After some negotiations ABC was given a semi-legal status in one of the city's buildings. Seventeen years later, the struggle continues. Using one loophole after another, and playing dodgeball with technicalities, ABC NO RIO teeters on the verge of extinction as a constant state of being. In New York the real estate market is brutal and acts fast. The gentrification process pushes prices artificially high for housing, something that should be a basic human right.
Developers invest heavily in the local political scene, lobbying strongly for their interests.
By his theory if you arrest a man for begging on the street then violent crime will go down. He has made a point of making the lives of homeless people as miserable as he can. Anything that doesn't conform to his image of middle-class American mall culture has to be stomped out. To the city government, art should be nothing more than whatever is sold at the Disney outlet in the newly refurbished megastore in Times Square. ABC NO RIO are a eyesore, a painful remainder that reality is harder than the city would like to admit.