Neighborliness-On-Hudson. The small community of houseboats in New York’s City’s 79th Street Boat Basin is a special kind of ghetto. It is smaller than a city block, its tallest house only two stories high. Its residents work in the city by day and sleep on the Hudson River by night, people who have tried to escape New York and didn’t quite make it. They still share city problems – crowding, dirt and noise. But they have a unique vista of city life.