Fixed Capital: Building Transition and Drug Capitalism in New York City

This paper explores the contours of drug capitalism in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, it asks: in what ways did New York's buildings and neighborhoods transition during this period and how did such transformations help to fashion the city’s residential buildings into centers of production, distribution, and administration? Ultimately, I argue that the transformation of New York’s buildings and neighborhoods set in motion a new set of relationships between residency and work for many of the era’s Latinx newcomers. Amid a declining formal employment market, the reactions to ongoing municipal divestment and building decay evinced in the organizing efforts of many tenant groups were matched by a generation of Latinx youth whose participation in the illicit drug economy offered significant financial incentives rooted in the buildings where many of them and their families lived. The unprofitability of once profitable real estate created an opening for an underground (or rather “in-doors”) economy organized around cocaine and crack. Rather than battling landlords over repairs and rent, drug capitalists and workers made rent-seeking calculations that mirrored those of landlords. Indeed, Latinx youth’s search for income led them to adapt their buildings in Washington Heights, the South Bronx, and other neighborhoods as forms of fixed capital.