Periodical: Design Observer

Thesis: While mixed-income housing is the solution for the low-income housing problems, they should produce fair, and ethical rights to our community occupying our cities.

Summary:

Throughout decades the public housing system has developed many problems. At one point and time affordable housing held so much hope and promise for cities’ poor community, but then they have become centers for crime, violence, and gang activity. Therefore affordable housing projects tend to be rejected by the upper-class community. However, some have become with a better way to carry out affordable housing into our cities without concentrating crime and poverty, and preventing a ‘critical mass’ of low-income housing from forming a ghetto. What is being tried in most cities is the method of spreading out public housing into small low-density units throughout a city. This model gives the parents and their children access to better schools, and employment opportunities. This is a great initiative and could better the housing community. The problem with this is that although the low-income people who are being moved to better neighborhoods are still being segregated from the upper class community, and not only by the upper-class community, but also by some developers.

A development tower rising on the Upper West Side of Manhattan’s waterfront in NYC known as “Riverside South” is a prime example of this problem. The building will offer luxury condos and affordable apartments in the same building, making it a mixed-income building. The problem is that the future owners of the condos will have access to all the amenities of the building, while those who will be on the affordable housing part of the building wont, and are going to be required to enter through another door. This has become known as the controversial “poor door.” According to The Post, Councilman Robert Jackson has proposed a bill that would need city buildings receiving affordable-housing subsidies to give access to the same services, amenities and entrances to all tenants of a particular building regardless of rent price. Yet some have spoken in defense of the “poor door” such as Josh Barro’ Building insider editor. On his article he states, “Getting mad about the “poor door” is absurd. The only real outrage is that the developer had to build affordable units at all” (Barro). Furthermore, According to several studies conducted in several parts of the world states that residents of mixed-income public housing are “widely stigmatized and associated with negative characteristics such as a propensity for criminal behavior and a weak work ethic” (Levy). Also, on a series of interviews with 35 relocated public housing residents at three mixed‐income developments in Chicago made by “City and Community” researchers, the interviewees reported being “singled-out and differentially treated by both the Housing Authority’s administrative procedures for resident relocation and by their new, higher-income neighbors” (McCormick).

These discriminatory practices are denying all people the equality that being human demands therefore, these should not exist. According to a cityscape journal “Mixed-income strategies can succeed in spatially desegregating households by income and improving lives through environmental changes, but so far they have proven insufficient for overcoming social barriers and alleviating poverty” (Levy). If a mixed-income building is the answer to our affordable housing problems, then all the occupants of that building should share the same amenities of the wealthier counterparts, including the fitness center, pool and entertainment room, and give the same level of courtesy and prompt service from the staff.

Sources:

1. Navarro, Mireya. “‘Poor Door’ in a New York Tower Opens a Fight Over Affordable Housing.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.
2. Barro, Josh. “In Defense Of The ‘Poor Door’: Why It’s Fine For A Luxury Condo Developer To Keep Its Low-Income Units Separate.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.
3. Levy, Diane K., Zach McDade, and Kassie Bertumen. “Mixed-Income Living: Anticipated and Realized Benefits for Low-Income Households.” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research2 (2013): 15-28. Print.
4. CHASKIN, ROBERT J., and MARK L. JOSEPH. “Social Interaction in mixed‐income Developments: Relational Expectations and Emerging Reality.” Journal of Urban Affairs2 (2011): 209-37. Web.
5. McCormick, Naomi J., Mark L. Joseph, and Robert J. Chaskin. “The New Stigma of Relocated Public Housing Residents: Challenges to Social Identity in Mixed‐Income Developments.” City & Community3 (2012): 285-308. Web.
6. Gans, Herbert J. People, Plans, and Policies: Essays on Poverty, Racism, and Other National Urban Problems. New York: Columbia UP :, 1991. Print.

Photography by Tom Bonner

Architecture by Studio 111