The bitter irony of Trump's "YMCA" dance
No, you can't stay at the Village People's YMCA in Manhattan anymore and the president is one big reason why.
Donald Trump’s last dance before the election was a bizarre one.
On Tuesday morning he tweeted a surreal supercut of himself dancing (spasming?) to “YMCA,” an act that’s become his calling card on the campaign trail despite the objections of the Village People.
Many commentators have snarked about the juxtaposition of the nation’s top Republican official gyrating to the disco classic that’s been heralded as a gay anthem by the LGBTQ community.
But there’s a deeper irony here: You can no longer stay at the Village People’s YMCA in Manhattan and Trump is a big reason why.
“YMCA” was written from the perspective of the kind of weekend party people (often young gay men) who once used the Young Men's Christian Association as a crash pad or a place to discreetly hook up.
But what’s forgotten is that YMCA’s were once an important source of affordable housing for the working class and poor. The organization served as a refuge for itinerant men moving to the city from rural areas or immigrants looking for their first entry point into America. As the Village People themselves noted: “Young man, there's a place you can go/I said, young man, when you're short on your dough.”
This wasn’t a unique feature. For a better part of a century, boarding houses and single-room-occupancy hotels (SROs) were everywhere. At their peak around 1900, between one-third and half of Americans living in cities boarded or took boarders, according to one estimate by scholar Paul Groth.
Those demographics began to change mid-century as many white men left (due to a combination of the post-World War II economic boom, suburbanization, and white flight). Soon, the YMCA began serving more black men arriving from the South during the Great Migration and more homeless and destitute men.
And then—largely due to greed, racism, and the demonization of the poor—SROs began to slowly vanish. In the 1950s, New York City banned the construction of new SROs while other cities targeted them for urban renewal demolitions.
Enter Trump.
During New York City’s fiscal crisis in the ‘70s, Trump was at the forefront of the rich’s class war against the poor. He used the downturn for his financial gain by acquiring land and buildings at fire-sale prices—starting with the shady redevelopment deal for the Commodore Hotel (it’s cost New York City about $360 million in uncollected taxes, according to the New York Times) and set the stage for a new wave of luxury developments.
Trump and others constructed upscale hotels and apartments that served Wall Street and finance-related industries accumulating fortunes during the Reagan years. Thus began the wholesale gentrification of Manhattan.
As property values skyrocketed throughout the late ‘80s and ‘90s, many of the remaining SROs in New York City sold out and the YMCA closed many of its residences while rebranding as a family-friendly gym for middle-class residents.
In 1987, the New York YMCA still had 4,000 rooms in 10 Y facilities. But as of the last count in 2019, it’s down to 1,200 rooms in five.
The iconic century-old McBurney YMCA building in Chelsea, which appeared in the Village People’s video, was sold back in 1999. A few years later the old Y was redeveloped as—yes—luxury condos, including this ridiculous $14 million duplex that once housed the YMCA’s gym and running track.
It’s Trump’s gilded vision of New York in a nutshell: cheap communal space for $80 to $120 a week for the precariat turned into multimillion apartments with public basketball courts, running track, and swimming pools converted into private.
It may have been fun to stay at the Village People’s YMCA. But we’ll never know.