A View from Public Housing: Resident Histories, Perspectives and Hope

A View from Public Housing: Resident Histories, Perspectives and Hope

When I was growing up there, we were proud to live in public housing.

It was a great place to live. You got to really see a lot of family, community, playgrounds. It was so close to schools.

Public housing is no different than anywhere else you live. It’s the way you take care of what you have.  

What I remember about it was the clean streets, the beautiful grass that was kept cut all the time and the flowers. Every spring I loved to see the flowers bloom.

Back then we called it housing, they call it the projects now. And I believe it changed because of the high unemployment that happened in the nineties, the crack epidemic from the eighties.

This is not our doing, right? I do believe that every problem that we can name in public housing has a policy attached to it. And when you start connecting those dots, you know, when everybody was like, oh, those where the glory days, we had our own policemen, we had this, we had that. We had money.

The difference isn’t really the people, the difference is the resources that’s available to these people.

We don’t have that anymore, and we don’t have that for a reason. And it’s by design. And it’s time that people really learn that and we start to change the way we talk about what’s going on within public housing.  

As a former public housing resident, I am intimately familiar with both sides of the affordable housing debate and crisis. I lived in a federally subsidized apartment for most of my life before my daring leap into the perilous territory of the private market. Renting in the private market is extremely expensive and offers little to no protections, while state or federally subsidized housing is the more affordable option and often comes with a range of programs and support services. I ended my long stint in public housing about six years ago in order to preserve my respiratory and mental health. Dealing with secondhand smoke from neighbors, the suffocating presence of the scaffolding, and the constant struggle to promote community engagement made the move a necessity rather than a choice. I was fortunate enough to have access to resources that made the move possible. So many do not have that option. Moving into the private market is a costly endeavor because of the need for first and last month prepayments, security deposits, and enough income to qualify for the extremely high rents. For too many, subsidized housing is the only option.

I am sharing this condensed version of my housing journey to connect my story directly to some of the housing policies that have had an impact on my life and the lives of others living in public housing communities. Many of these policy decisions are developed by people who have never experienced life inside a public housing development, so it is important to share residents’ perspectives in order to change the narrative. Countless organizations are fighting to influence policy decisions, fighting for housing justice, fighting evictions that displace single moms, children and families; fighting discrimination from landlords who refuse government subsidies; and fighting to secure housing for the growing unhoused population. Housing justice advocacy has not been able to disrupt the mounting misery of the housing crisis, which persists and worsens. Activists, community organizers, oral historians, and a large number of nonprofits are working toward real housing reform and an end to the neoliberal policies that created many of the problems that they purported to fix.

The public routinely consumes a dominant housing narrative that focuses on the crumbling infrastructure, maintenance issues, criminalization, and other stigmatizing social concerns. The repetition of this narrative desensitizes the public, which in turn diminishes and misdirects the policy response. My approach challenges the dominant narrative by bringing in the crucial voices and experiences of those affected by housing policies. While pursuing a master’s degree in public policy in 2017, I organized and led the activist initiative Changing the Narrative (CTN) in partnership with the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW). Changing the Narrative is a resident-centered oral history project that provides the missing substance to the current narrative by directly engaging and centering the residents of public housing. We believe that the current narrative should be countered by the history and experiences of those who actually live in these communities. Recording the current landscape from the perspective of residents is critical to how we understand the contemporary moment when these programs are being defunded. Presenting my own housing narrative alongside resident voices brings agency to the community to redefine our story. Creating and maintaining an archive of interviews, workshops, and other community engagement activities is important not only for community visibility but for public understanding and eventually public action. Oral history thus becomes a method that is about more than recording lives: it is an archive of historical perception and memory of entire communities that can lead to policy impact.[1]

