Chapter 13

Model Housing Revisited

America’s dominant political parties had by the 1990s abandoned the

entire notion of a welfare state. Public housing appeared as a key, trou-
bled element in this fading paradigm. However, the New York City Hous-
ing Authority did not fit comfortably into this more skeptical milieu.
Unlike housing authorities across the country it had weathered two
decades of higher welfare concentration and disorder. Maintenance had
become strained, and the future seemed bleak, but public housing in
New York was too large and successful to be dismantled as it was in cities
such as Chicago and Baltimore. Savvy tenants and their advocates
quickly scotched any hint of demolition or privatization of apartments.
NYCHA then and now has had to manage a large and subsidy-needing
system of housing that the federal government dislikes supporting. In
2006, for instance, NYCHA still had 345 full developments with 420,000
official residents. The authority also housed, in a more distant fashion,
270,000 city residents in 90,000 apartments funded by Section 8. The
salaries of approximately 13,000 total employees remained its responsi-
bility. Dismantling this vast system, one of the last bastions of cheap
housing in New York, and one of the city’s largest employers, was out of
the question. Reforming it was not.1
Since the 1990s NYCHA has been carefully charting a course away
from welfare-state public housing. In so doing, the organization has looked
to its past when working-class people constituted most of the tenancy.
NYCHA now aims to remake its system, using management techniques,
into affordable housing. The term affordable housing denotes a program-
matic shift in American housing policy toward lower-cost housing that
serves the working poor rather than the poorest or welfare tenants. Not
only are these working-poor tenants able to cover a more reasonable
proportion of the cost, but also their behavior is, with some justification,
considered to be superior to the welfare underclass.
Most affordable housing has been built by nonprofits operating with
government subsidies, but NYCHA is also openly reconfiguring its exist-
ing public housing system along this model. The tight housing market
in New York has played a role in NYCHA’s ability to change tracks by
246 Affordable Housing

creating a large pool of potential tenants who are employed, but without
its management practices there is little chance that working families
would ever select to live in NYCHA developments. New York’s towers—
both physically and socially—remain competitive with the low end of the
private sector.
NYCHA has been able to reshape itself as affordable housing because al-
most all of its interest groups stand to benefit. The local and federal gov-
ernments understandably support any changes that will in the long term
reduce subsidies and improve performance. NYCHA’s recent invest-
ments in building and grounds renovation accompanying the new
model have aided acceptance by existing tenants because they benefit
from an appreciable upgrade in their environments. Many of the au-
thority’s current and most vocal tenants, some of whom depend on gov-
ernment support themselves, would also prefer fewer additional welfare
tenants. Because admissions have become the tool to social integration,
existing tenants face little danger of losing their apartments. The only
group expressing reservation is the city’s loose confederation of poverty
activists. Even most of them would concede, however, that the welfare-
state public housing model has serious defects and should be reformed.
New York City had by the 1990s made enviable progress in housing
renovation compared to cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. The
city in 1999 still had a higher percentage of housing with serious physi-
cal problems than most cities nationwide (7.6 percent in New York ver-
sus 2 percent nationally), but compared to the old days such a figure for
New York should be viewed as a sign of progress. Not only had large
areas been bulldozed in the Moses era, but also nonprofit housing de-
velopment and market renovation made the problems of tenement dis-
tricts a distant memory. The city government’s substantial commitment
to housing renovation positioned many blighted neighborhoods on the
road to recovery.2
This success in renovation, and the renewed attractiveness of New
York as a global destination for capital and immigrants, created a new
crisis. Cumulatively the city had lost hundreds of thousands of low-cost
apartments to rent increases, conversions, and dilapidation. A popula-
tion in the hundreds of thousands was thought to live in illegal and/or
unhealthy apartments, doubled up, or in severely overcrowded condi-
tions. New York’s private developers built only 85,000 new units in the
1990s for an additional 456,000 city residents, and many of those units
were designed for higher-income New Yorkers. In 2004, for instance,
“One out of three New York households [paid] more than 30% of its in-
come for rent . . . one out of four [paid] more than 50%.” Of the latter
group, approximately 500,000 households, 9 of 10 were low income.3
The failure of salaries, particularly for the poorest workers, to keep
Model Housing Revisited 247

pace with skyrocketing prices was a major factor in the affordability

predicament. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers left welfare (be-
tween 1996 and 2005 welfare recipients in New York City dropped from
1 million to approximately 400,000), but these workers were stuck in
low-wage labor settings where “salaries . . . adjusted for inflation—
[were] lower than in the late 1980s.” A flood of immigrants, while re-
energizing neighborhoods, likely played some role in keeping wages
low, but New York’s service economy in general created a more polar-
ized economy of winners and losers. Total household salaries of this low-
est group stretched between $10,000 and $20,000. In New York these low
wages presented a survival challenge. As has always been the case,
NYCHA did not have to serve exclusively the poorest residents in the city
to make an impact. The working poor were just as hungry for quality af-
fordable housing as welfare recipients.4
In spite of a tight housing market, and contrary to the notion that
market forces determined the fate of public housing in New York,
NYCHA faced a perilous situation in the 1990s. New York’s rebirth did
not automatically improve the tenant selection situation. The NYCHA
waiting list had hit 240,000 families in 1992, a record, but it was by no
means filled with ideal tenants. Administrators at NYCHA worried that
“the percentage of families on welfare has jumped from nearly 35 per-
cent to nearly 50 percent of” of those on the waiting list. By 1995, too,
“77 percent of new admissions were people in the lowest income cate-
gory, while only 8 percent of new applicants were working families.” Cer-
tain projects had, in spite of the Tier program, become “known as virtual
dumping grounds for the very poorest.” Approximately half the popula-
tion of the six projects in the Rockaways, for instance, was on welfare by
the mid-1990s.5 NYCHA tenant family incomes had only reached $12,476
in 1995 and welfare families made up 30.2 percent of all families.
The length of tenancy had increased from 13.2 years in 1985 to 16.7
years in 1995.6
Administrators in 1995 were particularly concerned about the lack of
working families, whom they believed provided stability to developments
and could also pay higher rents. As the New York Times discovered: “In
the last decade, the agency has seen the number of working families
drop from 46 percent to 32 percent.” An aging population contributed
to this decline, but the waiting lists tipped the system even more toward
welfare. Ceiling rents, the rents higher-income tenants pay, had not
been raised since the 1980s in part to keep working families in public
housing, but the looser rental market of the 1980s and early 1990s
proved irresistible to many working families. Above all, admission prior-
ities still favored the very poor who came from shelters or experienced
other housing emergencies.7
248 Affordable Housing

