Donald Trump hasn’t always been the billionaire behemoth now running for president. To Julia Pacetti’s grandparents he was “carrot top” – the guy who collected their rent checks.
Pacetti spent much of her childhood visiting her grandparents at Trump Village, the utilitarian housing estate Donald’s father Fred Trump built back in 1960s close to the hotdogs and cheap thrills of Brooklyn’s Coney Island.
As New York heads to the polls Trump will be counting on the residents of Trump Village for their support. But on a recent visit it appeared many of them don’t seem to know there’s an election, and for others their memories of the billionaire aren’t ones likely to send him to the White House.
“Trump’s mother used to come to Trump Village in a limo, get out of the limo in her fur coat and come to the laundry room and empty out all quarters from the washers and dryers into a bag. In her fur coat! And then get back in the limo, with bags and bags of quarters. I tell you, that is true,” Pacetti says, laughing. “My grandfather always used to say: ‘Carrot Top’ – meaning Trump – ‘Carrot Top used to come around to the office to pick up rent checks’.”
Pacetti’s grandparents were among the first families to move in. They were able to get “the golden ring – the coveted three-bedroom, high-floor apartment with the terrace”.
“That was like hitting the jackpot, with those buildings then. Everyone wanted those apartments,” says Pacetti, who still lives in Brooklyn. She is the CEO and president of JMP Verdant communications.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment on this story. His family no longer visits the development and the rent checks are made out to different management companies. Like much of the empire that bears his name, Trump long ago gave up managing Trump Village, moving on to more glitzy enterprises. The Trump Village buildings have been sold off over the years, but the name remains.
While to most Americans the Trump name is synonymous with glass towers and reality TV, to those living near Coney Island the name brings to mind a cluster of tall red-brick buildings, home to middle-class workers as well as new and old immigrants. A recent visit to the buildings, where Trump cut his teeth as a real estate developer, revealed a neighborhood far removed from the campaign trail in New York, and Trump’s gilded lifestyle.
Trump Village, which opened in 1964, consisted of five co-op buildings and two rental buildings. The five co-ops were part of the Mitchell-Lama program, which provides affordable rental and cooperative housing to moderate- and middle-income families. Trump Village buildings left the program in 2007.
“A lot of New Yorkers don’t have a personal experience with who the Trumps were before Donald Trump started building the gold lobbies in midtown Manhattan,” says Pacetti, whose mother grew up in Trump Village and whose grandmother lived there until two years ago. “It’s unfortunate that Donald Trump seems to have no interest in providing housing for people, regular people, as opposed to millionaires who want to stay in luxury hotels.”
To Barbara Seidenberg, 59, who lived in Trump Village from when it first opened until she was 29, Trump “was really just a name”.
“I have heard of Fred Trump, but it was not until years later that I found out that [he and Donald Trump] were related,” she says. “The only thing I knew about Donald Trump was his love life.”
Seidenberg’s mother still lives in Trump Village. Seidenberg, however, left Brooklyn a while ago and now lives in Orlando, Florida. This presidential election she is supporting Texas senator Ted Cruz for president because she is “a strong believer in the US constitution”. Cruz campaigned in a nearby matzo bakery earlier this month.
Inside Trump Village
“I was just thinking to myself yesterday how nice it is here. How much do we commend Trump for that? I don’t know,” said Richard, who is older than 70. On a sunny Friday morning, he and his wife were playing tennis on a nearby handball court. “I guess we keep the name to keep the ambience. To add glamour. I don’t know.”
Richard and his wife, who declined to give her name, moved into one of the Trump Village buildings about five or six years ago, after “waiting and waiting” for an apartment with an ocean view to become available. Richard is a retired teacher, and his wife, 60, a nurse.
“I’m thinking I will vote for [Bernie] Sanders and then see what he does,” Richard says of the primary. “Then, maybe, I will vote for Clinton in the final election.”
His wife says she is voting for Trump on Tuesday. Smiling, Richard reminds her that she cannot since they are both registered as Democrats.
How is it – living together – when they support different candidates? “We quarrel,” says Richard, smiling at his wife. “It’s what keeps our relationship going.”
A block away, two buildings have shed their association with the Trump family. Since February 2015, the two Trump Village buildings facing Ocean Parkway have been known as Shorecrest Towers. Nestled between them is Church of the Guardian Angel. Outside it, Oliver Raagas, 39, is mowing the lawn.