I was raised by my mom along with my three siblings in Manhattanville Houses between 129th and 133rd Street in West Harlem from the 1960s to the 1980s. My mom worked as hard as any of the parents in my development, and the ones that did not work did a good job of keeping an eye on the neighborhood and the children. As a young child, I was sent to the day care center located on the grounds along with children from the other buildings. Friendships were formed at early ages. At the community center, also located on the grounds, I was able to enjoy games, sports, and parties. We enjoyed a feeling of safety and caring as the Housing Authority Police had an office adjacent to the perambulator room in my building. Officers knew most of the children by name and knew their parents. Between the community officers and the at-home parents, there wasn’t a lot that adults didn’t catch. Many of us went to one of the two elementary schools and later to the one middle school on the grounds. We enjoyed this closeness, growing up together until our teenage years when we dispersed to different high schools in different boroughs. In 1984, my mom moved out and bought an apartment in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. I attributed her upward mobility to the affordability of public housing; it allowed her to save. This move would later become a huge benefit to me and my children as I was able to use her address for opportunities that my zip code did not afford me. A decade later, I moved to Atlanta. But not long after New York called me home. Within five years, I was back at my mom’s, staying there until I found my own apartment.

Right away I applied for public housing. I had two children of my own and wanted what I believed my mom had had for herself and for us: an affordable apartment, community, safety, and opportunities. But when I got the apartment, my experiences quickly began to prove that the circumstances were very different from those of my childhood. Public housing no longer had the same resources it did in prior years. Community was sporadic and the narrative about public housing had adjusted to match the deteriorating conditions. Linda Gitten, a Marble Hill resident since the mid 1980s, discussed the changes in the community, maintenance, and the defunding of public and social services during an interview for CTN:

Joanna: Do you think how the neighborhood has changed, especially over the last ten years, has some kind of impact on how people feel about it being a close-knit community with all the being surrounded by commercial activity and a lot of kind of strangers walking through the neighborhood?

Linda: We do have a lot of commercial activity around here that we didn’t have before. Every place you see now is like a big square box for retail which I think is horrible but I understand that people have to make a living and it takes away a lot of our little mom and pop stores who might have been here for years. I notice that a lot of little Chinese stores we used to have are gone, that used to have good stuff, but the rents are so high so a lot of businesses are also closing down because of the rents, because of the neighborhood. I felt like when I first moved here this is more like a little bit suburban because of the trees and the way it was. Now it has become so commercial it’s like we’re in the middle of a commercial city here, okay. All around us, so we boxed in. I don’t like that.

The stigma had taken hold. People no longer seemed to believe that we were fighting a defunded bureaucratic system or misinformed and often corrupt policy makers. We were now looking at other, more vulnerable residents as the cause of our troubles and the decline in housing services. Living in public housing was still relatively affordable, but opportunities were a little harder to realize. I had a harder time cultivating the village that would help me raise my children the way my mother had found hers. Safety had become mostly non-existent. Nonetheless, I made it work for about twenty years.

Initially, my experience in this new development was fairly pleasant. It was well staffed, at least two maintenance workers per building, and clean. The Resident Association, an elected group of residents tasked with improving the quality of life, was in place. Raised during the heyday, I was accustomed to residents serving on the Resident Association and signing up to monitor the lobbies, so I joined the association and volunteered to serve in as many capacities as I could. But engagement at resident meetings was almost non-existent relative to the thousand-plus families who lived in the development. Maintenance issues dominated the discussions every month. I held the position of vice president for three years and volunteered to be a resident leader of my building before coming to realize that it was a constant uphill battle to get things done. It was especially difficult to organize residents to be engaged and volunteer. It wasn’t hard to understand why residents were so discouraged and uninterested in being agitated to join the fight. The persistent and mounting health, safety, and quality of life issues coupled with disinvestment, limited resources, and neglect were exhausting.

By the time I moved out, the conditions in my development had hit crisis levels for me. Scaffolding had been installed two years prior and the thought of going through another year inside the maze did not appeal to me. The overall quality of life was also deteriorating. Petty crimes, robberies, and gang activity were increasing in the area, including two shootings during the month before I left.[2] I began to think that the best way to help my neighbors was to gain a better understanding of the policies that contributed to the decline in public housing. Why were things so different from all those years ago? My thought process helped me form the connection between understanding public housing policy and seeing how those policies played out in my community.