NYCHA aggressively used shifting political winds to its advantage. In

1992, HUD gave local housing authorities the power to set standards for
up to 50 percent of new tenants. NYCHA jumped on board. In 1996,
NYCHA gave top priority, with HUD’s approval, to working families
whose incomes ranged between $24,000 and $49,000 a year. NYCHA
aimed “to bring to public housing one working family for every two va-
cancies.”8 The initial plan failed in a court challenge, but NYCHA cre-
ated a revised version, exempting whiter Staten Island and Queens
developments, that the courts approved in 1997.9
NYCHA put in place its working family preference because adminis-
trators thought that working families did not even bother to apply be-
cause of well-known priorities in the admission process for the homeless,
overcrowded, and emergency cases. In the new system the higher-
income Tiers II and III of the old system became the working family des-
ignation. Working families, however, now benefited from a special track
to admission. That working families in 2005, for instance, had a 70
percent success rate renting an apartment as opposed to 57 percent for
applicants and transfers overall, is exactly what the designers of the pro-
gram had in mind.10
By 1999, working families had returned to 35 percent of the tenant
population as a result of both the working family preference and welfare
reform that sent many welfare families back to work. In 1999, for in-
stance, NYCHA announced it had “placed 2,833 additional working fam-
ilies, 38.1% of our total admissions, into our developments.”11 By this
time these working families were also being steered with some success to
the forty-one lowest income developments. These policies have become
even more successful with time. In both 2004 and 2005 working families
filled approximately half of all new vacancies. If NYCHA’s housing
turned over faster, this program would have had an even more extraor-
dinary effect. Welfare tenants in 2006 accounted for less than 20 percent
of families. Social Security, disability, and other forms of income support
accounted for about another 40 percent of the population. Working
families, in an impressive shift, comprise over 40 percent of the public
housing population—a statistic that would come as a surprise to many
New Yorkers who believe public housing is only for welfare recipients.12
These statistics must be read with some care. The working families sta-
tistic is not divided between new families and old (that is, existing ten-
ants who leave welfare). With NYCHA’s low turnover rate (about 1
percent per year) it must be assumed that the shift to working families
has been in part a result of improving employment conditions, or at
least the end of welfare support, for NYCHA’s existing tenants. A certain
number of tenants have also likely transitioned from welfare to Social
Security, either old age or disability (Supplemental Security Insurance,
Model Housing Revisited 249

SSI). The housing authority provides only one Social Security figure, but
I suspect that disability support is a growing category at NYCHA, as it is
in many other poor communities.
These statistical caveats aside, a number of factors likely contribute to
the authority’s clear success in attracting and keeping new working fam-
ilies. NYCHA has significantly renovated its buildings over the last
decade, added new community centers, redesigned its grounds, and
taken a hard line on crime. NYCHA’s maintenance crews generally keep
grounds and buildings clean and managers are comparatively respon-
sive landlords. NYCHA’s developments are well located along transit
lines and are close to community resources. NYCHA also has more large
apartments than many complexes in the city. Finally, these apartments
are cheap. Maximum rental prices in 2005, for instance, in NYCHA de-
velopments ranged from $347 for a studio to $901 for 6 or more bed-
rooms, but actual rents fluctuated based upon the percentage of
income. Even rent increases in 2006 did not change the fact that
NYCHA’s top rents were lower than those for public housing in cities
such as Chicago and San Francisco.13
How successful NYCHA has been keeping higher-income families in
its housing is reflected in the fact that in 2006 the top 27 percent of fam-
ilies earned an average of $41,480. The average income in the other 73
percent of families was only $11,587. NYCHA’s desire to hold onto its
high-income tenants is reflected in continued occupancy limits that
range from $52,750 for an individual to $81,400 for a five-person family.
In spite of having upper limits on the books, excess income tenants, ac-
cording to administrators, are actually never evicted. While approxi-
mately 60 percent of NYCHA families still receive some type of
government support, the retention of higher-income families at all is no-
table.14
The working and even dependent poor who are being selected for tra-
ditional developments are again likely to make public housing look
good. A Columbia University study in 2003 found that “NYCHA disqual-
ifies applicants who fail to meet a series of criteria that include rent pay-
ment history, the stability of a family’s composition and previous
criminal convictions or drug use.” The results, according to NYCHA,
spoke for themselves: “72 percent, or nearly four out of five applicants,
are found ineligible for public housing.” In order to find desirable ten-
ants, according to Legal Aid, “the Authority [granted] three interviews
for every one vacancy in anticipation of rejecting a high percentage of
applicants.”15
This high ineligible rate was, and remains, more complicated than
poverty advocates realize. The potential tenants are equally responsible
for the high failure rate. In 2005, for instance, 27 percent failed to show
250 Affordable Housing

up for their interviews; about 20 percent failed to pass criminal checks,

and about 8 percent failed landlord checks. Of those offered apart-
ments, almost 40 percent ultimately declined one. Officials of NYCHA
estimated that from the start of the application process to the finish,
only about 17 percent of tenants scheduled for interviews would either
rent or be able to rent an apartment.16
Those who are most welcome in NYCHA housing, as in the old days,
are those who need housing yet are likely to impress others with the
wisdom of the program: working families who will care for their apart-
ments, create community life, and pay a rent that helps cover the cost
of the housing enterprise as a whole. These are model tenants for a
model of urban transformation. When this selection system temporar-
ily broke down, New York suffered. Public housing elsewhere was too
far gone, and other options more abundant, for public housing to re-
bound without drastic reinvention under Hope VI. NYCHA appears to
be on the route to what Jane Jacobs famously called “unslumming”: in-
cremental improvements in the socioeconomic and physical condition
of an urban neighborhood without dramatic displacement of the cur-
rent occupants.
NYCHA’s recent history reflects what New Yorkers and Europeans
knew in the 1930s, but the rest of America denied. Those who would
build subsidized housing are far more likely to have success building
for the working poor rather than the poorest of the poor. The working
poor can partly pay their way and, by mimicking middle-class standards
of behavior, are less likely to give subsidized housing a bad name. The
modern community development movement has internalized these
lessons by carefully screening tenants. One of the leading forces in
South Bronx community development, Genevieve Brooks, explained
that her rehabilitated housing “only works because I interview each
and every family who moves in.” The welfare-state public housing para-
digm, both in New York and more dramatically on a national basis, in-
adequately addressed the notions of aspiration and social decorum
while underestimating the liabilities of concentrating the long-term
unemployed.17

