Pathways to Social Housing in New York: Conclusion

Conclusion

There is an urgent need for a housing system that puts more stock into housing’s value as a home and less in its value as real estate, what scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls the tension between exchange value and use value in housing. As we described in our previous report, the last three decades have seen more and more capital chasing rising property values in rental housing in New York and across the United States, further driving crises of rent burden, evictions, and homelessness. Rising property values are central to our economy. For those with investable capital, profit from land and housing undergirds the majority of the financial activity. For homeowners, it creates wealth faster than ever before. There is an increasing distinction between the asset-owning class — investors and homeowners benefiting from rising property values — and everyone else, for whom buying a home is unattainable and renting is unaffordable.

Our report focuses on policies rather than politics. Despite that, we are aware that a shift to social housing would constitute a serious challenge to the system of wealth creation through land and housing. Any such intervention therefore requires confronting the power of those who benefit from the current state of affairs. This system traces its roots to the foundations of racial capitalism — from this country’s original legal frameworks for common land enclosures and slavery, to 20th century exclusionary lending, zoning, and development practices, which perpetuated segregation and urban disinvestment. We must build an immense amount of political power to achieve our ends.

But in the face of this challenge, it is worth remembering that New York City and State have facilitated social housing conversions in the past, we do them occasionally today, and we can do them on a larger scale in the future. Combined with a new social housing program, conversions can improve the lives of houseless people and rent-burdened tenants, while simultaneously challenging the power of the private real estate industry over housing.

Many of the tools necessary to make these changes are already at our disposal, but require political will, organization, and action. To conclude this report, we offer 3 steps you, the reader, can take to advance this agenda:

1.) Join housing organizations and coalitions and get involved in legislative and policy campaigns:

New York is home to a plethora of organizations working at various geographical scales (neighborhood, city, state, national, and international), on various types of housing issues (homelessness, tenants’ rights, cooperative and community ownership, etc.), and through various means (building organizing, street protests, legislative campaigns, etc.).

Nearly every housing organization in New York State is working on some combination of campaigns relating to one or more of the policies outlined in this report. Not every elected official, however, thinks that their constituents know or care about these issues. This has to change if we want legislative and policy action on a social housing agenda.

2.) Organize with your neighbors:

Spread the word! Now that you’ve joined an organization and gotten active in a campaign, you can talk with others about why they should do the same. This kind of organizing often starts with small circles – people you’re already familiar with, like your family, friends and neighbors – then expands outward, and can include door knocking in your and other neighborhoods, participating in neighborhood assemblies and town halls, and joining in coalitions with others fighting similar fights across the state, country, and world.

3.) Learn more about the history of social housing. Below are just few suggestions:

Reports

Books

  • Tom Angotti, New York For Sale
  • Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked
  • James DeFilippis, Unmaking Goliath
  • Peter Eisenstadt, Rochdale Village
  • Johanna Fernández, The Young Lords
  • Joshua Freeman, Working Class New York
  • Roberta Gold, When Tenants Claimed the City
  • Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage
  • Benjamin Holtzman, The Long Crisis
  • Jacqueline Leavitt and Susan Saegert, From Abandonment to Hope
  • David Madden and Peter Marcuse, In Defense of Housing
  • Richard Plutz, A History of Housing in New York City
  • Gail Radford, Modern Housing in America
  • Annemarie H. Sammartino, Freedomland
  • Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose

Films

  • At Home in Utopia, directed by Michael Goldman and Ellen Brodsky
  • Decade of Fire, directed by Gretchen Hildebran and Vivian Vásquez Irizarry
  • The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, directed by Chad Freidrichs
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