The Situation: A Brief Summary

The supply of affordable apartments in New York City does not meet demand, which translates to market conditions in which vulnerable residents face less than desirable options. The three major programs currently available are housing choice vouchers, an affordable housing lottery, and public housing. These programs have not been able to adequately address the housing crisis that persists in New York City. Many reports through various organizations curate a vast amount of information into easily digestible formats for a clear picture of the housing shortages. One such organization is the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), which reports on the status of the housing crisis through yearly reports, articles, and statistics.[3] In addition to the problem of limited supply, the bureaucratic process by which residents gain access to these services can take years with complex requirements for eligibility. The lengthy process of documentation then becomes part of the problem. Affordable housing units are obtained through a lottery system and the required ratio of income-to-occupants keeps many New Yorkers from participating. Many of these units are built as part of a larger construction project by private developers who include a small percentage of affordable units in their building plan. Other programs include government subsidies, tax incentives, conversions, and rezoning to increase the production of affordable housing throughout the city. While existing programs do provide some relief for some residents, the volume of units does not increase as fast as the number of residents who need affordable housing. The inadequate supply of housing for the vulnerable populations of New York has hit crisis levels.

As an answer to this crisis, many housing advocates are calling for a fully funded public housing program. Not only is funding a persistent problem for public housing in the current moment, but public housing programs are going through major transformations that do not alleviate but instead exacerbate the problems. Federal funds for public housing capital improvements and operating costs have been in decline for the past several decades, putting this resource in serious peril.[4] As a consequence, the public housing system in New York is actually removing units from the public housing program. This works through a policy that partners the housing authority with private developers to close the funding deficits. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) claims that this public-private partnership will bring funding necessary to make improvements to remaining public housing units, but that remains to be seen.

The New York City Housing Authority is funded by federal and city agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and NYCHA respectively. NYCHA announced in July 2023 that 78.3 billion in capital investments over twenty years would be needed to deal with the backlog of maintenance repairs and to tackle much needed infrastructural improvements.[5] As of October 2023, according to reporting, there were 240,000 people on NYCHA’s waiting list. The turnaround time for new tenants to move into vacant apartments is over four hundred days.[6] Beyond the fact that the waiting list is too long, the application system is also periodically closed. This means that an individual or family is likely to wait years before getting into an affordable home. Meanwhile, they are forced to negotiate the general housing market. They may try to obtain housing choice vouchers or engage the housing lottery, but neither process is quick or guaranteed.

Affordable housing supply has continuously fallen short of demand. All of our most vulnerable neighbors who rely on these programs, including seniors, single-parent families, low-wage workers, rent-burdened, and houseless populations, are affected by these shortfalls.

Solution: Policy-wise

Residents are frustrated by gentrification, housing discrimination, houselessness, and evictions. Local officials use their platforms to advocate for affordable options and talk about constituents having to make choices between rent, food, and medicine, but nothing seems to change. Real estate websites like StreetEasy and Zillow post average rents ranging between three and five thousand dollars a month, far outpacing average wages.

To mitigate the crisis by increasing funding where public funds are lacking, policy makers put forward public-private partnerships, regulations, and rezoning as strategies to increase the supply of affordable units. As a result, all public housing policies today adopt the public-private partnership model: HUD’s Rental Assistance (RAD) program, the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) Initiative, New York City Public Housing Preservation Trust, and Blueprint for Change, to name a few. Other public-private affordable housing resources include the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program for private developers, along with other programs to help vulnerable, at-risk individuals and families move out of shelters or keep them from falling into the system. The RAD program was created in 2011 to preserve public housing and gain local access to federal funds by converting units to the voucher-based Section 8 program. However, RAD was met with much controversy since it resulted in a loss of units under the public housing program, also known as Section 9. Since that time, other policies have been developed to address the shortage of affordable units and attempt to raise the capital needed for infrastructural repairs. The most recent proposal by the New York City mayor aims to create more affordable housing, ease regulations, and end exclusionary zoning.[7] Theoretically, these changes could allow construction and conversions in areas where affordable units are either limited in number or non-existent. Meanwhile, rent increases and evictions are on the rise while the houseless population grows. Public housing advocates are raising their voices in opposition to the privatization of so many public housing units through RAD.[8]

I tell my story as part of this chorus of voices because I know that public housing can work well for residents, for community building, and for the well-being of the city. Public housing may, in fact, be the best program to alleviate the housing crisis and provide residents with permanent, affordable, and safe housing. All of the policy solutions offered since the advent of the crisis may be well-intentioned, but they do very little in relation to the scale of the crisis because they do nothing to increase federal and state funding levels or the number of public housing units. Instead, the crisis continues.

