When/why did the projects get so bad in NYC?

I thought this was going to be a rufus thread when I first saw the title. LOL

10023, can you link to the article?

there was a great book, can't recall the title, a number of years back that looked at public housing in Boston, I believe, and discussed the types of public housing that "work" in the US. does anyone recall?

there was also a good article in The Economist recently, i think, that discussed the European attitude toward public and subsidized housing. maybe it was in the article on France?

Right, social housing. I think it was a story about the Netherlands or Belgium, or housing in general.

I might be wrong but didn't Reagan admin. changed the rules on the eligibility/requirements/welfare?

Reagan, Clinton, and probably the others. Project-eligibility and welfare/AFDC(?) are two different things, though some overlap.

Can someone post the link to the article?

Just curious, has anyone read Random Family, by LaBlanc?

Not sure where it is now on NYT website. Article profiles various high-profile people who grew up in NYCHA projects. The curious thing is that projects "worked" for decades, so to make the excuse that the highrise super-projects don't work is too facile.

I suspect that this is the one: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/nyregion/31projects.html

I'm sorry, but while the facts used in that article are not false, they are so cherry picked as to give a very different view than reality. I don't remember where, but there are several urban planning studies which have shown the entire concept of all of these projects was wrong headed (tall hi-rises many units in a group with communal land set off from city streets).

I remember when a bunch of these projects had severe plumbing problems because people were stealing the copper piping to sell for scrap.

While I agree that the towers-in-the-park concept works better for middle class people (ala Stuy/Cooper, Penn South, Cooperative Village), I think by and large NYC's housing projects are successful compared with those in other US cities. Certainly there's quite a waitlist to get in to almost all of them. Did all the social problems affected the poor and working poor magically go away? No.

I do think they'd be much better, and deliver much better value both to the tenants and the taxpayers, if a War against Corruption and Incomptetence were to be waged against NYCHA -- FBofI and lots of forensic accountants, for starters. I suspect "people" weren't stealing copper piping, but rather NYCHA weasels.

I had a friend in a rundown NYCHA 2bed/1bath who was paying almost the exact amount on rent as I was paying in CCs on my larger 2/2 new apartment in a well-run condo.

Okeh, maybe I'll read the article tomorrow and see if it has any valid points.

Alan: I don't think there was a specific point to the article other than profiling various success stories out of the projects. They missed a few NYC notables including Lloyd Blankfein.

At one point, the projects were for working (!) community-minded people. I don't know when and how they turned into drug dealers' heaven. Political correctness overpowered common sense and some two-bit politician built a career.

They had a historian who has studied NYC's projects on WNYC on Friday and on average NYC project residents are 12% Welfare, 30% Seniors, and the rest working-poor. Just keep that in mind. We aren't taking Chicago here.

That would be "talking."

The projects fail as they produce generational poverty. The percentage of our populous on welfare in NYC is too high. Projects should be temporary housing. Rules should change. People should only be allowed to stay 5 years at a time and no more than 10 years in a lifetime. Right now the turnover rate in public housing is 3%. And much of that turnover rate is due to the tenant's death. Have you ever seen a moving truck at a project? Thousands of people living there but very few ever more out.
Projects discourage self sufficiency. They provide a "fish" instead of a fishing pole. We have failed generations because of our social programs which we find to be humane. In fact, it is more inhumane to treat people as if they are incapable of being self sufficient.

I don't advocate kicking people out of the projects in mass nor do I advocate ever kicking out elderly people (our chance to help them become self sufficient has come and gone). But I do advocate telling kids entering high school that they better graduate, because the city is no longer going to let people live in subsidized housing forever. Gone should be the days where having a baby as a teenager means you will have a higher standard of living than if you work a minimum wage job and support yourself.

These proposed changes need not be draconian. They should be eased in, giving people a chance to fail, but picking them back up when they do, then letting them fail again until they finally "get it." This concept of putting them in a "coffin in the sky" and forgetting about them has run its course.

Jazzman, do we have any reason to believe that slum ghettos produce generational poverty at a lower rate? I would guess higher.

Turnover? The point is to provide stable and decent housing, not turnover. And in a housing-shortage environment, who would be so stupid as to move out of that (relatively) stable and decent housing?

Moving vans? Expensive. Poorer people tend move in many small car-loads, rather than all at once.

