Nicholas Dagen Bloom - Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City

The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City

Edited by Nicholas Dagen Bloom and Matthew Gordon Lasner

With photographs by David Schalliol

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2016 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Cover illustrations: (front) NYCHA playground (unidentified), Bronx. Courtesy of The New York City Housing Authority Photograph Collection, La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La Guardia Community College/The City University of New York. (back) Via Verde, 2014. Photo by David Schalliol.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Affordable housing in New York : the people, places, and policies that transformed a city / edited by Nicholas Dagen Bloom and Matthew Gordon Lasner.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780-691167817 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Public housingNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. 2. Low-income housingNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. 3. Housing policyNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. I. Bloom, Nicholas Dagen, 1969 II. Lasner, Matthew Gordon.

HD7288.78.U52N7185 2016

363.5'8097471dc23

2015003568

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Publication of this book has been aided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

The editors express appreciation to the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. Material in this work was presented to the University Seminar: The City.

Cover and interior design by Jason Alejandro

This book has been composed in Palatino and ITC Avant Garde Gothic

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in China

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Paper ISBN 978-0-691-19715-9

Government credit at low interest and amortization rates should be made available for public housing wherever it is most needed, not only now in the emergency, but as a permanent public policy.

Mary Simkhovitch, Housing as a Permanent Municipal Service, Radio Address, WEAF, February 19, 1934

The combined effort of many talented individuals, across numerous fields, defines Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City. A project that would have consumed many years as a solitary undertaking was finished in just three as a result of this collaboration. This process nicely parallels the cooperative spirit that defined so much of the housing discussed. As with real housing cooperatives, then, this book belongs to the many co-owners who built and sustained it, especially our authors: Matthias Altwicker, Hilary Ballon, Lizabeth Cohen, Andrew S. Dolkart, Peter Eisenstadt, Yonah Freemark, Brian Goldstein, Richard Greenwald, Jennifer Hock, Benjamin Holtzman, Christopher Klemek, Lilian Knorr, Jeffrey A. Kroessler, Karen Kubey, Nancy H. Kwak, the late Steven Levine, Nadia A. Mian, Karina Milchman, Mariana Mogilevich, Stephen Petrus, Annemarie Sammartino, Susanne Schindler, David Smiley, Jonathan Soffer, Fritz Umbach, Nader Vossoughian, and Samuel Zipp.

The keen eye and determination of photographer and sociologist David Schalliol generated many of the breathtaking images in this book. Chair of the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) School of Architecture Matthias Altwicker and advanced architecture students Alexander MacVicar, Christopher Alvarez, and Kevin Kawiecki constructed models and floor plans that illustrate the changing standards in affordable housing design. Noted photographer Eduard Hueber of Archphoto captured the models for the comparative galleries following ) that provides a sense of scale to the citys housing efforts. Mark Willis and Sean Capperis of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University provided most of the maps data. The superior organizational skill of research assistant Oksana Miranova ensured that the collection was completed on time.

Many direct participants in the production and maintenance of affordable housing in New York provided feedback and assistance as the book developed. Thanks first to the residents, managers, and staff of housing developments across the city who graciously hosted the researchers. We hope that the results confirm their faith in our open-mindedness. Architects Fernando Villa and Petr Stand of Magnusson Architecture and Planning arranged for multiple visits to the Melrose district that deepened the coverage of this neighborhood. Lisa Diaz, the former federal liaison and senior policy advisor to the chairman at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) was a hidden treasure in the vast bureaucracy that is New York City government. She generously set up interviews and tours of developments because she believes deeply in the value of public housing. Architect Mary Rusz of NYCHAs capital division provided floor plans and other details. Millie Molina arranged for permission to use many of the agencys vast collection of images, past and present.

For access to and much assistance with images we thank Douglas Di Carlo at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College, who efficiently organized the retrieval and scanning of many, including those of the NYCHA collection. The New York Times, especially Phyllis Collazo, provided access to their unrivaled collection of photographs documenting the urban crisis and more recent renaissance. For help with these extraordinary pictures, many taken by some of the Timess most esteemed photographers, we also thank Rosemary Morrow and Jack Rosenthal. Lo-Yi Chan, Dan Wakin, Marc Miller of Co-op City, Don Shulman of Bell Park Gardens, Michele Hiltzik Beckerman at the Rockefeller Archive Center, Devon Meave Nevola at Columbia University, and Katherine Reagan at Cornell University all helped secure other archival images. Photographers Joe Conzo, Norman McGrath, Stephen Nessen, Grace Madden, Michael Moran, Alan Zale, Mel Rosenthal, Nancy Siesel, and Nancy Kaye generously shared their own.

Michelle Komie, executive editor of art and architecture at Princeton University Press, has been a long-time supporter of the project and we are honored that she took on the challenge of such a complicated manuscript. We thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their suggestions, many of which we adopted, as well as the strong vote of confidence by the Princeton University Press editorial board. Detailed feedback on earlier versions of the text by Alex Schwartz of the Milano graduate program at the New School proved timely and useful. Additional comments by Carol Lamberg, who hosted a tour of Settlement House developments in the Bronx, were also helpful in shaping the narrative.

The strong support of George McCarthy, former director of the Ford Foundations Metropolitan Opportunity division and now president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, enabled the books timely completion. We are also grateful to Jerry Maldonado and Rowena Nixon of the Ford Foundation, and Candice Homan of the Institute of International Education, Inc., for the grant that funded research assistance and index preparation. We hope that the final product matches, and perhaps even exceeds, the initial proposal. Similarly we are grateful for support for research, production, and photography from the Individual Projects program of the New York State Council on the Arts, overseen by the Van Alen Institute.