Solution: Centering Residents

Seven years ago, I initiated a conversation with staff members at BCRW about addressing the negative perceptions of public housing residents and their communities. These conversations were deeply personal to me as someone who at that time was both a NYC public housing resident and an MA student in Urban Policy. Learning policy in theory and living it practically drew a stark contrast. I was highly frustrated. I turned that frustration toward community engagement as a way to understand how certain policies were actually affecting my life in real time. The project at BCRW allowed me to develop relationships with other public housing residents, housing activists in NYC and nationally, and my coworkers at BCRW. I was aware that perceptions had the ability to shape policy and was frustrated that some of these perceptions had shown up in scholarly books. Whether it was mainstream media influencing these scholarly perceptions or some academic voices establishing the dominant narrative about public housing, everywhere I looked resident voices were lost in the conversation.

The dominant narrative of public housing focuses on unending disinvestment, mismanagement by the housing authorities, lack of maintenance repairs, and crumbling infrastructure, but not so much on how these issues affect the lives of residents. While academic writing on the conditions and quality of life in these communities is at times accurate, it also produces distracting and larger-than-life myths about residents and their communities that do far more harm than good. The myths and stigmas associated with public housing compound the material issues that residents have to overcome. One such example is the myth about the causes and effects of concentrated poverty, where crime-ridden communities are its evidence. That myth influenced policies that have torn down communities and displaced residents. Programs like Moving to Opportunity (1994–98), a “mobility social science experiment” that provided vouchers for residents to move from high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhoods, exacerbated issues by further siphoning resources from the communities who remained living in public housing.[9] Other stigmatizing myths are that public housing residents are lazy, don’t work, and just want to live off of government subsidies. Although it is easy to disprove these myths, the people who know the truth are the residents themselves, neighbors, family, and friends who visit immaculately clean, well-decorated apartments with family portraits proudly displayed on their walls, the very people the public ignores. As Rhonda Williams argues,

In the midst of poverty and crime, tenants involved in community affairs held on to a vision of respectable living and a right to safety and security for poor people. Those who had memories of what public housing had offered, hopes of what it could still provide, the time to devote, or the will to care labored as individuals and in groups against neighborhood decline and poverty.[10] 

Indeed, even though many residents of public housing work in the public sector and don’t have enough time at the end of the day to engage in the politics outside of their units, they still keep up with their homes, connect with their neighbors, and contribute to the community whenever possible. And there are still the more active residents who participate in the tenant meetings, protests, and community boards. These are the residents who look out for the community beyond their developments.

Activism: Engaging the Community

Changing the Narrative developed as a resident-centered, place-based, community engagement project that examined the public housing program through local and federal policy, through residents’ experiences, and through media and public perception. By documenting residents’ stories, the project counters the myths and stigmas associated with public housing while grappling with the real problems arising from disinvestment. These stories show how public housing has historically been a public good and how, even with disinvestment, it remains so for many vulnerable people facing a housing crisis across the public and private markets. What might be possible if more of these stories were told? What if the public heard stories that revealed lives, histories, and politics beyond the policy clichés reprinted throughout my textbooks? What if we could change the narrative?

CTN set out to provide the substance missing in the current narrative by directly engaging the residents who live in public housing. Through a series of community-based workshops and oral interviews, CTN created spaces for residents to share their experiences, study and reflect on the history, identify pressing issues, and explore solutions to improve their lives.

In these workshops, community groups and individual residents were invited into a space to share stories and experiences from their perspectives. A peer interview format was used to support relationship building and allow residents to hear directly from each other. Questions and activities were created to prompt these recorded discussions, which in turn generated materials to share with advocates and to raise public awareness through the first-hand experiences of public housing residents. Some of what came out of these conversations were positive memories, contrasts between public housing past and present, the need for more community engagement, maintenance issues, and community policing. Residents reflected positively on a time when public housing had its own community police. They recollected feelings of safety, how the community police knew all the children and their parents, and how they made sure to look out for the neighborhood. Paulette Shomo, a long-time resident of Marble Hill Houses, exemplifies this perspective:

Maria: What do you remember before the merger took place, you mentioned the police, talk about the police.

