have disempowered us all with their decades-long corrupt-crony connections to the Office of the Mayor. They charge ever-higher rents and gain even more profits by illegally cutting maintenance with impunity. These industries engineered the housing famine and continue to intensify it. The housing famine affects even cooperative housing. Council Member Dinowitz's nonchalance in the face of the suffering in his district and all over the Bronx should appall us all. 

Rodrick Wallace, Ph.D.

Deborah Wallace, Ph.D.