The Lower East Side of New York City has a long history of bohemian culture and political resistance. It was the location of rent strikes going back to 1907, the birthplace of many labor unions, a center for counterculture in the repressive 1950s, and draft resistance in the ‘60s. However, in 1969 a severe economic recession gutted New York City – bringing it close to bankruptcy. The city closed fire stations, schools and hospitals. Property owners failed to pay taxes and either abandoned their properties or burned them for insurance payouts, sometimes with residents still inside. The city reluctantly took ownership of these abandoned properties, but withdrew its services and hundreds of buildings sat vacant, slowly decaying, even though homelessness in the city was at a 30,000 person high and the waitlist for low-income housing was over ten years. This was especially prominent in the Lower East Side and the area experienced vast poverty, an influx of crime and a decimation of their community.

In 1974, Congress created a federal homesteading program that allowed residents to rehabilitate landlord-abandoned buildings and in exchange the residents would receive the property title. This was an attempt to correct the declines of the inner cities over the previous years. It proved popular with both New York City, which could shed the expensive ownership of the properties, and the occupiers who could build a neighborhood and a life. However, the City often left the Lower East Side out of the properties available for homesteading, directing their resources instead to less impoverished areas.

This omission sparked a movement when housing activists seized and occupied around 30 barely habitable buildings on the Lower East Side that were owned by the city. Their initial goal was to obtain the title by bringing the derelict residences up to code as was the law through the federal homesteading program. They were squatters who lived in decayed housing that was missing floors, electricity, running water, walls, ceilings and more. The residents would use their own funds and labor to fix up the blighted properties, engage in political activism in order to petition the city, and build community by investing in their neighborhood and its inhabitants.

At the same time, however, developers were gobbling up these cheap properties to both create or increase rent on the buildings they bought from the city. They were forcibly evicting those squatters who remained in the buildings as gentrification exploded in the Lower East Side. The federal homesteading program had worked, and cities were experiencing a rebound that spread and began to squeeze out those inhabitants who had been left out of the process. Conflicts erupted between squatters and owners, who often had city resources such as politicians, building codes, the media and the police on their sides. For instance, the media often described the squatters as anarchists and punks fueled by chaos and intent on destruction rather than the buildings’ previous inhabitants who were just trying to stay in their homes.

This struggle continued to intensify into the 1990s when police roamed the street in riot gear, and clashes and evictions were often violent. This time it really was the last gasp of the bohemian way of life that inspired Jonathan Larson to set his update to La Bohème in the East Village. From a rich world of labor unions, counterculture, and community – the Lower East Side had transformed into a place where everything was about RENT.