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Some PJ's are concentrated in poverty stricken areas, many are not. Many are surrounded in middle class neighborhoods, many have middle income residents already. In Manhattan many are now surrounded in wealthy neighborhoods.
I think it is a mistaken notion that residents don't make the most of the areas and that many have built better lives. Most current residents have only been in the PJ's for one generation. Many people that grow up in PJ's move out, never to return. They actually do serve a purpose.
What you are seeing is a constant revolving population of residents. What you are proposing will keep a permanent somewhat stabile population. For what purpose?
Many NYer's grew up in the projects and have gone on to be successful and were able to move out. Some are now rich and famous. Sometimes the parents stay and grandchildren visit, but usually it will end for that family after that.
Are you trying to eradicate poverty? That has been tried before, actually for the past couple of hundred years, by various methods. Nothing totally gets rid of it. This method of having PJ's actually does help many get out of poverty. It may not help the first generation that moves in to get out. Sometimes the blows of life just prevent that from happening. But the children having a stabile home can get a good education, and marketable skills, and move on.
I see your point, but it is already happening in the PJ's and surrounding areas, without converting the projects to coops.
Remember in the current 80/20 situation you have the working/middle class moving in with the upper middle class or the wealthy. These working/middle class are people that have excellent credit scores, savings, and have a very stable home life, they just would never be able to afford to live in those luxury buildings.
What you are proposing with a reverse 82/20 is the working/middle class buying units and living with the poor. Living with non working elevators most times, and pissed out when working, along with pissed out staircases. Why in the world would anyone want to buy into that? Just asking.
Main purpose is to increase the number of housing units for middle income people. Read back on the thread. I think I've answered all of your questions already.
IMO, my idea is more like the city going into the real estate for non-profit. all of the profit goes back into improving the NYCHA housing. If you read back, I wrote that money from sales would go for infrastructure and quality of life improvements.
And, it increases the number of available working/middle income units available.
Call it a philanthropic venture, maybe.
Money from sales?
What Lender would finance such a property? Who would finance a mortgage to purchase an apartment in a housing project?
Again, Politics! The city w/h to subsidize the mortgages, probably provide a guarantee.
You've got to think about the practicalities and solve those problems.
No, I am the OP and it is not about extending gentrification. It is about increasing the number of units for working/middle class families. I am no fan of gentrification because it has done the opposite ... changed the face of NYC so that it is becoming polarized (rich/poor) and with fewer affordable housing options for middle class people. I am a lifelong NYer who grew up in Mitchell Lama housing and then in a house, in a middle class neighborhood, that my civil service dad could afford on one salary.
I'm not sure how you've concluded that my post is about extending gentrification. I thought I was clear that this is not about creating more units where costs could skyrocket with the market.
We have way too much of that now.
Is that your narrow definition of gentrification? Gentrification is about DISPLACEMENT!
I said that your plan is an extension of gentrification, and its true. You simply prepose to displace poor people with less poor people. Putting a percentage cap doesn't change a thing. See my following post for more depth.
BTW, NYC is not Chicago! Different set of circumstances altogether. The most simple observation is that no matter how bad a NYC housing project may be or have been. NONE! Not a single one was or is as bad as those in Chicago, Newark, Jersey City, nor anywhere else in the country. Those old housing projects in those citties and elsewhere were/are horrendous! Third world conditions. I've seen them first hand, unbelieveable horrors. Choose the worst NYC project and it is far better than all others.
One reason is that more money was spent on constructing the NYC public housing than in other cities. In the overwhelming majority of instances most cities and municipalities spent no more money than the federal funds. So quality and design was lacking in comparison. I saw a little housing project in Melbourne, FL which was horrific!
All the cities above, including Baltimore, DC and elsewhere in the 80s and 90s were half and virtually empty dilapidated, worn, half windowless, things of brick, beyond anything a NYer could imagine. The only people who would live in them were the lowest of the low. The places were strickly for the under under class. Unlike NYC, no working people lived in these places.
Anyway, just having terrible memories. The situation in NYC cannot be compared to anywhere else. The politics is different, the people are different, the money and opportunities are different.
One other thing is somewhat different than some other places, for the greater part Welfare reform has worked here. For example, just throwing a number out to make a point, the number of non-working generational welfare recipients over the last 2 to 3 decades has declined by 90%! I would assume. Few other cities can make such a claim.
Back on topic,
You can say your plan is about increasing middle and working class housing, but the reality is that the plan is about displacing the poor for whom the housing was and is intended.
What of the politics? Al Sharpton will be hanging from the antenna of the Empire State Building like King Kong!!! He'd probably be elected Mayor.
I am thinking of a specific example. Please don't take this somewhere I'm not trying to go.
I had a co-worker who lived in the PJs and had raised her kids there. Both were grown and gone. She had a good paying job in a corporation. My question is, how would she still qualify for public housing? And, yes, I would expect that person to move or, if they want to stay, I would expect them to contribute more. For example, in Mitchell Lama housing, this is a requirement. It happened to a friend living in Co-op City when her income exceeded the threshold.
I don't know what you mean? I never said anything about taking shares away. I said people (either outsiders or insiders) could purchase an apt and belong to a co-op. For those who bought into the limited-equity program, they would own their shares, have voting rights but when they moved, they would not experience gain or loss in the value of the property.
It would seem only you, and perhaps others like you who are so desparate to live where you can't afford. No one else benefits, and many would suffer.