Matching a New Mood

The shift away from welfare-state public housing to affordable housing has
been a logical response to declining federal support since the 1980s.
During the last two decades, NYCHA chairmen have been more repre-
sentative of the racial hue of the authority’s tenancy, but they have all
guided NYCHA away from the welfare-state model. The chairmen, and
most leading administrators, refused to see NYCHA as a charity organi-
Model Housing Revisited 251

zation.18 The fiscally conservative political shift, realized under Mayors

Edward Koch, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg has led chair-
men to position NYCHA as an efficient municipal service that delivers a
decent product to its tenants.19
NYCHA must turn to its tenants, employees, and the city and state gov-
ernments to make up for declining federal support. The conservative
Congress of the 1990s continued to slash housing funds and under-
mined President Bill Clinton’s efforts to maintain subsidies. From 1994
to 1997, for instance, subsidies failed to keep pace with inflation, lead-
ing to cuts in staffing and proposals for more outsourcing and privatiza-
tion. Subsidies from HUD at that time and today counted for
approximately half of NYCHA’s “rent” from its apartments, so these cuts
made a major difference in operations. Under the administration of
George W. Bush HUD has even more dramatically cut subsidy levels to
NYCHA—threatening the organization’s very solvency.20
For some years NYCHA drew on its reserves ($414 million was spent
between 2001 and 2006) to cover operating deficits, but such a strat-
egy is unsustainable. Declining federal subsidies have been com-
pounded by twenty thousand remaining nonfederalized apartments
that receive no subsidy at all yet must be maintained to a decent stan-
dard. The rest of NYCHA’s deficit can be linked to the steady increase
in administrative, energy, and maintenance expenditures. Pension
costs have increased 752 percent between 2001 and 2005 because of
unfunded state mandates and now account for 17 percent of the
agency’s annual budget. Health insurance, fuel, wages, and worker’s
compensation have also skyrocketed. Strict budgeting has cut hun-
dreds of millions in spending over the last few years (and staff has
shrunk from 14,658 in 2003 to 13,215 in 2006), but annual deficits re-
main. Mayor Michael Bloomberg provided $100 million as part of an
agreement in 2006 to raise rents on the top 27 percent of tenants, levy
new fees, and further tighten administrative spending, but NYCHA will
for the foreseeable future face serious financial challenges.21
The federal government may be dramatically cutting annual subsi-
dies, but it has not overlooked NYCHA in capital spending that is essen-
tial to attracting the working poor. Since the 1990s renovation funding
has come from both federal funds, the Public Housing Capital Fund,
and locally financed bond initiatives. By 2005, the authority could boast
of a cumulative $4.7 billion in capital improvements over the previous
twelve years. Renovation financing and the solidity of NYCHA’s bonds
have been bolstered by a vacancy rate of 0.47 percent. Mayor Michael
Bloomberg and Chairman Tino Hernandez inaugurated an additional
$2 billion renovation plan in 2005, even in the face of growing operat-
ing deficits. Capital renovation has been funded primarily out of federal
252 Affordable Housing

funds and bond issues, with only about 10 percent provided through
state and city funding.22
This money is sorely needed. Decades of hard use and deferred main-
tenance during the hard years have taken their toll (Figure 31). Many of
NYCHA’s buildings had neared the end of their projected lifespans. The
state comptroller found in 1999 that 120,000 units (of approximately
180,000) could be found in buildings “riddled with lousy plumbing, bad
boilers and leaking roofs.” Declining conditions were not the result of
malfeasance, although tenant destructiveness had taken a toll, but of in-
sufficient capital for repairs. The few remaining city and state projects,
however, were in far worse shape than their federal counterparts be-
cause they lacked federal modernization funds. NYCHA at that time es-
timated it would need $5.3 billion to renovate its projects to a decent
standard.23
As indicated above, NYCHA will, by the time it has completed its re-
cent cycle of renovations, have spent over $6 billion. Renovation still in
process at many developments across the city includes new windows, fa-
cade renovation (replacing and repointing brickwork), elevator replace-
ment, new stainless steel front entrances, and extensive landscaping.
This is not touch-up work but complete overhaul of buildings by private
contractors working for NYCHA. The results are dramatic to say the
least. Billions of dollars set aside for renovation sounds like a great deal
of money, but it is important to remember that this large amount is
spread across a system housing over four hundred thousand people.24
NYCHA is spending billions on renovation and maintenance, but it
must maintain high standards with a smaller staff. The private sector, op-
erating with lower labor costs, is directly engaged in major contract ren-
ovation, grounds maintenance, elevator services, and apartment
painting. Day-to-day management by NYCHA staff has also shifted to a
customer service model influenced by the private sector. The authority,
for instance, manages a centralized call center for all five boroughs that
fields approximately two thousand tenant maintenance complaints
daily. Operators send work tickets to the local development staff or spe-
cial technical teams in more specialized areas such as elevators. The cen-
tralized call center has cut costs by setting specific times and dates for
apartment repairs. It used to be that 40 percent of tenants would not be
at home for repairs whereas now only 10 percent miss their repair ap-
pointment. The center even makes quality assurance calls to verify that
work has been completed.25
NYCHA’s projects, in spite of cutbacks, continue to be well staffed.
The authority in 2006 still had 13,687 employees, of which 9,640 were di-
rectly engaged in operations, mostly at the development level. Current
NYCHA staff ratios call for one housing assistant for every 500 units; one
Figure 31. A solid steel metal fence was somehow damaged and metal flashing
was ripped from a roof. NYCHA has faced a level of vandalism common to hous-
ing projects across this country. The difference is that the authority repairs the
damage. Photographs by Nicholas Dagen Bloom.
254 Affordable Housing

