Chicago Tribute: 

Study: CHA residents marginally better off than when living in high-rises

By Antonio Olivo. Chicago Tribune reporter, March 10, 2013

Public housing residents in Chicago are marginally better off today than when they lived in the high-rise towers that have since been torn down, though more social services are needed to prevent a backslide, a study scheduled to be released Monday finds.

Continuing problems with poverty and crime in their new neighborhoods point to a potentially dark future for many of those nearly 16,000 families, particularly children, the report by the Washington-based Urban Institute says..

“In the absence of a major intervention, most of these young people are likely to be mired in the same type of poverty as their parents, living in neighborhoods suffering from chronic disadvantage and cycling in and out of the workforce,” the study says.”

Photo: On July 31, 2012 a group gathered, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, for a ceremony heralding the completion of the first stage of the new mixed-income Park Douglas apartments located on the corner of 13th Street and Washtenaw Avenue in Chicago. (Abel Uribe/ Chicago Tribune) (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune / July 31, 2012)

Daily News: 

“NYCHA set to lease playgrounds, community centers for luxury high-rises

The housing authority hopes to generate nearly $50 million in lease payments that will be used to rejuvenate deteriorating housing projects and close $60 million annual deficit.

Greg B. Smith. Feb 5, 2013

The housing authority is planning its very own Tale of Two Cities.

To raise much-needed cash, the agency plans to lease out land to private developers who will then build some 3 million square feet of luxury apartments smack in the middle of Manhattan housing projects.

Internal documents obtained by the Daily News show the planned 4,330 apartments in eight developments are all in hot real estate neighborhoods, including the upper East and West Sides, the lower East Side and lower Manhattan.

Developers will get a sweet deal: a 99-year lease with the lease payments to the authority frozen for the first 35 years.

And they’ll get a big break on property taxes because 20% of the units will be set aside as “affordable,” offered to families of four that make $50,000 or less.

But the vast majority of units — 80% — are “market rate,” and in the neighborhoods chosen by the New York City Housing Authority, that rate is astronomical.”

Photo: Smith Houses tenant Association President Aixa Torres opposes the NYCHA plan to build luxury apartments on playgrounds, community centers and parking lots.

ANTHONY LANZILOTE/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The Lo-Down: 

NYCHA Plans Luxury Housing Alongside Five LES Public Housing Projects

The next big housing battle on the Lower East Side is upon us.  In the past month, officials with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) have been briefing elected officials and some tenant leaders about plans to lease a huge amount of property alongside public housing to private developers for market-rate apartments and retail.    Last night, at a meeting of Community Board 3′s land use committee, activists began to mobilize against the proposal, one tenant leader saying in regards to NYCHA, “if you want a war you’ve got a war.”

The cash-strapped agency has been talking about selling or leasing some of its property for years.  A 2008 report from the Manhattan Borough President found that the housing authority has more than 30 million square feet of unused property rights (including parking lots, playgrounds and open space).  In September, NYCHA Chairman John Rhea signaled that he was preparing to move ahead with the leasing plan as a way of narrowing the authority’s annual $60 million budget gap.

Members of the City Council, including local representatives Margaret Chin and Rosie Mendez, have been told that NYCHA plans to put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) from developers next month. The Daily News obtained “internal documents” showing an initial offering of three million square feet “in hot real estate neighborhoods, including the upper East and West Sides, the lower East Side and lower Manhattan.”

Photo: via Alfred E. Smith Houses Facebook page.

The Atlantic Cities:

“Will Climate Change Alter the Geography of New York’s Public Housing?

Richard Greenwald. Jan 3, 2013

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy last October, a renewed public and journalistic focus on public housing emerged that left many questions unanswered. Writing on December 3 in The New York Times, Jonathan Mahler asked what might have been the most basic questionon people’s minds on the topic: “How is it possible that the same winding, 538-mile coastline that has recently been colonized by condominium developers chasing wealthy New Yorkers, themselves chasing waterfront views, had been, for decades, a catch basin for many of the city’s poorest residents?”

Mahler’s answer was a restatement of our common belief. “New York,” he wrote, “started building housing projects on the waterfront because that’s where its poorest citizens happened to live. It continued because that’s where space was most readily available. Finally, it built them there because that’s where its projects already were.”

But Mahler only finds half the answer. What really drove this process was the impact of early de-industrialization.”

