Read more: In Brooklyn, Public Housing Tenants Struggle Against the ‘Slow Violence’ of Industrial PollutionĪt least one other public housing project in the city was able to secure a similar win in the months following. Cooper Park is located within a mile of two Superfund sites. The use of environmental law highlighted an under-utilized path in housing activism, especially considering 70% of all Superfund sites - a term used to describe the country’s most toxic sites - are located within 1 mile of public housing, impacting more than 9,000 federally subsidized housing properties. With legal help from Segal and TakeRoot Justice, residents showed that NYCHA failed to follow environmental-review procedures and did not adequately engage residents as the development plan was crafted. Eighty percent of the new units were slated to be luxury apartments, which would have drastically changed the economic makeup of the community. In 2019, the resident council - primarily older, longtime tenants of Cooper Houses - successfully fought off a proposal by NYCHA to lease the housing project’s parking lots to private developers who would then build “mixed-income” apartments. To win housing rights battles against the government and developers, Segal says, “you must be somewhat organized and in-community before the attempted takeover starts. “ have the secret sauce: a very strong, sustained, on-the-ground organizing presence,” said Segal. With decades of organizing under their belt, the residents exemplify tenant activism for other low-income renters throughout the city and country, says Paula Segal, a lawyer with the grassroots advocacy group TakeRoot Justice focused on housing issues in New York City. “I don’t see where our political leaders are really fighting for us to have housing,” she says. Karen Leader sits in her motorized scooter inside her 1-bedroom apartment in the Cooper Park Houses. One block east, there is a 120-acre natural gas plant. A few blocks west, posh restaurants, coffee shops, and new, modern, gray luxury apartment buildings line the streets. “The residents know when it’s time to come together and how to fight, when it seems like our political leaders and these companies want to get rid of us,” Leader said.Ĭooper Park Houses, a 70-year-old complex home to 1,500 people, sits in one of the fastest gentrifying areas in New York City, serving as a buffer between now-multimillion-dollar homes and heavy industry. Neighbors have survived by simply “sticking together,” says Karen Leader, a Cooper Park resident of more than 30 years. Tenants in the New York City Housing Authority’s Cooper Park Houses, a historically Black low-income housing complex in Brooklyn, are accustomed to making do and defying the odds, whether that means scrambling to secure last-minute holiday meals for neighbors or fighting off multibillion-dollar energy corporations and developers hoping to take control of their homes. With the housing justice movement advancing across the U.S., residents in one New York public housing project hope to serve as a model. In Chicago’s Cook County, more than 50% of renters are “rent burdened,” paying more than 30% of their income in rent. In Oakland, California, following a years-long rent strike against a landlord who wanted to kick out tenants to raise rents, voters made it illegal to evict people without reason, a win against displacement and gentrification.Īnd in Chicago, organizers fought the real estate lobby to successfully push state measures that stabilize rents. In Kansas City, Missouri, residents pushed city leaders to codify a right to legal counsel during eviction procedures for low-income residents as rents rose 10% last year. In the last year, as these protections dwindled across the country, tenants in Black neighborhoods have taken up fights to improve housing access and have won significant battles. As millions lost their jobs, many Americans were only able to remain housed thanks to the advent of COVID-19 housing policies, including eviction moratoriums and rent freezes. The coronavirus pandemic laid bare the critical need for affordable housing across the United States. This story was published in partnership with The City.
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