And the whole "high school graduation rate" thing is a jailer's approach to education. How about actually providing the elementary education that's the required foundation for secondary education?

I'm not sure that the projects in the 40s & 50s produced generational poverty. Are there any studies out there that compare the outcome of kids from that generation vs. kids from 60s,70s, 80, 90s? Was the outcome worsened by white flight?

There should only be vouchers and projects should all be torn down and replaced with market rate, or at least mixed, as has happened in most of the other large cities in America. NYC is a lone resistor on this.

If I recall correctly, there are over 100,000 people waiting to get into NYC public housing. It is not a guaranteed safety net of any kind.

I have plenty of poor relatives whom never lived in the projects, but whom have stayed poor over the generations due to horrible choices (kids too young or drugs), bad schools, and limited role models. As alanhart said, ghettos or any grouping of poorer people will most likely lead to generational poverty due to a complicated formula of culture, economics, and situation that no one has been able to solve. I don't see the red states having figured it all out, either.

One word: WELFARE.

When we managed to shift an entire segment of the population in the '60s away from self-reliance to goverment reliance is when everything started going downhill.

Uhhhh, matt its already been pointed out that the minority of projects residents are on welfare. Most are working poor.

I don't like them because it ghettoizes people. In SF, where I am from, they were almost all torn down and replaced with 40% market rate/30% moderate income/30% low income buildings, and the spillover were given vouchers. It made the neighborhoods a million times better, and the residents much happoer, because they lived in mixed income housing, whether in the new replacement projects or in the voucher buildings. Very few former projects residents in SF wanted the projects to remain as they were.

Actually, "ghettoizing" people is often just the stimulus people need to get themselves OFF of welfare.

I know the sensibilities in San Francisco are unique, but in other cities across the country where "Section 8" housing vouchers have been tried, the experiment has been a colossal failure.

But they weren't mixed income 40+ years ago and they were arguably more functional than today.

That's because most of them weren't on the public dole.

NYCMatt said: When we managed to shift an entire segment of the population in the '60s away from self-reliance to goverment reliance is when everything started going downhill.

For most of us, it would be hard to blame the Cold War, Vietnam, terrorism, global warming, violence and crime, excessive financial leverage, the tech bubble, the crack epidemic, AIDS, the prevalence of Diabetes, etc. etc. on welfare and government support.

jason10006 said: There should only be vouchers and projects should all be torn down and replaced with market rate, or at least mixed, as has happened in most of the other large cities in America. NYC is a lone resistor on this.

We don't have the money to keep subway fares low, add a 2nd Avenue subway, put more teachers in the classroom or cops on the street - where does the money come from to cavalierly tear down the projects and replace them with new "market rate" homes?

Trembling, I didn't realize you couldn't make the distinction that my scope of "everything" going downhill as meaning everything in terms of projects, rather than everything in terms of the world.

'We don't have the money to keep subway fares low, add a 2nd Avenue subway, put more teachers in the classroom or cops on the street - where does the money come from to cavalierly tear down the projects and replace them with new "market rate" homes? "

Projects are MORE expensive than the alternative. I am talking selling the buildings to private landlords, andinstead of mainting projects using vouchers. Its much cheaper.

Oh, there are people would gladly put up the money to cavalierly tear down some projects in NYC.
This condo is directly across the street from low income housing projects.
http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/52844-condo-161-west-61st-street-lincoln-square-new-york
I'm certain I know exactly how many housing vouchers a private landlord would accept once he got hold of those projects. And I'm certain I know exactly who would be moving far, far away with their vouchers. But yes, it would be much cheaper.

I for one do not think God gave people the right to live in Lincoln Center versus queens.

"I for one do not think God gave people the right to live in Lincoln Center versus queens."

Oh the Lord and his angels wouldn't protect the poor in Queens if public housing was privatized. The largest housing project in the United States is in Long Island City. It has its own subway stop 5 minutes from Upper East Side, and is very well situated for free market development. Real estate developers would be stepping over each other at the chance to blow up those projects and take part in the greatest displacement of poor people in NYC since Robert Moses was given free rein to chop up neighborhoods. But yes, it would be cheaper to manage.

I don't remember all the details, but there are projects near my folks; they were there before the house was.

In the 70s, early 80s (and possibly before) there was certainly a middle class element. Our family had friends in there, and it wasn't particularly easy to tell who was from the projects and who wasn't. And, yes, many were white.