maintenance worker for every 250–300 units; three to four clerical work-
ers per development; and many more caretakers depending upon devel-
opment size. Most developments also have a manager and a
superintendent while those over 1,000 (of which NYCHA has many) will
have an assistant manager and an assistant superintendent. My impres-
sion on visits, both formal and informal, is that NYCHA maintains a hi-
erarchical, quasi-military type of organization that is partly responsible
for the higher standards maintained as compared to other cities.26
This massive staff is both unionized and promoted through civil serv-
ice standards. This is an expensive system, but in the long term it has en-
couraged professionalism by making NYCHA jobs well paid and by
ensuring that those hired are actually in some ways qualified for the po-
sition. In order to monitor employee performance administrators have
employed what they call APTS (Authority Productivity Tracking System):
open style management meetings in which productivity and project con-
ditions are analyzed. The meetings, including candid photographs and
statistics projected onto screens, are a combination of the New York Po-
lice Department’s COMPSTAT reporting meetings and modern man-
agement analysis. Administrators ask tough questions and demand
changes during these open sessions. Almost all NYCHA developments
have been reviewed under this system since 2001.27
In spite of the fact that APTS reviews primarily take place in open fo-
rums at NYCHA headquarters, much of the power at the authority has
actually been decentralized to the borough and project levels. Project
managers can now appeal high up on the administrative ladder to get
what they need, but they are also held to account for deficiencies. De-
centralization has smoothed the way to “Asset Management,” a HUD-
mandated program for decentralized property management modeled
on the private sector. Under these new HUD rules individual develop-
ments are expected to be self-supporting (with the annual subsidy fig-
ured in). With the exception of the remaining city and state projects,
most developments are able to meet these standards.28
Of note, as well, is that 29 percent, or approximately four thousand
NYCHA employees, were also NYCHA residents in 2004, many of whom
have worked their way up from teenage summer jobs. Approximately
one-third of employees, then, have a personal stake in the well being of
NYCHA as a whole. Employees are generally not assigned to work in
buildings in which they live, but their presence likely makes a difference.
Young people, for instance, have role models whose relative success in-
dicates the value of participating in the summer work programs. In
Brooklyn, for example, five hundred teenagers in an average summer
help maintain the grounds.29
Tenants have not been overlooked in the emerging emphasis on de-
Model Housing Revisited 255

centralization and responsibility. The apartment inspection system had

weakened in the 1970s, but NYCHA chairman Popolozio, in a bid to con-
trol growing disorder, initiated a 100 percent apartment inspection pol-
icy in the 1980s. By 1989, 67 percent of apartments had been inspected.
All apartments today are in theory inspected on an annual basis and re-
ferrals are made if tenant apartments represent a danger to the health
and welfare of other tenants. Those who repeatedly miss their inspec-
tion times can face eviction.30
The end result of all this effort is evident to the naked eye. In spite of
the fact that crime and vandalism remain endemic to New York’s hous-
ing system, the average NYCHA project today has limited or no exterior
graffiti, neatly kept grounds (at least until kids return from school),
shading trees, modern windows, glazed brick lobbies and hallways, slow
but satisfactory elevators, and mostly tidy interiors. NYCHA has suc-
ceeded by pursuing a modified philosophy of environmental determin-
ism. Damaging cutbacks to the annual subsidy in the coming years may
ruin these decades of work, but such failure will be the fault of short-
sighted federal officials.

Rewards for Renovation

Distinct areas of renovation deserve special attention because they are so
crucial to the operation of high-rise public housing. Elevator repair, for
instance, remains a costly challenge for NYCHA but one that must be
met. In 1999, the state comptroller found that while 49 percent of eleva-
tors were in excellent or good condition, 16 percent were in fair condi-
tion and 37 percent were in poor condition. Without working elevators
NYCHA could not keep or attract families to its high rises. Other cities
fell down badly in this difficult area of high-rise management.31
During the last five years, over one thousand elevators, approximately
one-third of the total number, have been replaced as part of comprehen-
sive capital improvements. New elevators, featuring stainless steel interi-
ors and sliding doors, are regularly coated with lemon oil to resist the
graffiti that has marred older elevators. All of the new elevators include
computerized systems with the potential for remote monitoring from
NYCHA’s central maintenance facility in Long Island City. Such moni-
toring cuts down on frivolous and expensive service calls; traditionally,
about half of all calls had been false alarms. The staff remains at four
hundred full-time repairmen, who in an average month respond to thirty-
five hundred elevator outages. NYCHA also runs its own elevator school
to train staff on the different eras of equipment.32
The fact that NYCHA elevators last fifteen to twenty years—as op-
posed to about twenty-five years in the private sector—is a continuing
256 Affordable Housing

source of frustration. One longtime administrator in 1990 estimated hu-

morously that “what they spend on maintaining those elevators probably
could balance the city budget.” What began as part of a cheap solution
to housing the poor has revealed serious shortcomings, but NYCHA’s
record of elevator maintenance is far superior to that of other cities and
helps account for the continuing desirability of its housing. Other cities,
including Chicago and St. Louis, ignored the centrality of elevator
repair in tower buildings and their tenants suffered mightily or left.33
Funding from the federal transfer program and federal moderniza-
tion funds also reinvigorated NYCHA’s landscaping (Figure 32). A visi-
tor to public housing today will have almost no idea to what extent the
grounds declined during the 1970s. Leonard Hopper, a NYCHA land-
scape designer who pioneered the system, realized that high-rise build-
ings needed functional open space for a sense of community. In the
1980s he identified impediments to public safety, and thus community
life, by touring projects. He discovered that criminals had “numerous
entries and escape routes from development grounds.” Hopper also be-
lieved that lack of upkeep sent a signal that crime would be easy.34
Over the years Hopper has developed what he calls CPTED (Crime
Prevention through Environmental Design), a more pragmatic version
of the defensible space philosophy. CPTED, he believes, consistently re-
duces crime by 20 percent because the redesign reduces crimes of op-
portunity. Essentially the system gives tenants control of their spaces and
fills project grounds with as much positive activity as possible. In 2005,
he estimated that 275 NYCHA developments had been transformed
through this process.35 One does not have to accept all of Hopper’s
claims of crime reduction to admire the reconfiguring of formerly
chaotic grounds into pleasant landscapes, or to believe that renovation
positively influences tenant life.36
The CPTED process represents a confluence of influences. Hopper
credits Jane Jacobs, whose emphasis on neighborhood activity and “the
eyes of the street” as guarantors of public safety guided him to a new
path. Jacobs actually singled out NYCHA grounds as poor substitutes for
vibrant neighborhoods, but Hopper believes that even superblocks can
provide the type of informal social control she valued. He and his staff
have focused “on site activities and amenities” that bring people out into
public space. During renovations they locate “play areas with seating for
parents” and “gathering places for teenagers” to enhance building secu-
rity. Wide pathways are designed so that tenants “walk through the de-
velopment to take their children to school . . . rather than avoiding
these routes.”37
The process of redesign engages resident participation in design
charettes. Hopper claims that he and the staff from the site improve-
Figure 32. A remarkable system of landscape redesign has made NYCHA open
spaces more appealing and useful. Thick plantings, mature trees, spray foun-
tains, play equipment, wide paths, and strong fences give most developments an
attractive appearance. Photographs by Nicholas Dagen Bloom.
258 Affordable Housing

