Since its emergence in the mid-nineteenth century as the nation's "metropolis," New York has faced the most challenging housing problems of any American city, but it has also led the nation in innovation and reform. Plunz traces New York's housing development from 1850 to the present, exploring the housing of all classes, discussing the development of types ranging from the single-family house to the high-rise apartment tower.
A richly illustrated history of below-market housing in New York, from the 1920s to today A colorful portrait of the people, places, and policies that have helped make New York City livable, Affordable Housing in New York is a comprehensive, authoritative, and richly illustrated history of the city's public and middle-income housing from the 1920s to today. Plans, models, archival photos, and newly commissioned portraits of buildings and tenants by sociologist and photographer David Schalliol put the efforts of the past century into context, and the book also looks ahead to future prospects for below-market subsidized housing. A dynamic account of an evolving city, Affordable Housing in New York is essential reading for understanding and advancing debates about how to enable future generations to call New York home.
When it comes to large-scale public housing in the United States, the consensus for the past decades has been to let the wrecking balls fly. The demolition of infamous projects, such as Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis and the towers of Cabrini-Green in Chicago, represents to most Americans the fate of all public housing. Yet one notable exception to this national tragedy remains. The New York City Housing Authority, America's largest public housing manager, still maintains over 400,000 tenants in its vast and well-run high-rise projects. While by no means utopian, New York City's public housing remains an acceptable and affordable option. The story of New York's success where so many other housing authorities faltered has been ignored for too long. Public Housing That Worked shows how New York's administrators, beginning in the 1930s, developed a rigorous system of public housing management that weathered a variety of social and political challenges. A key element in the long-term viability of New York's public housing has been the constant search for better methods in fields such as tenant selection, policing, renovation, community affairs, and landscape design. Nicholas Dagen Bloom presents the achievements that contradict the common wisdom that public housing projects are inherently unmanageable. By focusing on what worked, rather than on the conventional history of failure and blame, Bloom provides useful models for addressing the current crisis in affordable urban housing. Public Housing That Worked is essential reading for practitioners and scholars in the areas of public policy, urban history, planning, criminal justice, affordable housing management, social work, and urban affairs.
Gentrification and displacement of low-income communities of color are major issues in New York City and the city’s zoning policies are a major cause. Race matters but the city ignores it when shaping land use and housing policies. The city promises “affordable housing” that is not truly affordable. Zoned Out! shows how this has played in Williamsburg, Harlem and Chinatown, neighborhoods facing massive displacement of people of color. It looks at ways the city can address inequalities, promote authentic community-based planning and develop housing in the public domain. Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse frame the revised edition of this seminal work with a tribute to the late urbanist and architect Michael Sorkin and his progressive and revolutionary approaches to cities as well as a new preface about changes in city policy since Mayor Bill de Blasio left office and what rights citizens need to defend. The book includes a foreword by the late, distinguished urban planning educator Peter Marcuse and individual chapters by community activist Philip DePaola, housing policy analyst Samuel Stein, and both the editors.
New York 2040: Housing the Next One Million New Yorkers is a transdisciplinary examination of how to plausible and equitable house future generations of New Yorkers. Through the development of a computational platform that measures both the quantitative and qualitative implications of simulated development, the books test a working hypothesis that certain zones within NYC have the potential for greater levels of density and intensity of use.
From city streets to City Hall and to Midtown corporate offices, Saving Stuyvesant Town is the incredible true story of how one middle class community defeated the largest residential real estate deal in American history. Lifetime Stuy Town resident and former City Councilman Dan Garodnick recounts how his neighbors stood up to mammoth real estate interests and successfully fought to save their homes, delivering New York City's biggest-ever affordable housing preservation win. In 2006, Garodnick found himself engaged in an unexpected battle. Stuyvesant Town was built for World War II veterans by MetLife, in partnership with the City. Two generations removed, MetLife announced that it would sell Stuy Town to the highest bidder. Garodnick and his neighbors sprang into action. Battle lines formed with real estate titans like Tishman Speyer and BlackRock facing an organized coalition of residents, who made a competing bid to buy the property themselves. Tripped-up by an over-leveraged deal, the collapse of the American housing market, and a novel lawsuit brought by tenants, the real estate interests collapsed, and the tenants stood ready to take charge and shape the future of their community. The result was a once-in-a-generation win for tenants and an extraordinary outcome for middle-class New Yorkers. Garodnick's colorful and heartfelt account of this crucial moment in New York City history shows how creative problem solving, determination, and brute force politics can be marshalled for the public good. The nine-year struggle to save Stuyvesant Town by these residents is an inspiration to everyone who is committed to ensuring that New York remains a livable, affordable, and economically diverse city.
Written by one of the country's foremost urban historians, "The Great Rent Wars" tells the fascinating but little-known story of the battles between landlords and tenants in the nation's largest city from 1917 through 1929. These conflicts were triggered by the post-war housing shortage, which prompted landlords to raise rents, drove tenants to go on rent strikes, and spurred the state legislature, a conservative body dominated by upstate Republicans, to impose rent control in New York, a radical and unprecedented step that transformed landlord-tenant relations. "The Great Rent Wars" traces the tumultuous history of rent control in New York from its inception to its expiration as it unfolded in New York, Albany, and Washington, D.C. At the heart of this story are such memorable figures as Al Smith, Fiorello H. La Guardia, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, as well as a host of tenants, landlords, judges, and politicians who have long been forgotten. Fogelson also explores the heated debates over landlord-tenant law, housing policy, and other issues that are as controversial today as they were a century ago.
In recent years, community policing has transformed American law enforcement by promising to build trust between citizens and officers. Today, three-quarters of American police departments claim to embrace the strategy. But decades before the phrase was coined, the New York City Housing Authority Police Department (HAPD) had pioneered community-based crime-fighting strategies. The Last Neighborhood Cops reveals the forgotten history of the residents and cops who forged community policing in the public housing complexes of New York City during the second half of the twentieth century. Through a combination of poignant storytelling and historical analysis, Fritz Umbach draws on buried and confidential police records and voices of retired officers and older residents to help explore the rise and fall of the HAPD's community-based strategy, while questioning its tactical effectiveness. The result is a unique perspective on contemporary debates of community policing and historical developments chronicling the influence of poor and working-class populations on public policy making.
For a generation, tabloids, television, and Hollywood have defined the public image of New Yorkers who live in the city's 334 housing projects. Focusing on crime, disrepair, and other ills that afflict these islands of red brick, such portrayals ironically have made it all too easy for government to reduce the support these projects have relied on since their birth some eighty years ago. And so conditions worsen further yet, as the buildings try to soldier on past their useful life, at times crumbling around the 400,000+ tenants. What if these New Yorkers had the tools and training to document their own lives? And the opportunity to share the result? Project Lives takes you on a remarkable journey into a world turned inside out, where the camera's subject becomes the storyteller. Participatory photography-of which this collection marks one of the largest efforts anywhere-approaches a new visual medium, a universal language speaking across borders and cultures. By using their single-use film cameras as a window into the heart of the projects and a creative instrument of hope, the courageous souls who set out on a daunting mission-to change how their neighbors, friends, relations, and very lives are viewed by America-may accomplish more than helping preserve their homes. George Carrano, Chelsea Davis, and Jonathan Fisher bring you a unique experience of a city within a city. All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to resident programs at the New York City Housing Authority. Project Lives was honored in Spring 2016 by being named a finalist for both Best Multicultural Nonfiction Book of 2015, and Best Current Events/Social Change Book of 2015, in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
