{"id":353136,"date":"2026-09-22T03:50:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T03:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353136\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T03:50:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T03:50:23","slug":"hipster-nyc-neighborhoods-to-get-gentrified-transit-makeover-at-cost-of-seniors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353136\/","title":{"rendered":"Hipster NYC neighborhoods to get gentrified transit makeover at cost of seniors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elderly residents of some of Brooklyn\u2019s hottest neighborhoods are accusing the Mamdani administration of catering to hipster cyclists<\/a> by taking over streets for bike lanes, saying it\u2019s \u201clike Nazi Germany in 1933.\u201d<\/p>\n

The longtime Brooklynites claim that City Hall refuses to listen to their concerns over plans that would transform Dean and Bergen streets<\/a> into more friendly pedestrian and bike areas\u00a0because pols are more interested in pandering to the new wave of deep-pocketed young residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like people of a certain age are no longer welcome in Brooklyn,\u2019\u2019 griped Betty Davis, 82, of Bedford-Stuyvesant.<\/p>\n

Residents Peter Anekwe and Stephon Richardson, at the B65 MTA bus stop at the corner of Dean Street and New York Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, blasted the plan. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody realizes what it means for someone at 82 years old to have to walk an extra five blocks to get to their bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnytime you deprive any group of people \u2014 especially working-class, elderly and handicapped people \u2014 of public transportation, that is more than just an issue of civil rights. That\u2019s an issue of human rights,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an elder, this feels like Nazi Germany in 1933. What are you gonna do next? Kill me because I\u2019m elderly?\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis is one of the neighborhood\u2019s many aging residents who use the B65 on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

The MTA first proposed shifting its route two blocks north onto Atlantic Avenue as part of the 2022 Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign Draft Plan in hopes of increasing speed and efficiency.<\/p>\n

But neighbors backed by their Community Board 8 made clear as far back as 2023 that aspects of the proposal seemed \u201ccounterproductive and arbitrary\u201d <\/a>for the neighborhood \u2014 which is deemed a \u201cnaturally occurring retirement center\u201d \u2014 and did not address the route\u2019s biggest chokehold areas.<\/p>\n

The bus redesign project is still in the workshop phase, but concerned residents were reinvigorated in their opposition this past spring when Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that Bergen and Dean streets would be even further transformed as they become\u00a0absorbed by the \u201cBike Boulevard\u201d project.<\/p>\n

The 10-mile corridor would \u201cprioritize cyclists and pedestrians\u201d without eliminating vehicular traffic, the city claimed at the time.<\/p>\n

The MTA has plans to eliminate the B65 bus route on Dean Street and Bergen Street to turn them into bicycle throughways. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n

The plans include transforming Dean and Bergen streets into bike boulevards and shifting the B65 bus route, forcing elders to walk further. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are developing a bike boulevard on Bergen and Dean so both school children and older New Yorkers can navigate these streets safely, with the joint goal of also supporting fast and reliable buses,\u201d a City Hall rep recently added.<\/p>\n

City and transit leaders emphasized that the bus redesign and bike boulevard plans are separate \u2014 but residents find it too coincidental for so much unwanted change to come at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone\u2019s selling us the Brooklyn Bridge,\u201d said\u00a0Kwasi Mensah, a member of Community Board 8 and Crown Heights resident of 27 years, calling the plans a \u201cwar on motorists.<\/p>\n

Fellow community board member and even lifelong cyclist Peter Anekwe has argued that Crown Heights already has sufficient bike lanes and that rerouting the B65 would actually cause more safety concerns.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn residents are blasting Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration, claiming new bike lanes and bus route changes prioritize \u201chipster cyclists.\u201d Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cThe elders and children have to cross the busy thoroughfare of Atlantic Avenue, which is where trucks are allowed to traverse. They have to now get caught up in that mix in order to utilize the B65,\u201d fumed Anekwe, 62, saying the plan was an \u201cattack on elders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local Stephon Richardson said he believes City Hall is dangling the plans to appease transplants who can be politically swayed but might not stick around long enough in the neighborhood to feel the impacts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like Mamdani is talking from both sides of his mouth in the sense that he campaigned on keeping longtime black residents in their homes, not pushing them out,\u2019\u2019 Richardson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese urban renewal policies aren\u2019t going to state, \u2018We\u2019re doing this for these unsavory reasons to displace these people to bring in the professional folks who might make more money and align with us more politically,\u2019 \u201d Richardson continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not for people in the immediate area of Crown Heights \u2014 it\u2019s for the passer-by, the transients, the people who are gentrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elderly residents of some of Brooklyn\u2019s hottest neighborhoods are accusing the Mamdani administration of catering to hipster cyclists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4987,10483,98,100,99,1209,102,68,1907,57,9,24,197,63,58,82],"class_list":["post-353136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-bedford-stuyvesant","tag-bikes","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-buses","tag-crown-heights","tag-exclusive","tag-gentrification","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-life","tag-nyc","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}