Paulette: Well working for the housing, like I said, I worked for a number of housing officers, and I like that familiarity or that fellowship because I worked at Claremont Village, 24 officers around the clock at various times, so well protected, just a good family type of thing. Officers that were really concerned about these children here, just like I said about Big Sam who’s passed on, but just knowing that he was here, he’s going to residents’ apartments, he’s going to speak to the children and not just him by himself but  maybe with other officers, but Sam was the one like, when you said Big Sam was coming, kids would be like I’ll keep myself correct and good. Because one of the young man he didn’t live here, he lived in Lincoln, he became a housing officer because of Big Sam, because he said he saw, Big Sam saw him getting into trouble and before he got into a place where he couldn’t be an officer he worked in training with him and he became a housing officer you know.

Residents spoke of robust programs and services, and most importantly, a fully functioning maintenance staff. In one of the facilitated activities, residents studied the major events and turning points in public housing history, co-produced a timeline exhibit, and discussed how those events shaped their lives and impacted a larger history. Sharing these stories highlighted themes and issues left out of reports in the media, which focus primarily on infrastructure, maintenance, and zoning. Internal community conversations explored families, activism, politics, education, health, safety, and dignity and respect.

At the start of CTN, the project’s main goals were to share the stories and experiences of actual residents living in public housing, to raise public awareness, and to provide an alternate narrative to the one predominantly shared in journalism and scholarship. Over time, the project has become a catalyst for building community and forming collaborations with other housing advocates and community organizations interested in hearing residents’ stories and the value they place on their communities.

Over the past six years and under the banner of public housing activism, BCRW has worked with housing activists, individuals, and community groups, including Ariana Faye Allensworth and Jayah Arnett, who are forging a path of their own in this fight for housing justice. A growing number of community organizations, activists, and some local officials have organized protests, started independent projects and initiatives to preserve public housing, and increased affordable housing options. The tenant coalition SaveSection9 offers community education to residents and allies, and lobbies Congress to keep public housing public. The activist organizations that partnered with us work on housing issues at a policy level or they work directly with vulnerable communities from differing angles of racial, social, and economic justice. We connected with resident leaders, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, People’s Power Movement, Families United for Racial and Economic Equality of Brooklyn (FUREE), and Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). We also worked with Sydnie Mosley from Sydnie L Mosely Dances, who combined her artistic skills with our archive to produce a creative performance about housing to engage the community. As the housing crisis worsens and home moves out of reach for more and more people, advocates of affordable and public housing are making their voices heard and organizing their efforts to change government investment and solutions.

The Changing Narrative of Public Housing

In “The Case of Public Housing” in The Nation,  Matthew Gorden Lasner outlines the case for increasing government funding for operations and capital projects, reducing barriers to access, and expanding public housing overall.[11] He considers a number of programs that could bridge the gap between wages and the high cost of housing for working-class and low-income renters, including the reengagement of the federal government in subsidizing construction and operations. Lasner’s discussion centers on the inability of current programs such as tax credits, inclusionary zoning, land trusts, and block grants to actually serve the growing number people in need of affordable housing. Instead, he proposes a direct, large-scale solution: deep government subsidies. Changing the Narrative brings the documentary evidence to bolster Lasner’s case. Bringing attention to quality of life issues, the need for safe housing, and the scale of demand, resident voices demonstrate that, without additional funding, any new program, no matter how well-intentioned, is likely to reproduce the mistakes of previous top-down policy initiatives.

In the face of affordable housing shortages, the public housing program is a valuable asset that needs defense, transformation, and expansion. Understanding this landscape from the resident perspective is critical to how we record this time in our history. The depressive force of the dominant narrative influences policies that often cause harm to the residents and communities who call public housing home. For me, sharing my personal journey has been empowering and allows me to resist being trapped in other people’s narratives. As a former public housing resident who spent over forty years in two different developments, I am deeply aware of the issues but also the benefits, opportunities, positive culture, and potential in public housing communities.

Transitioning to the private market made me aware of a vulnerability that I had not previously experienced. My wages had increased, my household configuration had changed, my exhaustive research and knowledge around policies and alternate programs had expanded, yet I was still unable to land somewhere affordable. In a city like New York, in a country this rich, we should not short on homes. The housing crisis is solvable if the people who develop policy listen to the voices crying out for justice.