Out of these particular projects came a basketball star... and a notable (white) fortune 500 CEO. Definitely a "mix".

Then I remember sometime in the late 80s or late 90s something changed. I don't remember the politics, I heard something about the government changing the "criteria" (as if they had a minimum before and they got rid of it). Folks said something like "they let the welfare folks in".

Whatever the case, the schools did get worse. Their was certainly an influx of kids whose parents were less academics-focused. Crime went up, and the neighborhood feel did change (a lot more 'people hanging on corners'). I know a teacher in one of the schools, and she mentioned something about the change in students in that period, including how many qualified for free lunches, etc.

So, not sure what it was, but at least in that neighborhood there seeme to be a big change in the late 80s. I wonder exactly what it was...

BTW, the British model is...

every "council" (which I think would be a district or neighborhood here) has to have one and one only public housing.

This gets rid of NIMBY, and it ensures that no one neighborhood is overwhelmed by them.

Of course, it means that you get some extra crime in some "nice" neighborhoods.

You've heard of the privatization of council estates, no? In prime parts of London, council housing no longer exists as former tenants have all bought.

There were similar proposals to privatize public housing through tenant ownership during the Reagan Administration when Jack Kemp was HUD Secretary. Amsterdam Houses behind Lincoln Center was reportedly one of the initial properties targeted for a privatization program during that era. IIRC, there may have been one success story in the Midwest, but the federal program never took off because too few public housing residents throughout the nation would be able to carry a mortgage at the +/- 25% of market value proposed as the sales price for the housing units. Moreover, outside of New York, the overwhelming majority of people associate home ownership with an actual house and not shares in a co-op so there wasn't much enthusiasm for the proposals from the nation's public housing residents.

One word for what the big change was in the late 80's ---- CRACK !

It wasn't just the crack. Something changed, the actual people coming in changed. Might hav been a higher % of crack users - ;-) - but there was some sort of change in teh populace.

Newsflash, jason10006 -- the Lincoln Square area was historically very poor. It was more or less leveled in its entirety, its residents scattered to the wind, to make room for Lincoln Center, Fordham, Lincoln Towers, and most of those post-war buildings on the east side of the square. The rather small number of low-income project units thrown in were a nice polite gesture, but that's about it.

And speaking of poor people scattered to the wind (i.e. homeless) ... nyc10022, I believe what happened was a policy (although I think it was fairly short-lived) to fast-track homeless families into NYCHA projects -- quite a turnaround from the in-home interviews they used to require before you'd get a projects apartment. The families that got the highest priority under the fast-track policy were the problematic ones that the shelters were most sick of dealing with.

nyc10023, I've been intrigued for a long time with the ugly ex-council estates on the Thames in Pimlico -- there are quite a few of them. I haven't price-checked them in awhile, but online they seemed like great values relative to the London market. Weird bathroom/WC arrangement, though, and less than ideal layouts -- but river-view terraces [as in my Soviet housing block apartment in Harlem]. I think councils/boroughs could decide whether to privatize or not, and pretty much only Westminster did -- that being essentially 95% of the London that tourists know.

In other cities, the projects are in poor, undesirable areas. In Manhattan, they're across the street from expensive co-ops. I wonder about those projects in the west 90's on Amsterdam - how much would you pay for a terrace like that? Frankly, I'm amazed that they manage to keep the projects low-income; you'd think that inexorable market forces, like corruption and illegal sublets for a profit, would fill them with the highest bidders.

In Manhattan, the projects WERE built in poor, undesirable areas.

That was NOT a newsflash alanhart, as I posted the same thing in another thread about a week ago when I spoke of the old term "urban renwal". My point was that it makes no economic sense for the government to operate projects as-is - its more sensible to sell them, pocket the money, (ir use it for vouchers) and use the money that would have gone to maintianing them and reparing them to provide vouchers. Its terribly wasteful as is.

Suzanne, perhaps a simple refresher course in supply and demand?

yes alanhart, but the powers that be still can't "believe" that prople were so stupid to...

So, who is going to do the mechanics of this? It's not going to happen. Look what's going on when someone is trying to sell a f'ing PRIVATE PROPERTY "project" and they keep getting their sales quashed by the gov't because the buyer "might" go tossing all the low income people out.

Vouchers wouldn't work anyway - isn't it almost impossible to find landlords who will take Section 8?

