Politicians Can't Back Sell-The-Projects Idea
Unsurprisingly, a group of legislators has a serious bone to pick with HUD regional director Sean Moss over his recent comments that selling some public housing developments might help solve New York’s affordable housing crisis. A letter addressed to HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson that was signed by 14 assemblymembers (including Joan Millman and Hakeem Jeffries)…
Unsurprisingly, a group of legislators has a serious bone to pick with HUD regional director Sean Moss over his recent comments that selling some public housing developments might help solve New York’s affordable housing crisis. A letter addressed to HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson that was signed by 14 assemblymembers (including Joan Millman and Hakeem Jeffries) makes the case that selling public housing is in no way a long-term solution for the city’s housing crisis:
At issue is the assertion that mass displacement of residents in one neighborhood, would benefit residents of another. At the very least, this assertion is misguided. The existing NYCHA developments are of much more value, to both the number of individuals which they provide shelter to as well as the diverse communities they help foster, than a short term budget windfall. Likewise, any purchase and/or development of affordable housing, short of new construction of full scale NYCHA developments, would be comparatively wasteful of the suggested sales proceeds and could by no means accommodate the same numbers of residents currently served by existing developments. In short, a sale of NYCHA properties would be a ‘one-shot’ deal, and would offer very few benefits for those in need of public housing extending past the year of the sale.
Full text of the letter on the jump.
HUD Official Speaks the Unspeakable: Selling The Projects [Brownstoner]
“Allocate a % of the building to the former residents, and I am not talking about a lottery where everyone can apply, I am talking about those people from those projects where they once stood.”
why????
why should they entitled to lux condos in a prime location. whearas someone who makes the astronimical sum of say 60K /yr has to commute 90 minutes from the outer boroughs?
Here’s my personal experience. I’m a white Jewish woman, born in the Bronx (a “townie,” as native NYers were being described on another board recently, which I think is hilarious). My parents moved to Yonkers when I was born. When I was 6, my mother kicked my father out (not a nice man, was he) and discovered that he had left her in serious debt — utilities and rent unpaid, the whole shebang. My grandparents lived in a Mitchell-Lama building in the Bronx, and paid the super $500 to fast track my mom into an apartment (yes, you read that right — A BRIBE!). We lived there until I was 13, and my mom worked her ass off, starting as a secretary and working her way up the corporate ladder to become an executive (with no college education) while my grandma took care of me. My mom actually paid my grandmother a “salary” to be my caregiver, since my grandma had to quit her job to stay at home with me. I went to public school, my mom saved every dollar, and when I was 13, my mom remarried and we moved to Westchester. My grandmother, who went back to work as a secretary at Lehman college in the music department (and who was adored by everyone — students, professors, her neighbors, her doctors, the local gangbangers, I mean EVERYONE) died in that building. So while it is not an exact comparison, what I can tell you is that subsidized housing enabled my mother to make a better life for us, gave my low-income grandma a clean, relatively safe place to live, and gave me the incentive to go to college, get a good job, and work hard at it so that (God willing and the creek don’t rise) I won’t ever need to live in subsidized housing. I know people who share on this board often get blasted, but I did want to put a face on this. It helped us during a rough few years, and we were grateful to live there and grateful to leave. My grandmother made a home there, and she paid her rent and was part of her community and took amazing care of her apartment. I am certain there are people just like we were in the projects, so I am slow to judge what goes on there, even if it frustrates and frightens me.
stuck_in_the_middle
110.09 is someone who only has the tenacity of a bulldog online. I bet you quiver on Canal St.
The areas immmediately surrounding public housing are consistently bleak and never seem to change. Meanwhile, if you go a few blocks away the areas have generally improved significantly over the past 10-15 years. The onus should be on the NYCHA to do something ab out that.
How do I know a few rookie cops? Maybe because I went to high school with them. Maybe I helped one furnish his STUDIO in east NY projects less than 2 months ago.
People on this board kill me. They are priced out of Manhattan, and they want to trample on homes where people already live.
Tear down the projects, fine but make sure these people have a place to go thats not in Idaho. You want to put luxury high rises up? Allocate a % of the building to the former residents, and I am not talking about a lottery where everyone can apply, I am talking about those people from those projects where they once stood.
I bet some people would not like to be THATCLOSE to them. huh?
I too, work for a living and am not some BS Artist. I do not know many Artist who can afford to live in these ugly facades going up across NY.
10.56;
Still full of it. Can’t answer the question about how you know the rookie cops, and where they live. However, as usual, you are ready to launch into a lecture about the ills of society, and the “lessons” we should learn.
You are FOS.
I agree 10:56. It says so much that someone would think that someone living in midtown could not possibly know any cops. This is because this person knows no cops. This person feels the way they do about the projects because they fail to see the residents as humans.
The projects often do seem to be isolated islands of poverty, and underachievement and certainly this can be good for no one. However, simply selling off the projects without more will certainly displace the most vulnerable in society including many working people.
As with virtually everything now a days it seems like you have to be in one ‘camp’ or another, when the solution is probably in the middle.
There is probably a solution that can make the projects less homogeneous for the benefit of all as well as raise money for their continued role in our city. As a proposal, I suggest using some of the vacant land/parking for new construction as 50/50 affordable housing with the 50% being culled from the projects themselves – as the existing buildings begin to have vacancies – either convert those units to market rate (which will be lower then prevailing rates – at least at first) or sell them as condos. Eventually with a re-investment from the proceeds of the construction and the more balanced demographics – the projects can serve as an affordable as well as good place to live.
So now it’s impossible for someone living in midtown to know a couple of rookie cops? How absurd. The opportunities to know anyone doing anything in this city is one of the great things about it – you can meet rookie cops on the subway, in church, on line in the supermarket, and gasp! they could be from your childhood neighborhood – not everyone in NY is from somewhere else. Talk about generalizations.
And since the starting salary for cops is under $30K, they certainly qualify for public housing. That’s a crime on several levels. Lesson taught here – people’s conceptions of who lives in public housing is based not on fact, but on the evening news, the NY Post, and zipping by in a cab with the windows rolled up.