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Pamela Phillips is director of the Changing the Narrative project and Senior Program Assistant at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. 

Audio produced by Lewis Wallace for Changing the Narrative. 

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ENDNOTES

[1] Margaretta Jolly, Sisterhood and After: An Oral History of the UK Women’s Liberation Movement, 1968-present (Oxford University Press, 2019).

[2] Zak Kostro, “Two Die in Weekend of Violence,” Riverdale Press, Apr. 18, 2018, https://www.riverdalepress.com/stories/two-die-in-weekend-of-violence,65379.

[3] Andrew Araud, “The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes,” National Low-Income Housing Coalition, March 13, 2023, https://nlihc.org/gap.

[4]  Victor Bach and Tom Waters, “Strengthing New York City’s Public Housing,” Community Service Society, July 9, 2014, https://www.cssny.org/publications/c/affordable-housing/P48.

[5] New York City Government, “NYCHA Releases New Physical Needs Assessment Demonstrating 73 Percent Increase In Its Capital Needs, Now Totaling $78.3 Billion,” NYCHA Press Release, July 12, 2023, https://www.nyc.gov/site/nycha/about/press/pr-2023/pr-20230712.page#.

[6] Dan Krauth, “Thousands of NYCHA apartments sit empty as wait continues for potential tenants,” ABC7, https://abc7ny.com/nycha-housing-apartments-empty-apartment-nyc/14053684/.

[7] Emma Whitford, “Mayor Adams Pitches Zoning For Less Parking, More Housing,” City Limits, September 21, 2023, https://citylimits.org/2023/09/21/mayor-adams-pitches-zoning-for-less-parking-more-housing.

[8]  Annie Howard, “Fearing Privatization: Public Housing Activists Push Back Against RAD Plans,” Shelterforce, March 21, 2019, https://shelterforce.org/2019/03/21/fearing-privatization-public-housing-activists-push-back-against-rad-plans.

[9] “Moving to Opportunity,” Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD User, 1993-8, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/mto.html.

[10] Rhonda Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2004), 151.

[11] Matthew Gordon Lasner, “The Case for Public Housing,” The Nation, May 6, 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-case-for-public-housing.

WORKS CITED

Bach, Victor, and Tom Waters, Community Service Society. “Strengthening New York City’s Public Housing: Directions for Change.” July 2014. https://smhttp-ssl-58547.nexcesscdn.net/nycss/images/uploads/pubs/CSS_NYCHA_FinalWeb.pdf.

Howard, Anne. “Fearing Privatization: Public Housing Activists Push Back Against RAD Plans.” Shelterforce, March 21, 2019. https://shelterforce.org/2019/03/21/fearing-privatization-public-housing-activists-push-back-against-rad-plans.

Jolly, Margaretta. Sisterhood and After. An Oral History of the UK Women’s Liberation Movement, 1968-present. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Krauth, Dan. 2023. “Thousands of NYCHA apartments sit empty as wait continues for potential tenants.” ABC7, November 14, 2023. https://abc7ny.com/nycha-housing-apartments-empty-apartment-nyc/14053684.

Kostro, Zak. “Two Die in Weekend of Violence.” Riverdale Press, April 20, 2018. https://www.riverdalepress.com/stories/two-die-in-weekend-of-violence,65379.

Lasner, Matthew Gordon. “The Case for Public Housing.” The Nation, May 6, 2016. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-case-for-public-housing.

“Moving to Opportunity.” Office of Policy Development and Research. HUD User. 1993-8. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/mto.html.

National Low-Income Housing Coalition. “The Gap: A Shortage of Rental Homes.” March 2023. https://nlihc.org/gap.

New York City Government. “NYCHA Releases New Physical Needs Assessment Demonstrating 73 Percent Increase In Its Capital Needs, Now Totaling $78.3 Billion.” NYCHA Press Release. July 12, 2023. https://www.nyc.gov/site/nycha/about/press/pr-2023/pr-20230712.page#.

Whitford, Emma. 2023. “Mayor Adams Pitches Zoning For Less Parking, More Housing.” City Limits. September 21, 2023. https://citylimits.org/2023/09/21/mayor-adams-pitches-zoning-for-less-parking-more-housing.

Williams, Rhonda Y. The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality. Oxford University Press, 2004.

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