READ: CAN NEW YORK CITY SAVE PUBLIC HOUSING?

Harlem Bespoke:  News has been circulating this spring that the city will be demolishing  a couple of public housing buildings in the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea this year to make make way for three new constructions for displaced families and market rate renters.  This would be a historic precedent in Manhattan since the city has held on to its mid-century stock of super blocks while the rest of the country has been replacing this type of housing over the years. Because New York City has the largest national investment in the housing projects, simply replacing the buildings has alway been a complicated concept for social and political reasons but now that impressive housing number has accrued a financial factor that has moved the government towards demolition.

All of the massive residential towers were pretty much built in the mid century within a 30 year time period and now they are all deteriorating in unison.  It all amounts to a $38 billion repair bill that the city does not have any funding for and therefore is seeking out private investors in develop the public land. Advocates for public housing and current residents are uneasy with this concept which would basically have low-income housing regulated by the private sector.

The inefficient Towers-in-the-Park model are the standard layouts for public housing so there is a lot of unused land to build upon surrounding the older developments.  Relocating tenants from deteriorating buildings into newer ones built on the grounds of the projects and then demolishing the previously vacated public address appears to now be the new plan.  Developers then would have access to the site of the demolished building to build new market rate towers of which the profits would go to repairing the older buildings.

Infill, relocation and re-building appears to be the next step to actually add more units on all economic levels to public land but this monumental shift has many unsure on the future of government housing.  More on the controversy can be found in this recent Post article: LINK

HarlemBespoke.com 2019