When Housing Was a Human Right

In 1967, when I was four years old, my family moved into RNA House, at 150-160 West Ninety-Sixth Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue in New York City. It was one of the first in a series of brutalist, no-frills, co-op super-slabs created at a time when the idea that “housing is a human right” was a guiding principle of politics, urban design, and planning. Each cooperator, as they were known, owned a share of the co-op upon purchase; if they left, they sold the share back for the same amount. The point was not to make a profit, but to live an affordable, safe, communal life in an integrated stable community. Those with earnings above a certain amount were ineligible to buy. My parents bought our three-bedroom subsidized apartment well below market rate, for $3,800.

After the Depression and World War II, there was a desperate need to construct housing for low- and middle-income American families. In response, President Truman passed the Housing Act of 1949, which greatly increased funding for public housing construction and expanded federal mortgage insurance. Truman declared: “How can we expect to sell democracy to Europe [via the Marshall Plan] until we prove that within the democratic system, we can provide decent homes for our people?” This was the peak of progressive government housing activism in New York City. Politicians, urban planners, and architects combined forces to socially engineer large swaths of slums into New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) towers meant for the working class.

Soon after, combining public and private investment, New York State passed the 1955 Limited-Profit Housing Companies Act or Mitchell-Lama Housing program, designed for moderate- and middle-income New Yorkers like my family. The state gave developers low-interest loans, mortgages, and tax exemptions to build apartments contingent upon controlled rents and sales prices below market value for a twenty-year period, which allowed people to live with housing security and thrive. Once the twenty years passed, the buildings could either opt out of the program and privatize, or refinance under the same conditions and remain public. This opt-out provision, introduced in 1959 by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to encourage private investment,