The financialization of housing is raising the cost of human shelter worldwide, leading to similar problems in many countries, with growing populations being priced out of housing altogether and forced into homelessness.
It makes for an argument that concerned citizens should look for solutions anywhere worldwide, particularly in places better equipped to reveal advances in both thought and action to deal with a shrinking stock of affordable housing.
Which takes us frequently to New York City. Still to be found there is roughly half of all of America’s still existing and endlessly discredited public housing. It is still considered important in spite of some 40 billion plus dollars needed for repairs.
We might expect that local attitudes towards public housing owned by the New York City Housing authority (NYCHA) would favour rapidly dumping as much as possible. Instead, recent calls have been for the repurposing of empty green space between existing public housing buildings. There are good arguments to be made for using the empty space to create a more effective neighbourhood, with mixed housing and business services. But although it is fashionable to hate public housing, some are calling for construction of more of it1.
Clearly, there is a recognition that in a local, state and national affordable housing crisis, public housing (warts suitably removed) remains one of the few reliable methods of guaranteeing housing that is affordable for the most vulnerable citizens.
Except … the events of the COVID pandemic are threatening to change the character of city downtowns, with work-from-home hollowing out downtown business districts. Will the gentrification of city cores slow, perhaps even cease all together? The value of expensive condos that have replaced poor inner city suburbs may diminish. They may no longer benefit from their proximity to a not-so-thriving downtown, as well as being in walking distance to work in glass business towers that are now empty.
So will we see a reverse migration of wealthier citizens back to the lawns and veggie gardens in the more spacious suburbs? If so, the recent decline of suburbs as the place to live may be reversed. In the meantime however, there are calls for the suburbs to carry a share of the burden that may be necessary if no more effective means can be found for housing society’s most vulnerable people.
New York may be a continental bellwether for understanding the future for sorely needed, and hopefully more effective, new public housing. An article on the role of New York’s suburbs in this role may be worthy of thoughtful consideration in other jurisdictions. Read more in CITYLIMITS: New York’s Suburbs Need Social Housing