ments department bring “a blank sheet of paper when [they] start”: “We
listen to what their problems are.” Staff members of the NYCHA do,
however, offer a Power Point presentation of “before and after” land-
scapes from earlier NYCHA renovations that likely steers tenants to the
authority’s preferred approach. The standard design features, from
which tenants can pick, is quite consistent across NYCHA landscapes—
but it is of a very high quality.
Fences, for instance, are always solid steel and nearly indestructible.
Because tenants still want high fences the authority’s designers have de-
veloped new designs that have a bold visual impact but are much lower
than earlier fences; variety in fencing is sometimes introduced to distin-
guish one development from another. Brightly colored vertical elements
are often inserted to balance the ground plane with high rises—includ-
ing pergolas and steel sculptures keyed to a neighborhood theme. After
renovation the pathways are wider, newly paved, curbed, and lined with
low steel fencing. Multicolored pavers create different zones and attrac-
tive patterns throughout the developments.38
Designers have also cut off vehicular traffic, replanted formerly paved
areas, and transformed many parking lots into play areas. Sunken bas-
ketball courts often include low amphitheater-type seating that turn bas-
ketball courts into social spaces. Sinking basketball courts a few feet and
adding seats also means a lower fence and less noise in the surrounding
buildings. The ball courts themselves are colorful. Across the develop-
ments spray fountains and bright play furniture for small children are
ubiquitous and of the highest quality. Run-down grounds have become
the exception at NYCHA.39
The success of NYCHA landscaping is the result of good intentions
properly understood and realized. The authority was lucky to get both
modernization money and talented staff, but landscape success reflects
the constant revision that is a hallmark of NYCHA policies. NYCHA did
not succeed because it did everything right from the beginning; rather,
constant revision and updating to meet new challenges appears to be an
essential component of good public administration.
New and completely renovated community centers complement the
new landscaping and have created beacons of light and activity in many
drab super blocks (figure 33). Chairman Ruben Franco (1994–99) de-
cided, based upon advice from community program administrators, to
launch a program to build and renovate community centers. Working
with residents, architects, and staff, NYCHA devoted approximately 5
percent of capital spending annually. Over more than a decade more
than $100 million has been spent on sixty-two new or renovated facilities
(with twelve more underway); almost 70 percent of NYCHA’s centers
have experienced some renovation.40
Figure 33. A new community center at Williamsburg Houses reflects the invest-
ment NYCHA is making in community facilities across the city. Photograph by
Nicholas Dagen Bloom.
260 Affordable Housing

Building new community centers was hardly radical, but staffing them
and existing centers at realistic levels was. The current head of Commu-
nity Operations convinced the NYCHA board in 1996 that the new cen-
ters demanded enhanced staffing because the Health Department
intended to enforce mandated staff-to-child ratios of one staff member
to ten children. NYCHA has paid for the staff increases in creative ways.
General revenues have provided the bulk of funds. Other sources in-
cluded the federally funded Drug Elimination Program and HUD funds
designated for tenant participation activities. Summer camps and after
school programs are fee-based services; community center rental for
parties provides additional revenue.41
In 2006, NYCHA directly ran 111 of 163 community centers and 42 of
138 senior centers. Outside sponsors ran 52 community centers, 96 sen-
ior centers, 102 day care centers, and 35 health clinics.42 In the context
of New York’s rebounding nonprofit environment, many community
centers are actually finding new sponsors. City-wide programs such as
Partners in Reading and a variety of police-sponsored recreation pro-
grams also help keep the centers busy.43
One of the many sleek new centers is that at Williamsburg Houses.
With 31,000 square feet of space—including a gym, a dance studio, art
studios, computer facilities, stages, a recording studio, and a commercial
kitchen—it is a world away from the two rooms that preceded it. Its
openness is designed both to attract children and facilitate supervision.
The center’s gym converts to an auditorium and is used for NYCHA city-
wide events such as fashion shows and spelling bees. At the comprehen-
sively renovated Bronx River Community Center over 200 teenagers use
the center every night; they can mix their own music, play in a very nice
game room, or exercise in an excellent gym and weight room. Bronx
River’s glass walls look out on the project’s grounds and serve as a wel-
coming beacon for the area.44
These new and renovated centers are impressive, but they still com-
prise tiny parts of superblocks and serve a relatively small proportion of
tenant populations. At many centers up to 50 percent of community
center participants come from outside the developments. These centers
are finally becoming a valuable service to the city as a whole, but it re-
mains debatable if NYCHA should foot the bill for neighborhood com-
munity resources. Should current federal subsidies continue to decline,
NYCHA may be forced to withdraw its support entirely for the commu-
nity programs. The loss of these programs from a morale point of view
for neighborhoods, rather than just housing projects, may have a more
serious impact than is commonly realized.
In recent decades NYCHA has enhanced not only its community pro-
grams but also its once controversial commitment to social intervention.
Model Housing Revisited 261

