Category: OpEd
No, Our Homes Aren’t a Plaything for Speculators
No, Our Homes Aren’t a Plaything for Speculators Disproportionately impacting the low-income and poorly housed, COVID-19 was, in the words of one London politician, “a housing disease.” Historically, working-class people fought for and won public housing as a way of getting homes that wouldn’t cost their lives. Today, we need…
OpEd titled “The City’s Three NYCHA Plans That Will Privatize Public Housing” for East New York News
Today, public housing in our city, and in the country really, is at a crossroads. Buildings are dilapidated, unsafe and unhealthy to the tune of $40 billion, meanwhile disinvestment has also led to an operating budget deficit. The City has put forth three plans they say will solve these coinciding…
OpEd titled “City’s Finance-Driven Approach to Managing NYCHA is Wrong for Tenants” for City Limits
Image credit: Adi Talwar Caption: A New York City Housing Authority building in the Ingersoll Housing complex near Downtown Brooklyn On Tuesday, July 28th, the Chair and CEO of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Greg Russ introduced a new “preservation strategy” for the city’s public housing. As City…
Opinion: A Public Letter to Public Officials on NYCHA
Image Credit: J. Murphy Caption: At the Ravenswood Houses in Queens. To the attention of all elected officials of city, state, and federal levels, and representatives of NYCHA and HUD: First, the Justice For All Coalition hopes you and your family are doing well and staying safe during these unprecedented…
OpEd titled “Envisioning A state of Care in a Time of COVID-19” on Medium
Image Credit: Posted to Instagram by Southern Poverty Law Center. Image of Dolores Huerta, Labor leader and civil rights activist stating: “Every single day we sit down to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, and at our table we have food that was planted, picked or harvested by a farm worker.…
OpEd titled “Sunnyside Yards Master Plan Sits on a Deck of Myths” in City Limits
Last Tuesday, the NYCEDC released their long-awaited—and dreaded—master plan for development over Sunnyside Yards. In it they praise themselves for their “robust engagement efforts” and “inclusive, community-driven process”, and for making this $14.4 billiion project about human and community needs rather than the profit desires of developers. They position the…
OpEd titled “Stop Sunnyside Yards! Reparative City Building Now!” in City Limits
Image Credit: Adi Talwar Caption: A 2017 Sunnyside Yards feasibility study proposed scenarios that included up to 24,000 units of housing—including up to 7,200 affordable units—in residential buildings as high as 69 stories, surrounded by as much as 52 acres of open space. Over the last year, the quasi-private, city-affiliated…
OpEd titled “NYCHA’s NextGen Threatens More Harm than Hope” in City Limits
Image Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office Caption: Mayor Bill de Blasio announces the city’s plan to renovate NYCHA apartments and preserve public housing in New York City at the NYCHA Hope Gardens Community Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday, December 12, 2018. In December 2018, the second and seemingly final installment…
OpEd titled “A Community-Centered Perspective on Displacement” in Shelterforce
Image Credit: Tree City Architecture. Illustration by Fritz Ahlefeldt via flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In the last year, displacement has become a hot topic for policy analysis and intervention in New York City and across the country. For example, in 2017 the Regional Plan Association released its fourth plan for…