On March 12th 2014 there was an explosion caused by a gas leak in two East Harlem apartment building located on 116th street and Park avenue. I was upstate in Oswego for school when friends on my social networks started posting comments like "pray for East Harlem" with the picture of the two collapsed buildings. I immediately called my mother to see if she was okay. My mother lives far away from the explosion but she could have been walking on that block. A day or two after I started to think about gentrification and how gentrification is brought upon lower class communities. Some landlords will raise rent, while they have their tenants living in mold infested apartments. Some landlords would do things such as this to push tenants out of the apartments so that they could get new tenants and raise prices. It was said that the gas main that served the two buildings was 127 years old and made of cast iron, a material that is known for becoming brittle and prone to leaks. This is something that probably should have been fixed or renewed decades ago. I am not accusing anybody of murder, but was this a way of getting people out of those buildings? When the space is clean, will there be apartment buildings built for the people in the community or will the space be exchanged with luxury apartment buildings? only time will tell.
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