NYCHA has reduced the contentious aspects of early paternalism by fo-

cusing on the problem families.45 Threat of eviction for unacceptable be-
havior remains NYCHA’s preferred tool for initiating social work. Over
the decades the authority has annually placed hundreds of tenants into
eviction proceedings on behavioral grounds even though it ultimately
evicted few families. NYCHA’s Social Services Division was instructed in
the 1960s, for instance, to view eviction as a social tool: “The potential
loss of the apartment mobilizes whatever strengths may exist in the fam-
ily. . . . Casework intervention thus often means that the family is able to
remain within public housing.” Little has changed. A current member
of the legal department explained that of 1,788 non-desirability cases
brought in 2005, for instance, only 149 ended in termination—the ac-
tual loss of the apartment—because the process primarily focuses on be-
havioral modification.46
As of 2006, NYCHA’s Social Services Department was comparatively
well staffed (246 full-time staff) and focused on families with serious
problems. This large staff, actually reduced from a few years ago, is a rel-
atively new phenomenon at NYCHA. Social work staff members now un-
dertake comprehensive case management, seek out financial help, and
develop long-term service plans for families in trouble. Staff members
make thousands of home visits every month to their casework families.
Housing assistants at each development (staffed at approximately one
housing assistant per five hundred units) also still knock on the doors of
those who miss their rent payments. In just one section of Red Hook
Houses today, for instance, two hundred families may be tardy every
month; a significant amount of visiting thus follows.47
NYCHA’s changing relationship to tenants includes enhanced respon-
sibility for cultivating tenant participation and advisement. Federal rules
now mandate that the authority stimulate tenant participation. The Res-
ident Advisory Board (RAB), a city-wide tenant organization composed
partly of resident association presidents, provides input on NYCHA’s an-
nual plan. A similar resident board composes the other city-wide orga-
nization, known as CCOP, which is most concerned with bread and
butter issues relating to services for individual projects. According to the
Community Service Society’s Victor Bach, who serves as a self-appointed
tenant advocate, the CCOP and the RAB generally support NYCHA po-
sitions and are dependent on NYCHA administration for leadership.
Community affairs administrators I talked with view tenants groups as a
means for communication but stress that NYCHA alone is responsible
for final decisions. Nor do they view tenant activists necessarily as accu-
rate barometers of tenant opinions.48
The emergence of a powerful and semi-independent voice for tenant
activism has pushed back on NYCHA paternalism. While seeded and still
262 Affordable Housing

advised by outside organizers such as Victor Bach, the New York City
Public Housing Resident Alliance formed in 1996 to raise tenant aware-
ness of congressional legislation that would affect NYCHA residents.
Since the 1990s, the alliance has opposed NYCHA on issues such as in-
creasing income levels for new residents, privatization schemes, public
accountability, and community service requirements.49
The total budget for all of NYCHA’s community and social programs
in 2006 was an impressive $62 million, including both community and
social service programs. Recent federal cuts reduced full-time staff from
1,500 in 2001 to approximately 1,200 in 2006, but this number was still
far larger than in the past. Declining staff levels have probably con-
tributed to a decline in community center utilization from 101 percent
in 2004 to 72 percent in 2006. Senior centers, for instance, which re-
mained well staffed from other city funds, had a 135 percent utilization
rate in 2006. Tension remains between the ideals of community staff and
NYCHA’s general budget crisis. Understandably, NYCHA’s “core real es-
tate mission” will have to take priority over community programs in the
coming years.50

The New (Electronic) Eyes on the Street

One of the key pieces in renewed public housing is crime control.
NYCHA endeavors through its community and social programs to en-
courage socially acceptable forms of activity, but if NYCHA cannot con-
trol criminality on its grounds it will never attract or keep decent
tenants. Crime is, in fact, finally declining in New York’s public housing,
but only through tremendous effort. Since the 1990s NYCHA has devel-
oped new tools for dealing with criminals, thus reversing some of the
limitations imposed in the era of the welfare state. Unlike other housing
authorities, NYCHA is demonstrating that crime control in public hous-
ing, while expensive and complicated, can be accomplished.
In 1996, “a federal judge made it far easier for authorities to evict drug
dealers” in public housing. Administrators hoped that the time for ter-
mination (final eviction) would drop from two years to a few months.
Tenant leaders welcomed the decision, but the Legal Aid Society
thought that it would lead to unfair treatment of innocent family mem-
bers. The decision eliminated the burden of both administrative hear-
ings and a separate hearing in Housing Court, which was established in
the early 1970s. NYCHA could now begin wider application of the Bawdy
House law, which stated that “leases can be broken if a vice . . . was being
practiced behind closed doors.” The authority was, after the federal de-
cision, able to take drug dealers right to Housing Court.51
This policy’s effectiveness has been frequently overstated by advocates
Model Housing Revisited 263

for the poor: “Since 1996, the Housing Authority . . . has more strictly
enforced its severe evictions policy: one strike and you’re out. As a ten-
ant, you are vulnerable to eviction if your grandson gets caught smoking
a joint on public housing grounds.”52 NYCHA managers I talked with,
however, said that for an expedited drug eviction there must be a felony
conviction, which is rare because plea bargains are so common. Most
cases end up with exclusion of the offender from the family’s home with
provisions for spot checking by the police.53
In 1990, NYCHA still claimed that its tenant patrols, while unable to
do much in the most troubled projects, played an important role in ten-
ant safety elsewhere. Supervisors received payment and training by
NYCHA staff and the total numbers of participants seemed impressive.
Victor Bach explained in 2005 that the tenant activists he knows dismiss
the tenant patrols because they “all have arthritis”; the tenant patrol is
often seen as a senior citizen activity. Surviving patrols usually restrict
their activity to the early evening hours, and substitutes for tough polic-
ing they are not. Luckily, NYCHA never tried to exchange tenant man-
agement for real policing.54
Both Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins had sought the merger of
the Housing Police with the NYPD but failed. The unions (and tenants)
successfully opposed this idea, but Mayor Rudolph Giuliani finally
pulled off the merger. The New York Times noted that crime was drop-
ping faster in the city than in the projects. It attributed this lag to the fact
that in 1967, 90 percent of housing police “were on foot patrol, walking
through the projects. In 1994, less than 12 percent were on foot.” There
were other reasons why public housing crime remained stubbornly high,
but ineffective policing was not helping.55 Mayor Rudolph Giuliani suc-
ceeded in 1995 in merging the forces only by playing hardball. He
threatened to fire all of the housing police and rehire them through the
NYPD in order to circumvent civil service laws and union opposition.56
A 2004 report by the City Council judged the merger a success in spite
of force reductions: “Reducing the duplication of services . . . redeploy-
ing some of the NYCHA uniformed officers to other divisions . . . trans-
lated to a reduction in the number of uniformed officers” from
approximately 2,700 in 1995 to 1,810 in 2004. Even with this decline in
the force, “violent crimes have fallen 44 percent in NYCHA develop-
ments and 48 percent citywide since the merger.” These statistics are re-
viewed in more detail below, but it does appear that the loss of the
NYCHA housing police has not resulted in a loss of police coverage.57
The NYPD Housing Bureau, at 1,700 officers, continues its core mis-
sion of vertical patrols. Saturation by extra police (60 to 70 officers),
known as impact zones, has also scored major crime reduction in public
housing complexes. The NYPD uses a special “crime reduction strategy
264 Affordable Housing