Photo: Reuters

“The New York Times:

Housing Agency’s Flaws Revealed by Storm

By ERIC LIPTON and MICHAEL MOSS. December 9, 2012

Three weeks after Hurricane Sandy, fresh teams of federal disaster recovery workers rushed to Coney Island to solve a troubling mystery: few people were signing up for federal financial aid. The workers trooped into the city’s public housing towers, climbing up darkened stairwells, shouting “FEMA,” knocking on doors.

What they found surprised even these veteran crews.

Dozens of frail, elderly residents and others with special needs were still stranded in their high-rise apartments — even though life in much of New York City had returned to near normal. In apartment 8F of one tower, Daniel O’Neill, a 75-year-old retired teacher who uses a wheelchair and who still lacked reliable electricity, cut in half the dosage of his $132-a-month medicine, which he needed to stabilize his swollen limbs.”

Photo: Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

The New York Times: 

How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor

By Jonathan Mahler Dec 3, 2012

In retrospect, after the storm, it looked like a perverse stroke of urban planning. Many of New York City’s most vulnerable people had been housed in its most vulnerable places: public housing projects along the water, in areas like the Rockaways, Coney Island, Red Hook and Alphabet City.

How is it possible that the same winding, 538-mile coastline that has recently been colonized by condominium developers chasing wealthy New Yorkers, themselves chasing waterfront views, had been, for decades, a catch basin for many of the city’s poorest residents? The answer is a combination of accident, grand vision and political expedience.”

Photo: Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times

The Architect’s Newspaper: 

“PUBLIC HOUSING AFTER SANDY

Nicole Anderson. Nov 21, 2012

New York City Housing Authority announced Monday evening that the power is back on in all of the 402 buildings that were affected by Hurricane Sandy, but after weeks without heat, water, and electricity, residents were frustrated and asking why it took the city so long to restore services.

At a contentious meeting on Monday night with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) representatives, residents from the Red Hook Houses expressed concern about their safety and the general stability of the buildings after Hurricane Sandy.

“We have assessed all the buildings and we did not find any structural damage in the buildings so they will not be condemned,” said Cecil House, NYCHA general manager.

Some residents, however, say this isn’t true. June Clarkson, a resident who has lived Red Hook House East for 51 years, said that on the outside of her building it appears that bricks are coming loose, and inside her apartment she believes something like “asbestos is bubbling” from the ceiling.”

Photo: ELEVEN DAYS AFTER HURRICANE SANDY, THE RED HOOK HOUSES WERE STILL WITHOUT POWER. SHELLEY BERNSTEIN / FLICKR

“NYTIMES: 

In New York’s Public Housing, Fear Creeps In With the Dark

By CARA BUCKLEY and MICHAEL WILSON.  Nov 2, 2012

It would be dark soon at the Coney Island Houses, the fourth night without power, elevators and water. Another night of trips up and down pitch-black staircases, lighted by shaky flashlights and candles. Another night of retreating from the dark.

n the second floor of Building 4, an administrative assistant named Santiago, 43, who was sharing her apartment with five relatives, ran through a mental checklist. Turn the oven on for heat. Finish errands, like fetching water for the toilet, before the light fades.

“We don’t dare throw out garbage at night,” she said. “We make sure everything’s done.”

Elsewhere in the building, Sandra Leon, 35, a mother of two, kept an eye on her door fearing another attempted break-in. Victor Alvarez, 60, waited for any word of his wife, Lucet, who suffers from schizophrenia and had disappeared into the wreckage-strewed neighborhood. And Marilyn Smalls, 48, sipped a room-temperature Corona that she had liberated from a gas-station trash bin the day before, along with sodas and bags of beef jerky — which drew neighbors knocking, as word of the haul got out.

Perhaps more so than in any other place in the city, the loss of power for people living in public housing projects forced a return to a primal existence. Opened fire hydrants became community wells. Sleep-and-wake cycles were timed to sunsets and sunrises. People huddled for warmth around lighted gas stoves as if they were roaring fires. Darkness became menacing, a thing to be feared.”

Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

“The Right Way to Engage Residents in a Neighborhood Redesign

Kaid Benfield. June 7, 2012

Denver’s rejuvenated South Lincoln neighborhood, being redeveloped in phases, will be walkable, transit-oriented, equitable, green, and perfectly located in close proximity to downtown jobs and services. It’s a terrific new model-in-the-making of how to revitalize older, distressed public housing sites in an ambitious yet sensitive way. But what really sets the South Lincoln project apart from others is the outstanding predevelopment public engagement and analysis undertaken by the Denver Housing Authority to ensure that the new community will deliver maximum benefits to existing and new residents and neighbors.

