Six on New York: Residents an Afterthought in Public Housing Privatization Coverage; N.Y. Had a Plan for a ‘Pied-à-Terre’ Ta
panaritisp
Residents an Afterthought in Public Housing Privatization Coverage
"When governments propose multi-billion-dollar programs, one would hope media coverage would center first and foremost the human beings most directly affected by them—especially when those programs affect the lives of some of the most marginalized people in society. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to fill the $31.8 billion five-year funding gap for repairs and replacements of thousands of deteriorating public housing apartments in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the US’s largest provider of public housing, is a perfect test case.
The 10-year plan called NYCHA 2.0 will pay for 75 percent of NYCHA’s renovations by handing over the management of 62,000 of NYCHA’s 175,000+ apartments (more than a third of the stock) to private developers; selling NYCHA air rights to private developers; and facilitating “infills,” mostly huge apartment buildings with 70 percent market-rate apartments, to be built on open space in housing developments by—you guessed it—private developers.
Several alarm bells should have rung when this was announced last November. After all, converting public housing apartments into quasi-private Section 8 housing, selling air rights and inserting private developments into public housing projects sounds a lot like privatization—a direct attack on the public nature of public housing.
Media have been very clear that thousands of NYCHA residents, mostly black and brown persons, are suffering from lead poisoning (Gothamist, 8/31/18), mold (New York Daily News, 7/5/18), no heat (New York Times, 12/19/18), broken elevators (New York, 2/12/19) or other dangerous, unfulfilled maintenance requests across 326 developments.
And few skip the opportunity to describe NYCHA and its units as “troubled” (Wall Street Journal, 1/31/19), “embattled” (New York Post, 3/7/19) or “dilapidated” (NY1, 11/19/18). Many are ripe to blame NYCHA’s crises on “years of disinvestment” (Curbed, 2/21/19).
So surely when journalists heard that there would be no additional city funding (cursed disinvestment!) for NYC public housing, but rather a whole host of privatization initiatives, their first thought was: What do the residents think? Right?
Wrong. A Nexis search of English-language news articles (excluding TV news write-ups) that include “NYCHA 2.0,” or mention “NYCHA” and words like “private” and “privatize” in reference to the proposed public/private partnerships, turned up 42 reports over a four-month period (11/15/18–3/15/19). Public housing residents represented only 9 percent of the 105 total sources quoted in these stories.
Government officials, largely pro–NYCHA 2.0, made up 63 percent of sources, followed by nonprofit advocates (14 percent). These advocates often come from orgs funded by the real estate, construction and development industries, like the Citizen Budget Commission and the New York Housing Conference.
Corporate sources, some of whom were former government officials, were also 9 percent of sources. Evidently real estate/development industry voices are just as elucidating as the people whose actual homes are at stake under NYCHA 2.0. But then, this wouldn’t be the first time that voices with the most at stake were pushed to the margins of their own story by corporate media (FAIR.org, 7/1/14, 7/17/18, 6/21/18).
Outlets’ reliance on largely pro–NYCHA 2.0 government quotes, and developers themselves, has mostly left substantive critiques of NYCHA 2.0 unexpressed. If not lending explicit editorial/op-ed endorsement (New York Daily News, 11/21/18; New York Post, 1/31/19; Crain’s New York, 11/27/18; Real Estate Weekly, 12/18/18), the media inadequately questioned the plan’s dangers for residents, or just outright ignored them.
Politico (11/15/18) was first to report on NYCHA 2.0’s whispers. Aside from a quick “the proposals…will likely spark concerns from residents and elected officials” tacked onto the end of the article, the piece’s description of the plan’s key features reads like an investment sales pitch:
The vouchers are more appealing to private developers who are given partial control over the sites and are responsible for managing the buildings, generally leading to faster repairs.
Crain’s (11/16/18) similarly acknowledges that infills “might rankle affordable housing advocates,” without subsequently consulting a single housing advocate or resident. Instead, they quote a special advisor to the Jonathan Rose Companies development firm, passively identified as “a former NYCHA executive who helped draft the plan.” Other reports (e.g., Real Estate Weekly, 12/5/18; QNS, 12/20/18) raised no concerns at all. Metro New York (11/19/18) took De Blasio’s statement, “These [public/private] partnerships are one of our best-proven tools to deliver critical repairs,” as a matter of fact.
See the top five designs for Shirley Chisholm’s Brooklyn monument