It would seem that rather than turn your coworker's empty nest over to a qualified family, you wish to take the apartment for yourself, and cooping is just a justification and/or method to upgrade to a standard satisfactory to yourself.
The present non-displaced residents, what do they gain? The displaced coworker, what does she gain? What does the City gain? What does the neighborhood gain, which isn't already present from previous and past gentrification?
You simply wish to displace people you think s/n be living where you want to.
Take your coworker, and I presume you are, and certainly the majority of 'buyers' w/b Transplants, so your coworker who has lived in her home, raised her children, successfully enough that they are out of the projects, a women and family FAR FAR FAR more vested in this city and housing project, than you or any Transplant could ever be----s/b displaced for your benefit? Not for the benefit of another needy family?
Your coworker who MUST be nearing retirement s/b displaced and left to the marketplace, at a point in life when her income will soon be taking a precipitous drop. This is your proposal?
You sayyyy, you want to create additional working/middle class housing, yet you wish to do so by lowering the available housing already marked for the poor.
80/20? I presume that's 80% poor, correct? So what happens to the existing 20%? What happpens to the needy ready and waiting to occupy the existing 20%?
I believe you are blinded with selfish desire.
[I wrote the above before reading that you are a NYer. Pardon.]
Whoa .... Slow down and let me answer your first two questions and let's take it from there ...
1. No, I'm not saying that it should ALL be converted into cooperative housing. I'm saying that a portion of it -- across all of NYCHA -- could be.
2. Yes, I am inquiring as to who might be interested in purchasing an apartment in a public housing project that would be part of a cooperative of apartments (again -- not in one specific PJ, but across several).
I'm sure we can agree that there are people in the PJs who don't belong because they are above the income threshold or below the family size threshold. Maybe these could be insider, early adopters???
Anyway, I would consider it. I'm single, have no kids and I would love to live in one of the neighborhoods where some of these PJs are. Without an alternative, affordable way of doing it (like this) I would never be able to.
BTW, this is already on the drawing board, as per the link I included in my OP. I just thought about it yesterday and did a Google search, and there it was.
That link isn't about cooping public housing, but blather about Bloomberg's dated plan to increase affordable housing. He came up with this prior to the mortgage/real estate bust. Political BS! Do you really think there are under-utilized housing projects?
****
"Across several "? What would be the purpose?
So, as I said you want to gentrify Public Housing and displace poor people, simply for your personal benefit. Gentrification in its most negative form.
BTW, no I don't agree that there are people living in public housing with incomes which would allow them not to. Why would anyone live in public housing who didn't have to? Even the best public housing SUCKS!
Anyway, NO, I would not choose to live in Public Housing under any circumstances. I would do whatever I had to NOT to live there. If I were unsuccessful, I'd blow my freaking brains out! Note, that is not just a cute remark. I made that commitment to myself from childhood.
No, kick out those making over $60,000 a year. The projects aren't meant for them, give them 90 days to find a rent stabilizied apt, buy a co-op or leave town. They are milking the system for low rent, free electricity, free gas etc. Then give the vacant apartments to the homeless, get them off the subway, out of the food court at grand central station (YECH!) etc.
That link isn't about cooping public housing, but blather about Bloomberg's dated plan to increase affordable housing. He came up with this prior to the mortgage/real estate bust. Political BS! Do you really think there are under-utilized housing projects?
****
"Across several "? What would be the purpose?
So, as I said you want to gentrify Public Housing and displace poor people, simply for your personal benefit. Gentrification in its most negative form.
BTW, no I don't agree that there are people living in public housing with incomes which would allow them not to. Why would anyone live in public housing who didn't have to? Even the best public housing SUCKS!
Anyway, NO, I would not choose to live in Public Housing under any circumstances. I would do whatever I had to NOT to live there. If I were unsuccessful, I'd blow my freaking brains out! Note, that is not just a cute remark. I made that commitment to myself from childhood.
You are entitled to your opinion. I've stated what I believe to be something worth considering. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not pro-gentrification. Just trying to find alternatives to keep working New Yorkers with middle income from fleeing the city. In your posts you said that I was a transplant. I am not. I have lived here my entire life. I am a native NYer and frustrated with how gentrification has driven up housing costs like crazy. The more this happens, the less working/middle class NYers will be able to stay.
If you'd like to take this discussion offline, feel free to respond to my direct message. If there are things that I don't know that would make this impossible just tell me. No need to bash me. I'm just thinking out loud. It's an idea ... nothing is etched in stone.
Last edited by queensgrl; 07-12-2011 at 06:07 AM..
You are entitled to your opinion. I've stated what I believe to be something worth considering. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not pro-gentrification. Just trying to find alternatives to keep working New Yorkers with middle income from fleeing the city. In your posts you said that I was a transplant. I am not. I have lived here my entire life. I am a native NYer and frustrated with how gentrification has driven up housing costs like crazy. The more this happens, the less working/middle class NYers will be able to stay.
If you'd like to take this discussion offline, feel free to respond to my direct message. If there are things that I don't know that would make this impossible just tell me. No need to bash me. I'm just thinking out loud. It's an idea ... nothing is etched in stone.
I did not bash you. I simply talked straight and hard, like a native NYer.
There are a number of issues, the most significant is that in your plan to allegedly increase middle/working income housing, existing housing for the poor is lost!
To answer the question,
No, I would not buy an apartment in the projects.
I wouldn't buy any type of real estate even near projects.
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