But the narrative suffers from one major flaw: the residents of East New York themselves are denied any sort of agency whatsoever.
They are not treated as real human beings in this article, but rather depicted as purely inert, incapable of taking any action themselves, entirely passive, battered about by the cruel winds of fate. In this article, things are exclusively done to them, not ever by them.
The city did this to them, failed to do that for them. Drug dealers and gangs did this do them. Industry closed and did this to them. The NYPD did this to try to help, but also did that to make things worse. And so on.
All probably true. However, there is another piece that he missed: what is the community itself doing about all this?
Nowhere in this article is any East New Yorker depicted as having any sort of agency at all. The few times he actually talks with people from the area, it's to depict them as passively asking for help from outside, or passively complaining about what the outside did to them.
That's what's lacking here. Where are the voices of the people on the inside who are trying to make things better? What steps have they taken, what is working, what didn't work?