By Joseph Berger
JERSEY
CITY — To the gentrifying stew of bankers, artists and college
graduates who are transforming this once blue-collar city across the
Hudson River from Manhattan, add an unexpected flavor.
In
a heavily African-American neighborhood, 62 families from a number of
Hasidic sects based in Brooklyn and rarely seen here have bought a
scattering of faded but roomy wood-frame rowhouses whose prices are less
than half what homes of similar size would cost in New York — roughly
$300,000 compared with $800,000.
These
families are pioneers in a demographic and religious shift that is
reshaping communities throughout the region. Skyrocketing real estate
prices in Brooklyn and Queens are forcing out young ultra-Orthodox
families, which are establishing outposts in unexpected places, like
Toms River and Jackson Township in New Jersey, the Willowbrook
neighborhood on Staten Island and in Bloomingburg, N.Y., in the
foothills of the Catskills.
The influx, however, has provoked tensions with long-established
residents, as the ultra-Orthodox seek to establish a larger footprint
for their surging population. Residents complain that investors or real
estate agents representing the ultra-Orthodox community have been
ringing doorbells persistently, offering to buy properties at “Brooklyn
prices.” Jersey City, Toms River and Jackson have all passed no-knock
ordinances barring such inquiries under the threat of fines or have
banned solicitations altogether.
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Source: The New York Times (via The Empire Report)
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