deploying 1,000 police officers to targeted high-crime locations,” includ-

ing nine troubled NYCHA projects. Since the 1990s the NYPD, both the
housing bureau and regular forces, have used controversial methods—
including profiled frisking to check for drugs and firearms and so-called
quality of life enforcement—to control the atmosphere of both poor
neighborhoods and housing projects. The merger has not led to a loss
of effectiveness by any reasonable standard because the NYPD has not
abandoned public housing.58
The crime rate in NYCHA’s developments has been falling, but devel-
opments cumulatively registered, for example, 287 shootings and 64
murders in 2003. Annual figures like these were a significant improve-
ment over the 1980s, but by this point, with city-wide crime plummeting,
such reductions meant a great deal less. New York as a whole has become
America’s safest big city, with crime statistics last seen back in the 1950s.
Remaining crime in public housing has started to stand out that much
more and now far exceeds its approximate 5 percent share of city-wide
population. In 2003 NYCHA thus accounted for 11 percent of the city’s
murders, 11 percent of the city’s rapes, and 16 percent of the city’s
shootings. More than half of all project shootings could be linked to
drugs, as opposed to about one-third city-wide. The total arrest rate in
2003 on public housing grounds and buildings was 21,000—a typical an-
nual figure for NYCHA since the 1980s. In addition, officers issued over
60,000 summonses for quality-of-life offenses. Since 2003 felony crimes
have declined another 10 percent, but these reductions are not fast
enough to reduce NYCHA’s share of city wide crime.59
The persistence of crime is impressive in light of the fact that NYCHA
has relatively few stores, strict enforcement, more working families, and
a rapidly aging population. A certain percentage of those who stay in res-
idence, and NYCHA no longer breaks down tenant versus non-tenant
crime, obviously engage in fast living and they often chase out orderly
families. Convicted felons are theoretically banned from NYCHA
grounds and apartments, but enforcement of such a broad rule is diffi-
cult to enforce. The open grounds of most developments and buildings
also remain ideal for clandestine drug dealing by tenants and out-
siders.60
A detailed City Council report in 2004 found failings in NYCHA secu-
rity related to tenant sabotage of security hardware. The investigators
discovered, after looking at 479 buildings in 25 developments, “that a
trespasser trying to gain access to a NYCHA building by the front door
succeeded nearly half the time—without a key or entry card.” The re-
port openly linked tenant irresponsibility to security problems. NYCHA
had devoted millions of dollars to security improvements, including in-
tercoms, but “residents may nevertheless be jeopardizing their own
Model Housing Revisited 265

safety by propping open doors and giving strangers access to their

homes.” In one Brooklyn development, for instance, 92 percent of all
doors were propped open all of the time. Sabotage has not led to an
abandonment of security measures in New York’s public housing, but
until the general tenant population improves its behavior there will be
levels of disorder that many tenants themselves find distasteful.61
A growing video surveillance security program, which ends the essen-
tially open nature of development grounds and interiors, promises
major crime control in the future. NYCHA is finally creating a virtual
doorman for its buildings. The first version of this system, the Video In-
teractive Patrol Enhancement Response (VIPER), has been installed in
fifteen developments since 1997. This system as a whole now includes a
total of 3,160 cameras in public spaces. Officers in special rooms moni-
tors activity and will call in back up if trouble is spotted. The authority
in the early years of implementation logged a 20 percent drop in crime
at Grant Houses.
CCTV (closed circuit television), an unstaffed, more affordable, and
smaller-scale surveillance system now installed at fourteen other devel-
opments, also features saturation videotaping. At Queensbridge Houses,
for instance, the newly installed system includes 254 cameras that record
all areas of the development night and day. Managers when I visited
were already impressed with the reduction in crime. Authority figures es-
timate that since CCTV has been installed 2,800 arrests city wide have
been linked to its use. Developments experience the biggest drop in the
first year of installation (approximately 25 percent), but a modest down-
ward trend continues even in subsequent years. Vandalism is also
thought to drop 50 percent after CCTV installation.62
High-rise public housing is not, in retrospect, an ideal form of hous-
ing for a socially disordered population undergoing a serious drug cri-
sis. What constitutes an ideal environment for such a population is
unclear. NYCHA has full towers not because its tenancy is so much bet-
ter than that in other cities. The authority from the 1950s onward has
taken a hard line on criminality, even against its own tenants. A system
that arrests over twenty thousand people a year and constantly monitors
its grounds is engaged in a serious battle. Crime control is not only the
result of long-term policing, but also of NYCHA’s pursuit of decent
maintenance standards (for example, working elevators, lighting re-
placement, and so forth) and improving standards of tenant selection.
That crime is declining, if not as fast as that in the city as a whole, means
that NYCHA has survived a war comparable to many civil wars around
the world.
NYCHA’s emphasis on control is a sufficient, if regrettable, substi-
tute for the multiple sources of authority one finds in a typical urban
266 Affordable Housing

neighborhood. The price of this order is high, can cause further alien-
ation of many tenants because of police error, and can lead to loss of
aspects of personal freedom that accompanies surveillance and crack-
downs. In my opinion it is preferable to unregulated “Wild West” hous-
ing projects left to gangs and drug dealers. Most cities have lacked the
will to enforce order. Sporadic policing sweeps, in projects already dis-
ordered and poorly maintained, rarely yielded a long-term restoration
in order in cities such as Chicago or Baltimore. Disorder even in low-
rise public housing, as in New Orleans, becomes far more suspicious in
light of NYCHA’s relative success with difficult to manage tower blocks.
63

