Monday, April 24, 2023

What Happened To The Original 1970's Roosevelt Island Affordable Housing Experiment - Plot Of Land Podcast Talks To Current And Displaced Residents To Find Out In Excellent Piece Of Reporting

Roosevelt Island was built by government in the 1970's as an experiment in developing affordable housing for a multi-income, multi racial and disabled population. What happened to the Roosevelt Island housing experiment from the 1970's to today is the subject of an excellent piece of journalism by the Plot Of Land Podcast. The reporters of this 2 part series are Melissa Fundira who grew up on Roosevelt Island and Jameela Hamond. 

According to the Plot Of Land Episode 6 transcript:

... Hammond: For this episode we’re going to join Plot of Land reporter Melissa Fundira. Melissa actually grew up on Roosevelt Island. Her family moved there from Gabon in 1999, when she was just 6 years old. Here’s Melissa.

Fundira: I don’t think it was a typical New York City upbringing for a kid. We had so much freedom to just roam. Some of my fondest memories were summers spent playing with other kids on the island. As young as 7 years old, 6 even, we’d leave the house around 10 AM, wouldn’t come back ‘til 6 PM for dinner. None of us had cell phones at that time of course, but we just knew there would always be someone to hang with if we showed up at Blackwell Park, or at the courtyard between 20 and 30 River Road, or any number of playgrounds and other public spaces. Our parents didn’t really have any reasons to worry about us.

My family’s originally from Rwanda, but my parents raised my brother and I mostly in Gabon before we moved to Roosevelt Island, so moving here was our first time living outside of Africa. And I can’t say that I really remember experiencing much of any sort of culture shock. There were so many other families from Africa on the island, so many other kids whose parents worked for the United Nations like my mom did.

It was such a dreamy place to grow up. As I got older, I started realizing that all the things I love about Roosevelt Island were really by design. And that we were all subjects in a grand social experiment. An experiment that wanted to prove that the government was capable of building quality housing for New Yorkers of all racial and economic backgrounds.

And like Jameela was saying earlier, this vision, one in which U.S. tax dollars go towards providing housing for all, this vision is closely tied to the island’s namesake: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt....

Listen to Part 1 of the Podcast or read the transcript.

According to the Episode 7 transcript:

... Melissa: This story, about the soccer and sports teams, is in many ways an analogy for what happened to housing on Roosevelt Island. When the original four Roosevelt Island apartment buildings opened, everyone was on the same team. Yes, there was class differentiation, but everyone lived in subsidized housing and shared the same spaces.

Today, there are those who buy or rent at market rate, those who are shareholders in a co-op, those fighting eviction notices, those living in Section-8 housing, and those weathering a new management company every other year hoping to not get priced out when the next lease comes along. Each scenario offers a different level of housing security, a different level of access to resources and opportunities; things like traveling soccer clubs for some kids and gutted soccer programs for others. It’s a far cry from the UDC’s vision of Roosevelt Island as a mixed community equally enjoying what the neighborhood had to offer. It’s a neighborhood divided.

Ross: The adults of my generation tried very hard, even the teenagers of, of my time, the 80s, the 90s tried very hard to curate and cultivate a neighborhood where everyone got along, right? Because that was the premise of Roosevelt Island, the social economical, uh, project. It was an experience. It's no longer that. As new buildings came in, as rents go up. It's becoming a haves versus have nots. You have people, what I call them temporary people making permanent decisions.

Melissa: Temporary is a tricky word, because the island’s newer residents aren’t all necessarily transient. Many want to make a long-term home of the island and believe in its original ethos. But still, that sentiment holds, and I’ve heard it get expressed in different ways. What people mean, I think, is that the island’s newer residents want their buildings to be more exclusive, which by definition, excludes people. And the ones being excluded, the people being shut out, they’re often part of a community 30, 40 years in the making, one founded on a principle of inclusion.

And that exclusion….

... Melissa: I reached out to the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation several times for an interview. That’s the corporation set up in 1984 by New York State to run the island. I wanted to ask someone there about its priorities and goals when it comes to providing genuinely affordable housing for low and middle income residents. No one returned my requests.

As a public-benefit corporation, its goal is to develop the island and presumably, it can help set the agenda for what gets built or doesn’t get built. But lately, the majority of new housing there has been prioritized for upper middle income residents. And the last meaningful remaining plots of land on the southern tip of the island are now home to Cornell University’s tech campus and the long-awaited Four Freedoms State Park. These last developments are appreciated in many ways, but certainly many have wondered: what if the state chose to build more subsidized housing there instead?...

Listen to Part 2 of the podcast or read the transcript.

Here's some more interesting observations on the beginnings of Roosevelt Island as a residential community

and the gentrification of Roosevelt Island.

 

In October 2020, developer Hudson Related opened Riverwalk Park which had over 70 thousand lottery applications for an apartment in the 340 unit affordable housing building.

If you haven't listened to the Plot Of Land Roosevelt Island podcast by now, I highly recommend it.

By ROOSEVELT ISLANDER at 5:17:00 PM

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