Let's just all call a spade a spade. Selling projects in NYC and relocating public housing residents is the same as 'ethnic cleansing' large swaths of the city because some feel it's not a "God given right" for poor people to stay in their homes when enough rich people decide to move into the neighborhood. I know New York City has some byzantine housing laws that definitely need revision, but a vouchers-for- projects program sounds like something out of apartheid-era South Africa.

alanfart,

"In Manhattan, the projects WERE built in poor, undesirable areas."

Not true you have projects in the UWS and in PRIME areas throughout NYC.

I do think the gov't should "gently" force those who live int the projects who are postal workers, corrections, court and police officers to become homeowners but its not limited to these workers lets include hospital workers, those who work in banks basically all those we see on the buses and trains going to work every morning earning an honest living who live in the projects. I feel this could be done by setting up homeownership classes open to residents of the projects. Given how expensive these homes are today, who in the projects can afford them?

Actually, the UWS and Chelsea were not prime when those projects were built, they gentrified later.

Vouchers work in many other large cities, and Bloomberg wanted a law banning discriminating against voucher holders. In SF it has made things a lot LOT better.

I remember sitting on the stoop decades ago listening to the to the Hit Parade on the transistor radio featuring Glen Miller - man that guy could play. Just sitting on the stoop with a bunch of buddies man, thinking that we had it made. Didn't see many drag queens stroll by, in fact you can say a girl was a girl and a man was a man Hoping that in the next election someone would renew the policies of President Hoover. We all pulled our weight and didn't feel entitled to a welfare check or a place in the projects.
If we got sick of the city we hopped in our car - an old LaSalle convertible and headed up to Bear Mountain. That car ran great. I like to reminisce because those were the times!

dingbat

"Something changed, the actual people coming in changed. Might hav been a higher % of crack users - ;-) - but there was some sort of change in teh populace."

Yes. What changed is that the "populace" went from being predominantly "low income" to predominantly "no income" (on the public dole). Once people shirk their self-reliance in favor of government reliance, all of the attentive personal and social responsibilities that come with self-reliance are tossed out the window, as people lose respect for themselves, their neighbors, and their surroundings.

No, Matt, that's hate-radio ideology, not reality. The statistics show it to be untrue: 12% Welfare, 30% Seniors, and the rest working-poor.

As usual, causation is fabricated in the absence of facts to support the argument.

"And speaking of poor people scattered to the wind (i.e. homeless) ... nyc10022, I believe what happened was a policy (although I think it was fairly short-lived) to fast-track homeless families into NYCHA projects -- quite a turnaround from the in-home interviews they used to require before you'd get a projects apartment. The families that got the highest priority under the fast-track policy were the problematic ones that the shelters were most sick of dealing with."

Alan, I think you hit it.

FYI: The City overall has a poverty rate of 18.5%, vs. 13% of NYCHA tenants on Welfare.

> "In Manhattan, the projects WERE built in poor, undesirable areas."
> Not true you have projects in the UWS and in PRIME areas throughout NYC

Mutumbo, Alan is right. The areas gentrified later.

Many, many, MANY of the projects were build to "clean up" slums. They knocked down tons of bad tenements to build big towers that would have much more "air and light". This was a big deal given that the bad conditions cause a lot of things like TB to go around in the slubs.

Lincoln Center projects (Hell's Kitchen) are a clear example. The rockaways were after they knocked down the bugalows. The lower east side FOR SURE. That some of these places got better was the case after the fact.

Maybe there are a couple of exceptions of ones built in areas that just hadn't been built yet - Canarsie, perhaps - but even those are few.

It's much more complicated than that, and The Power Broker by Robert Cato should be required reading for anyone who posts regularly here on SE.

The Lincoln Square area, formerly San Juan Hill (which had that name well before it became a Puerto Rican neighborhood), was low-income residences and (I think) industrial, and never wealthier prior to urban renewal. Same for LES. The UWS in the W. 90s had been upper-middle class and solid working-class, but by the time the projects were built, had deteriorated sharply -- depending on the account, by natural economic forces or because Robert Moses had his eye on Federal urban renewal funds ... Federal Interstate money having dried up for future allocations.

The Rockaways are a whole other story, with conspiracy theories to rival Marilyn Monroe's Cuban moon-landing in the Bermuda Triangle with Jimmy Hoffa.

