These days the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the talk of all of New York City. NYCHA is home to estimated 500,000 residents who reside in hundreds of buildings spread across New York City.
Invented in the 1930’s by then-New York City Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia, he was on record as saying “There shall forever be public housing for successive generations of poor people.”
Thus, NYCHA was created with the intention of being self-contained cities within a City. NYCHA projects were originally staffed with their own parks, employees, community centers, and they even had their own police department, etc. Over time, however, political attacks on poor people have become de rigueur across New York City. Millions of people grew up poor in America and nobody looked upon them as likely criminals or societal burdens to be swept away. Today is a whole new ball game. Attacks on poor people have become political theater.
Currently, public housing, long starved of public funding by federal, state and local government officials, is chaffing under the weight of large numbers of repair needs. Public housing also have become the target of developers who have been seen walking thru NYCHA grounds with shopping lists in hand, salivating at the possibilities. Real estate developers have coined a new political buzzword–‘underutilized’. Lately the word ‘underutilized’ has been thrown around with increasing frequency, even reckless abandon.
Each time a developer spies a piece of NYCHA with an eye towards getting a parcel for luxury development, they recklessly throw around the word ‘underutilized’ to cheapen even soften the impact of their proposed taking of NYCHA land.
It’s time to enact legislation that establishes objective and measurable criterion to make utilization determinations.. It must be clarified if parks and playgrounds are truly ‘underutilized’ or if these city-owned properties are merely eye candy for real estate interests.
Mayor LaGuardia must be turning in his grave at the attacks on NYCHA.