“This neighborhood is good. Peaceful,” says Raagas, who works as a custodian at the church. Raagas is from the Philippines and came here legally with his wife. He cannot vote in the 2016 elections as he only has a green card and is not yet a citizen. The way that some presidential candidates speak about immigrants bothers him.
“We are second-class residents and we are the ones working hard,” he says. “Putting up that wall? It’s not right,” he adds, referring to Trump’s plan to build a wall between the US and Mexico. “The US is slowly deteriorating because of this.”
If he could vote, Raagas would cast his vote for Sanders.
“Bernie Sanders is awesome. He is so close to … everybody. He is transparent,” he says. “He is good for more than just talking.”
To find out just how diverse the neighborhood is, one has to look no further than the church’s mass schedule. In addition to English, the church offers services in Spanish, Polish, Filipino and Malayalam. Outside, passersby speak Russian, Polish and Spanish into their phones.
On the sidewalk, outside the church’s parking lot, Elba Ciobanul was setting up her table. On Tuesdays and Fridays she drives down from Queens to sell her wares at the local flea market. The people who live in Trump Village like unusual objects, collectibles, she says.
Ciobanul was four and a half years old when she arrived from Cuba in 1968 with her parents. Before coming down to the flea market on Tuesday, she intends to go and vote.
“I’ll go for the female power,” she says, pumping one fist in the air. “I’d like to see a woman in the White House.”
As for Trump, Ciobanul says that “his mannerisms need a little work. His etiquette.” Pausing, she slaps her wrist and continues: “Someone needs to do this to him.”
‘What election?’
Searching for political discussion at the barbershop nestled between a pizzeria and a discount store in Trump Village shopping center results in disappointment.
“Election? What election?” says a startled barber, looking up from his cellphone. The New York primary? “Go talk to the girls in the back,” he says, his attention already back on the phone screen.
The girls – mostly women in their 30s and 40s – also appear startled by the question. “Talk to the boys,” they say.
At the pizzeria next door, the staff also don’t want to talk about the elections. They have more to worry about. One by one, the shops at the center have been shutting their doors. Soon, in their place, a new 40-story glass tower will be built despite outcry from the community.
The neighborhood will be left with few shopping options while the area is under construction. For groceries, there is a small Key Food across Neptune Avenue. Then on the other side of the McDonald’s Avenue, in the shadows of the rambling F train is a McDonald’s fast-food store. There are no boutiques, no Starbucks.
West Brighton, where Trump Village was built, is not the poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn. A little further to the east is Coney Island, which is the second poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn. But here, in the Trump Village area, this is a lower-middle-class neighborhood. According to the US census, about 13% of those who live there live in poverty. The median income is $57,083, just a few hundred dollars below New York City’s overall median income of $57,760.
Yet this is also the neighborhood that was beneath Trump’s real estate aspirations. Pursuing his goal of catering to the rich, Trump swapped red bricks for glass panes and looked to Manhattan.
“I build the most luxurious buildings in the world; my father was extremely cost conscious,” Trump once told the New York Times. “Gucci is a hot store in Trump Tower for me. Waldbaum’s was the hot store for him.”
Waldbaum’s, similar to Key Food, is a local supermarket chain.
Despite the fact that Trump appeared to turn his back on the working-class and middle-class Americans in Brooklyn, he has gained support from middle-class Americans elsewhere propelling him to 744 delegates by Tuesday. That’s almost 200 more than Cruz.
For those familiar with Trump Village, a Trump presidency doesn’t spell a great future for America’s middle class.
“We loved Trump Village, but the Trumps, they came with their bags and they took the rent checks and the quarters from the laundry rooms and got into the limos and left,” says Pacetti, who plans to vote for Sanders on Tuesday.
“[Trump] is not going to do anything for the middle class. He is clearly someone who gravitates towards the rich and the wealthy and luxury. That’s what he likes and that’s who is going to run the country for. That’s his world view – that the world should be like lifestyles of the rich and famous, but the world is not that way. This country is not that way.”
View all comments >
comments
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion.
This discussion is closed for comments.
We’re doing some maintenance right now. You can still read comments, but please come back later to add your own.
Commenting has been disabled for this account (why?)