Were the Canarsie NYCHA sites literally undeveloped farmland or whatever before the projects? I find that hard to believe. Military? Landfill?

I'd also recommend The Working Poor, by David Shipler.

Temporary lay offs.
Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs.
Good Times.
Scratchin' and surviving.
Good Times.
Hangin in a chow line
Good Times.
Ain't we lucky we got 'em
Good Times.

"Were the Canarsie NYCHA sites literally undeveloped farmland or whatever before the projects? I find that hard to believe. Military? Landfill?"

A whole lotta marsh and such. The vast majority of canarsie housing stock was built in the 70s/80s, well after the projects. There were a couple of older houses in the middle pocket, but its a very small share.

So, not surprised if the projects were on landfill, they were right by the water (literally across the Belt from it). The old subway line ran right down to them....

I know the Rockaways pretty well. Tons and tons of old bulgalows, and they were getting pretty horrible, so the city knocked them down with grand plans... that just never really came together until, well, now I guess, with that Averne crap.

But that did manage to get mucho projects in there.

Just lookin' out of the window
Watchin' the asphalt grow
Thinkin' how it all looks hand-me-down
Good Times
Keepin' your head above water
Makin' a wave when you can
Temporary lay-offs
Good Times
Easy Credit rip-offs
Good Times
Aint we lucky we got 'em
Good Times

alanhart, jason10006 & nyc10022,

I did not mean to write that and meant to say projects being in prime neighborhoods today.

So mutombonyc, do you think that now, with gentrification closing in on the projects, the working-poor NYCHA tenants should have to evacuate and head higher up in the mountains to try to eke out an even harder living, so their former homes can be turned into coffee/sugar/banana plantations?

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/videoclips/thepjs.mpg

alanfart,

No, I don't think that residents of the projects should become maroons, if they did elect to or were forced too become maroons, how would the backbone of NYC function? However, I do believe, when gentrification was being planned it should have included, working class residents of the projects to be owners instead of creating a separate section designated for low income residents to be selected by a lottery.

Please, give gratification to your former president bush for changing the laws of eminent domain.

"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs sheds some light as to how architectural and urban planning factors regarding housing projects contribute to their propensity for decay.

The history and good intentions notwithstanding, the reality today is that the projects digressed into gangs-run entities where most law-abiding working people live at mercy of non-law abiding people. Generational thing doesn't help either. The project system is corrupted to the bone, there's no oversight and no law, except when the cops are called to the shooting. It's being taken over by drug dealers and nobody cares. And nobody will talk openly about it, ever.
The idea was good. But so was, in theory, any other populist approach.

Oh really? Because I have friends who've lived in two different projects in different Manhattan neighborhoods, and the only problems they've had are with maintenance, cleaning, and capital replacement, and things like people smoking in the hallways/stairs ... not gangs or violence.

yes really. "...problems they've had are with maintenance, cleaning, and capital replacement, and things like people smoking in the hallways/stairs "...
and selling drugs, and (female) fighting in the apartments, and blasting music at 3 am, throwing bottles out the windows, and knifing somebody in the elevator, and having attack dogs... etc. Use your imagination.
I'm glad for your friends. They have it nice.

I'm glad you're using your imagination.

beholder,

Some of the things you mentioned takes place outside of projects too.

Whatever.

The projects need to be strapped with dynamite and blown into pieces and the tenants relocated to Bronx. There should be no projects in Manhattan.

All the precious Manhattan land consumed by swaths of ugly low-income blight. Ew.

Do you see public housing in the middle of the 6, 7, 8th Arrondissements in Paris? No. Do you see public housing littered about Manhattan's upscale neighborhoods? Yes. Do you see swaths of public housing in the high priced centers of Tokyo, Hong Kong and London? No.

New York, you backwards city, please follow Paris footsteps when it comes to dealing with the welfare set by toss them out of Manhattan (and no, I don't care about the rioting in Paris from the suppressed people shoved into outer ring ghettos, so don't bring it up)

westside,

Do you have evidence Paris and Tokyo have no public housing or ghettos?

No, he said the nice parts of Paris, and he is right. They are on the outskirts - the equivalent of Jamaica, South Staten, etc.

Singapore's public housing program really impressed me. You wouldn't know they're projects at all. 80% of the population live in them with pride of home ownership.

