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Housing
Contents
Apartment Houses > Before
the Tenement Housing Options in the 1860s > Tenements
> Public Housing > Housing Abandonment
> Gentrification >
Homelessness > Immigrant
Housing today > Housekeeping
in the Tenements > Rent, Wages and
the Cost of Living
Public Housing
Both the social geography and the architectural
design of public housing from the 1930s to the 1960s was shaped
by federal, state, and local government policies, and reflected
prevailing ideas about race, ethnicity, and poverty. Advocates of
public housing believed that a combination of well-designed new
housing and the elimination of tenements would alleviate pressing
social problems. Regardless of race or ethnicity, residents of early
public housing were never destitute but "deserving poor,"
families with steady, modest incomes. They considered public housing
a way station for the temporary poor, a place to live until they
could get back on their feet again and resume their rise into the
middle class.1
Completed in 1936 on the Lower East Side, First Houses was the first
wholly government-built housing project in New York City. Tearing
down some existing buildings and reconstructing others, architects
created a complex of 24 rehabilitated prelaw tenements with courtyards
and shared recreational space. By nature a small-scale development,
First Houses would be atypical of what was to come in subsequent
decades.2
Unlike earlier efforts, post-World War II public housing was designed
for the very poor. Potential tenants were drawn from applicants
who showed an income level 20 percent below that of those able to
afford the least expensive housing. Upon moving in, residents' lives
were constrained. Apartments contained no large spaces for storage
of objects like bicycles or suitcases, because these possessions
were thought to be beyond the means of tenants. Architects, social
workers, and housing authority staffs sought to improve the domestic
life of tenants by reinforcing certain behaviors, but they failed
to fully understand the economic situations that had brought them
there.2
By the 1950s, conditions in public housing had begun to deteriorate.
Segregation and racial tensions became critical issues which initiated
a shift in both architecture and policy for urban public housing.
Due to a large postwar migration of African-Americans, and urban
renewal and highway construction projects that destroyed minority
neighborhoods, increasing numbers of blacks applied for public housing.
What is more, the New York City Housing Authority was required to
conform to the existing pattern of segregation in each locality.
In this context, public housing came to no longer be seen as a temporary
stop for the "worthy poor" on their way to homeownership
and the middle class. Rather, it became the last refuge for the
very poor.4
Even in the 1950s, most housing officials still believed that they
could reform poor families' behavior by placing them in model environments.
The vision of the model environment, however, changed dramatically,
from less emphasis on building communities to more talk about enforcing
order. This turn witnessed a preference for massive projects of
the towering superblock variety, instead of small developments (such
as First Houses and Vladeck Houses) that were better integrated
into the neighborhood.5
In many ways, this model of public housing failed. In terms of children's
needs, the huge courtyards became empty wastelands where no one
felt safe. Rather than leave them unattended, mothers kept their
children in all day. More importantly, it destroyed what critics
felt helps make cities vibrant, dynamic places-mixed residential
and commercial uses, frequent interaction between diverse peoples,
and human-scale neighborhoods. In addition, according to some critics,
high density and monotonous standardization made the projects look
harshly institutional, which demeaned the tenants with a charity
stigma.6
Since the 1980s, when New York City embarked upon a housing disposition
program to deal with hundreds of foreclosed properties (abandoned
buildings, vacant lots, dilapidated semi-occupied buildings), developers
and non-profit organizations have pioneered new and innovative approaches
to the development of low-income housing. The city "gave"
many of these properties to nonprofits and other developers with
the intention that they would renovate or build, own, and manage
them. Such housing programs allowed for the revitalization of distressed
neighborhoods including the Lower East Side.
See also: Economic Depressions/Great Depression/Fiorello
La Guardia and the New York's New Deal; Economic Depressions/Great
Depression/Public Housing and Slum Clearance.
1
Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling
Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990); Gwendlyn Wright, Building the
Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1981), pp. 220-240.
2 Christoper Mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture and Real
Estate in New York City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000).
3 Wright, Building the Dream, 220-240.
4 Ibid.
5 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
(New York: Random House, 1961); Plunz, A History of Housing in
New York City; Wright, Building the Dream.
6 Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities; Plunz,
A History of Housing in New York City; Wright, Building
the Dream.
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