Hope VI Deferred
Public housing projects in big cities have provided a focused example of
underclass life that was easier to conceptualize than the vast private
slums where equal disorder prevailed, but it would be foolish to deny
that much of American public housing has been abysmally designed,
built, and managed. Lacking an ideology of housing as a legitimate pub-
lic service, or a tradition of multi-family management transferable to
projects, many city officials outside New York allowed public housing to
become a welfare program, a racial program, a slum clearance program,
a dumping ground for urban renewal, and only secondarily a long-term
housing program. They rarely got it right.
The authors of the Final Report of the National Commission on Severely Dis-
tressed Public Housing (1992), which laid the groundwork for Hope VI,
came away “rightly alarmed by the broader pattern of inadequate man-
agement and deepening resident poverty” at most public housing au-
thorities. An “underclass culture” related to drugs and gangs seemed to
render all efforts at revitalization null. Most cities welcomed Hope VI’s
opportunity to initiate project demolition with new funds for renovation
and reconstruction, but New York did not. The high vacancy rates and
decades of vandalism made destruction of towers much easier and less
controversial in cities such as Chicago and Baltimore.64
Chicago, for instance, had squandered generous HUD subsidies. By
the 1970s, according to Bradford Hunt, the Chicago Housing Authority
inventory was “clogged with trash, infested with vermin, and overrun by
gangs. Heat, water, light, elevator, and trash systems worked erratically.”
By 1996, “over 17,800 of the Chicago Housing Authority’s 30,000 family
housing units failed a . . . ‘viability’ test.”65 In spite of the fact that the
rest of Chicago has rebounded from decades of white flight, public
housing remained mired in crime and dilapidation. Most of the CHA’s
high-rise inventory has either been demolished or is scheduled for clear-
Model Housing Revisited 267

ance and will be turned into low-rise, mixed-income communities. Low-

rise public housing, as in Boston, can also be economically renovated
into something that the planner Lawrence Vale believes approximates
“the privacy, security, and sense of community expected of more desir-
able private residential neighborhoods.” The long-term success of Hope
VI redevelopment projects in other cities is still unknown, but beyond
reducing poor people to a minority of the redeveloped site (one of the
primary activities of Hope VI) these new projects will only prosper to the
extent that new management practices emerge.66
New York’s full towers, in contrast, are far more difficult to reorganize
from both social and design perspectives, even when some problems do
exist. New York’s comparative success is best reflected in its nominal par-
ticipation in the federal Hope VI program. Edgemere/Arverne Houses
(1951/1961), now called Ocean Bay in Rockaway, are some of the few
developments that have been targeted for Hope VI renovation. Their
isolated location, high concentrations of welfare and single-parent fam-
ilies, crime, and other social problems made them better for Hope VI re-
development, even though they were full and comparatively well
maintained.67
The plan looks nothing like a conventional Hope VI project. Accord-
ing to NYCHA, the Rockaway plan is “unique among HOPE VI sites be-
cause it does not incorporate demolition of existing structures into its
revitalization plan.”68 Only about 100 apartments were lost for commu-
nity space, while significant resources were devoted to revitalizing
nearby retail services, the renovation of 1,800 apartments, and commu-
nity center enhancement. Other improvements included the elimina-
tion of balconies, renovated lobbies, and the addition of new marble
lintels and other details that reduce the “project” look. The renovated
apartments are now indistinguishable from private market rentals in
every way except cost. Hope VI has become a community revitalization
strategy rather than a dramatic redevelopment project in New York.69
NYCHA’s vitality can also be appreciated in its return to what once was
its most controversial activity: middle-income housing. Widespread con-
cerns about affordability and the expiration of state-funded affordable
housing programs have renewed calls for municipal leadership in mid-
dle-income housing. As one 1999 employer study found, “fully 86 per-
cent of respondents cited housing costs as a serious deterrent to doing
business in New York” and “45 percent of New Yorkers ‘seriously consid-
ered moving out of the city’ because of high housing costs.” In order to
compete as a global city, New York’s government believes that it must
offer relatively affordable housing to a range of the city’s inhabitants.70
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a multi-billion dollar,
165,000-unit program targeted at both lower- and middle-income New
268 Affordable Housing

Yorkers. He aims to create new housing with participation from NYCHA,

the city’s Housing Development Corporation, and the Department of
Housing Preservation and Development. Land for new affordable hous-
ing is now at a premium, but NYCHA has comparatively vast reserves of
open space. NYCHA controls land it has never developed and even its
vast superblocks are approximately 85 percent open space. NYCHA may
have extensively renovated its grounds, but plenty of underutilized park-
ing lots and other spaces are ripe for development. Already, for instance,
open spaces surrounding existing developments have been targeted for
new middle-income buildings in Chelsea. The insertion of middle-
income housing within high-rise public housing superblocks is doubtless
one of NYCHA’s more interesting social experiments. Given the author-
ity’s previous success rate, there is room for hope.71

A Century of Public Housing?

The housing authority will turn seventy-five in 2009. There should be
every reason to celebrate such an impressive management record and to
believe that NYHCA will make it to its centennial birthday. Yet skyrock-
eting fuel and pension costs, stingy federal administrators, and tenant
resistance to modest rent increases threaten to undermine NYCHA’s
long-term management success. It seems likely that the authority will
continue to make the right choices even with fewer resources, as it has
in past hard times, but its continued survival is not guaranteed. Well-
managed public housing will become a memory if NYCHA staffing is cut
more deeply.
New Yorkers, many of whom conceive of public housing as largely a li-
ability, easily discarded or privatized, fail to understand how embedded
public housing is in New York’s physical and urban fabric. NYCHA, as an
institution, represents a legacy of good government and affordable
housing every bit as valuable to the city as mass transportation and pub-
lic water. Nor could these towers realistically be sold without a political
uproar. Public housing tenants, and the politicians who represent them,
must consider reasonable rent increases in order to maintain good serv-
ices, but New Yorkers not living in public housing would be wise to pre-
vent the decline of such a valuable system by encouraging local and state
subsidy to replace federal support. Declining management, as in other
cities, could have a dramatic impact on property values and neighbor-
hood peace across the city. The effect that thousands of disordered
towers would have in New York is almost beyond imagination.