I think the city should offer them ownership and if they don't want it they can take a hike or offer a cashout. Something will have to chance with the projects at some point. I wish it would come sooner. The cost of upkeep on these failed projects just keeps rising.

While attending a community board meeting about redevelopment some poor guy was yelling that he wanted to live in manhattan, like it was a god given right. Another resident from the community downtown replied back to that she wanted to live on CPW but couldn't so shut up.

Anyone think something will actually change anytime in the near future? I've been hearing for years from people who claim to have it on good authority that some of the projects in prime locations would be torn down and privatized. If anything changes it would be under Bloomberg right?

Yeah, Paris's low income housing planning really worked out well for them!!! How soon some people forget.

11201,

I agree with your post.

Considering the fact that i woudl favor the UK style selling them to the poor in question (like 11201 says) or to developers and replacing them with vouchers for those unsuited to buy, and thus tearing them all down or converting them all to condos or market rate, why would you think I support the Paris version?

Jason, I assume you're addressing me. However, I was replying to westsidehighway, who seems to have forgotten that the Paris riots occurred not only in the suburban ghettoes, but spread to city's center as well. So much for the isolation by marginalization that he/she thinks is so great.

Furthermore, the US has a major cultural difference from much of the world in that here, suburbia is associated with relative wealth and the inner-city with poverty. In many countries suburbia is fully equated with relative poverty, and you'd be insulting someone in a major way by even asking him if he lives in the suburbs. So it's no surprise that projects are in inner-cities here.

"Furthermore, the US has a major cultural difference from much of the world in that here, suburbia is associated with relative wealth and the inner-city with poverty. "

But this is Manhattan, this isn't the rest of the United States. New York is very different from the rest of the United States and such a cultural divide vs. Europe isn't the case in this city.

As I said, relocate the project blight to someplace like South Bronx...just get them out of Manhattan.

Oh, and it's not racial at all because I'm black.

i've met some very racist black people. and some very sexist women.

if it isn't true in Manhattan, why would you want to move the projects? maybe because you feel a cultural divide between yourself and the poor people who live in Manhattan?

Why are you so against moving projects out of Manhattan?

Luxury in New York doesn't correlate to luxury in someplace civilized like the center of Paris or key centers of London where these cesspool projects wouldn't be tolerated.

And no, I'm not racist I just don't like these outdated blight projects in the middle of Manhattan.

"i've met some very racist black people. and some very sexist women."

True.

But now we have two black people who agree in principal, though not in the details. I say get rid of projects altogether and replace with vouchers wholesale. Even in this depressed market, the amount of money the City and HUD would get for selling those things is astronomical, and they coudl do it gradually. They could even set aside some in the salvagable buildings for low income residents to buy on the cheap like in the UK.

but where do the residents move to? the south bronx, as suggested elsewhere?? it's not just economic costs, although i think you're a bit optimistic in thinking the land would go for astronomical amounts, it would depress the land market in NYC significantly, even if done gradually developers would know that huge tracts of buildable land were in the pipeline. but you'd have enormous political and social costs as well.

there's already very little affordable housing in NYC, not just manhattan. and i don't think you'll tell me that the administration could convince the poor that NYC would be doing this to improve their lot in life.

"principal" ... principle

vouchers: lots of money-backed demand drives up rents, which makes it necessary to increase voucher amounts; repeat repeat repeat. Additionally, they necessarily imply an added layer for profits, etc., making that plan like the private healthcare that's so much less efficient in this country than Medicare, while delivering less customer satisfaction. Pass.

outdated blight projects: so projects should be built to be beautiful? I couldn't agree more. Build new ones that are beautiful.

So in times when the inner-city is out of fashion, poor people can live in Manhattan, then they should be banished, then they can return when the inner-city is back out of fashion?

San Francisco: homeless people and junkies in abundance on the streets of every neighborhood, in the parks, on public transport. Not a model to aspire to.

US/Manhattan cultural differences: but this isn't my body at all, it's my arm.

Black: so the problem is the projects have become more Latino?

Singapore: it's public housing (costing more than comparable private housing in other countries), but it's not low-income.

Ownership: Mitchell-Lama coops are an excellent model for future new construction, but construction costs became prohibitive. Educational levels limit effective self-governing (coop and condo boards) and invite fraud, necessitating endless layers of government oversight.

Mixed-income: that's what the 80/20 buildings in Manhattan are, but as rentals. "Privatization" of low-income housing. Not bad.