Last month I wrote about the Denver Regional Equity Atlas, a compendium of maps and research showing how the city’s expanding transit system can be leveraged to bring opportunity to traditionally underserved populations. A couple of weeks later, my collaborator Lee Epstein wrote an article about how we can use emerging technology to facilitate citizen participation in the design of sustainable communities. Neither of us had the South Lincoln redevelopment in mind when we wrote those posts, but we certainly could have.  Now that I have had an opportunity to research the project, it’s hard to imagine a better exemplar for both subjects.

Anticipating full redevelopment of the 17.5-acre site by 2018, DHA will replace 182 outmoded apartments in an area of “concentrated poverty and physical distress,” to use the phrase of the Housing Authority’s Kimball Crangle in a presentation to the Urban Land Institute last year. The new community will include 457 homes, including over 300 public housing residences, workforce homes and other affordable housing. There will be 147 units available at market rates, creating a mixed-income neighborhood.

Public and affordable housing will be available to households earning less than 80 percent of the area median income; workforce housing will be available to those earning 50 to 60 percent of the area median income. All homes will be within convenient walking distance of the neighborhood’s light rail station and expected nearby mixed uses. By coordinating demolition and construction in phases, all residents will maintain the ability to remain in the neighborhood during the redevelopment process.

The first new project to be completed in the neighborhood is a 100-unit, eight-story apartment building for seniors and the disabled, constructed on a remediated brownfield site. Expected to earn a LEED-platinum rating, the building features rooftop solar panels, an advanced green heating and cooling system, and graywater recycling; the landscaping in the adjacent right-of-way includes green infrastructure for stormwater management.

Apart from the green features, among the building’s tenants is a youth culinary academy providing job training. Denver artist Jolt and his company GuerillaGarden created a 5,000-square-foot mural symbolizing community pride that stretches the full 90-foot height of one wall of the building.”

Via: The Atlantic Cities

Image: Courtesy of Mithun

“The Future of the Public Housing Project

Karl Benfield. March 2, 2012

Like the equally infamous Cabrini-Green public housing project in Chicago, the Pruitt-Igoe towers in St. Louis were once seen as beacons of hope, a way to bring quality housing to families in need, amidst green space and close to jobs and amenities. Built in 1954, the 33 nearly identical high-rises once stood where the large, green plot of land in the satellite image above is now.

What we know now but didn’t then, unfortunately, is that concentrating low-income, largely African-American families in an artificially contrived environment that isolated them from the rest of their communities - frequently with the approval of a fearful white elite who preferred it that way - was a formula for disaster. Whites fled America’s central cities beginning in the 1960s, taking their tax base and investment dollars with them, leaving behind what amounted to high-rise ghettoes plagued by poverty and devoid of hope and opportunity.

Those that could get out, did, leaving behind vacancies even in the housing projects that became breeding grounds for addiction and crime. Only now are we starting to emerge from some of the darkest decades of our urban history, with challenges remaining but lessons learned. Recognized as a failure, Pruitt-Igoe was famously demolished in 1972 (as was Cabrini-Green over time, beginning in 1995).

A recent publication by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development summarizes some of the research findings relevant to concentrated poverty:

‘Neighborhoods of concentrated poverty isolate their residents from the resources and networks they need to reach their potential and deprive the larger community of the neighborhood’s human capital … many neighborhood-level indicators are linked to important outcomes for people residing in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, including crime and delinquency, education, psychological distress, and various health problems.’

Things are finally beginning to look up. Today, central cities are starting to rebound, faster in some places than others, of course.  About a mile northeast of what was once Pruitt-Igoe, the once-abandoned historic neighborhood of Old North Saint Louis is becoming a model of revitalization done thoughtfully and well; to the southeast, the Murphy Park neighborhood (see photo) stands as a much more walkable and human-scaled approach to urban housing, a prototype of what we now know as the HOPE VI program (more recently expanded intoChoice Neighborhoods). HOPE VI and Choice replace distressed, ghetto-style public housing projects with mixed-income communities more integrated into their cities.”

Via: The Atlantic

Photo: Missouri History Museum