It is five o’clock, when I arrive at The Theater at City Tech. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) annual hearing starts at five-thirty. After a quick press conference alongside Council Member Chris Banks who chairs the public housing committee of the city council, I sign up to speak, like a good citizen, like
The Chair left early. So did the truth. Read More »
Public housing must remain public. The name really says it all. This should not be a radical idea. It should be the municipal equivalent of “water is wet.” And yet, after forty years of historic disinvestment in housing, the assault is shifting. It is no longer only the housing that is being assailed. It is
The Budget Line That Ate Public Housing Read More »
Three years ago, my friend Vittoria Fariello approached me. She wanted to tell me about a bill she was advocating for. She knew I was generally inclined to support labor issues, civil rights, and human rights. She told me the bill introduced by Council Member Christopher Marte, would make it illegal for home-care attendants to
Schrödinger’s Home-Care Aide Read More »
On Friday afternoons, the community room at Westbeth artist building performs a small act of defiance. The room itself is not terribly remarkable: a low ceiling, a row of stackable chairs, the linoleum has the matte tiredness of civic space. Nothing about the room announces transcendence, except maybe the grand piano. By a quarter past
Eve Zanni: A Different Kind of Capital, by Layla Law-Gisiko Read More »
Demolition must have hired a good PR firm. It gets mentioned as if it were renewal. In the language of planning documents and press releases, buildings are “cleared,” sites are “activated,” neighborhoods are “reimagined”, and in the case of public housing, it was referred to as “decanted”, a vocable usually reserved for wine! The verbs
The High Cost of the Wrecking Ball Read More »