Oh God, I hate 80/20 buildings in Manhattan too.

alanfart,

You have impressed me on this thread keep up the good work.

The SF homeless problem pre-dates and has nothing to do with vouchers. It has everything to do with the uber-liberal policies of the City, and frankly the better weather versus New York. Other cities that have vouchers do not have the same problems as SF, and cities (think nearby Berkeley or similarly uber liberal Santa Monica) that have neither vouchers nor projects have just as bad if not worse homeless problems.

Utter straw-man.

I've heard it's cold and it's damp (that's why the lady is a tramp).

The straw man is the presentation of what are essentially just neighborhoods within cities (even if politically separate), and citing their voucherless homeless problem.

What cities with very tight housing situations (i.e. very popular with rich people worldwide) really completely on a voucher system that works well?

I thought westside was being facetious because surely no one could be that ignorant. If westside is truly black, then I would guess that s/he is an immigrant from some 3rd world country. jason could have good intentions but is just seriously misguided.

At one time, I too thought vouchers and private ownership were viable alternatives. However, while in grad school I researched the issue including Jack Kemp's privatization initiatives (during the GHWB Admin, correction in era cited in earlier post). Ownership does not work for the reasons I cited earlier. Even using Amsterdam Houses as an example of what is arguably the most valuable piece of real estate where a housing project is located (adjacent to Lincoln Center) and one where the residents would have most to gain from having equity in the buildings, the numbers just don't work. There are just too few residents who could afford to buy at even 25% of market value if their apartments were offered in a co-op plan. Throughout NYC, there are just too many people (approx. 400,000)in public housing to implement any type of privatization policy that would not result in an untenable economic and social disruption within the region. The transition would be VERY ugly in a way I don't think anyone in NYC would want to witness regardless of politics. I agree with alan's comments concerning Mitchell-Lama and Mixed-Income development. Like it or not, those projects are going to be around for a long time because no politician is going to touch this issue with a 10 foot pole. Best policy is to make the existing projects the best places to live for upwardly mobile families who use them as a way to save up and move on. And on another note, the character of NYC has always been distinguished by the close proximity and contact among the economic classes, as opposed to many cities where it is very easy for high income people to have no contact whatsoever (other than domestics)with poorer people.

"If westside is truly black, then I would guess that s/he is an immigrant from some 3rd world country. "

Wrong, but I'm curious as to what gave you this impression?

they can just make all of the tenants in the projects, good locations (Lincoln Center and the like) owners and let it ride.

last year, the Trump buildings between Brighton Beach and Coney Island (originally Mitchell/Lama) turned coop. all of the people who lived there had a choice of becoming owners or remaining Mitchell/Lama. obviously 99% became owners. when they sell, they have a 20% flip tax for the original owners only.

now since the projects are NOT Mitchell/Lama, raise the flip tax to 50%, 60%, 70%, who cares. have most of the money paid to the city and some (5%) to the coop's fund. many people will feel pride in ownership and will actually stop destroying their homes and actually improve them.

the older will be able to sell out and move to....
the younger, with children, will be able to relocate to the burbs, if they wish...

the first buyers will definitely be the Pioneers and will reap the benefits of having very low prices. just like the people who pay a fortune to live across the street from the projects, there will be people willing to live in them. they will know that their struggles, at first, will be paid off as more and more of these apartments will be sold. the demographic will improve and they will not be considered projects within a short period of time.

how does that sound?

ab_11218, the Trump buildings you're referring to were Mitchell-Lama coops, already owned by the residents, so they did not go coop, and they did not have a choice of becoming owners. They had a choice of becoming renters. Moreover, the residents had decades of experience governing the buildings themselves.

I like that plan for NYCHA buildings, but only if the flip tax is used to build twice as many low-income units as are removed, and also if the flip tax is used (as in the ex-Mitchell-Lama coops) to keep the maintenance from spiking ... but even at 75% flip tax, not enough revenue can possibly be raised to achieve those goals. And for keeping maintenance affordable to the residents who precede such a conversion, the 5% flip tax that follows the initial sale really won't do it. And finally, the greater the flip tax, the less money a NYCHA resident will have to buy a new home in Jamaica, the South Bronx, etc.

Not finally. Finally is that hate-radio Republicans would scream bloody murder at the news that housing project residents get to walk away with even a nickel. It has something to do with the reptilian brain.