{"id":97874,"date":"2026-01-12T22:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T22:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/97874\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T22:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T22:11:08","slug":"the-bronx-still-burns-dissent-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/97874\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bronx Still Burns – Dissent Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bronx Still Burns <\/p>\n

The borough\u2019s arson wave in the 1970s was caused by financial forces and political priorities that continue to hold power in New York City.<\/p>\n

David Helps<\/a> &squarf; Winter 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Onlookers watch a fire burning in an apartment building in the Bronx in 1983. (Ricky Flores\/Getty Images) <\/p>\n

Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
by Bench Ansfield
W.W. Norton, 2025, 368 pp.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last summer, the Bronx was burning. In July, as a heatwave smothered the Eastern Seaboard, the temperature in New York City\u2019s poorest borough reached a record-setting 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Extreme heat kills over 500 New Yorkers each summer, when crowded, shadeless neighborhoods become furnaces and pressure-cookers. No borough is more vulnerable to heat-related deaths than the Bronx, where residents\u201485 percent of whom are Black or Hispanic\u2014suffer from higher rates of asthma and diabetes, are more likely to work outdoors, and have less air conditioning access than people living in other boroughs.<\/p>\n

A hundred miles east, in the Hamptons, the climate crisis has also arrived for New York\u2019s ultrarich. Rising sea levels and more frequent hurricanes have tripled<\/a> the cost of property insurance; industry groups warn that this summer playground will become an insurance \u201cdesert\u201d if the government doesn\u2019t intervene. As access to private coverage evaporates, the New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association\u2014the state\u2019s \u201cinsurer of last resort\u201d\u2014has stepped in to fill the void. In summers ahead, as deadly heat scorches the Bronx, the mostly white homeowners in the Hamptons will rest easier knowing their properties are protected during hurricane season by a public-private resource provided by New York State.<\/p>\n

In the last few decades, inequality in the United States has been redefined by uneven exposure to climate disaster. Yet long before the surge in dangerous weather events, the private insurance market reinforced the vulnerability of poor Americans by exacerbating rather than mitigating risk. In Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, historian Bench Ansfield investigates the infamous arson wave<\/a> that engulfed the Bronx in the late 1960s and burned for over a decade. Contrary to the popular myth that residents torched their own neighborhoods, Born in Flames explains how failed regulation and the government\u2019s misplaced faith in the market all but guaranteed the Bronx would burn. \u201cThe arson wave came to an end only because those whose homes lay in its path mobilized and fought back,\u201d Ansfield argues. Today, this historical legacy lives on in a sacrificial economy that secures private wealth and property while leaving the urban poor exposed to chance. As homeowners in the Hamptons demand an even greater share of public attention, the Bronx faces the hazards of a warming planet under conditions of financial predation and state neglect. …<\/p>\n

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