Frank Braconi’s account of New York City’s public housing policy provides an excellent illustration of the challenges of governing a city as sprawling and diverse as this one. Mr. Braconi makes it a point to note that even though the concept of In Rem housing is not unique to New York City, it is certainly a more complex and significant process here than anywhere else. Despite the problems mentioned in the piece about the management of In Rem housing taken over by the city, I think that this story is an example of how city governments can be successful in the face of overwhelming odds.

I was really impressed by all the inter-agency cooperation that went into tackling various problems that arose in the public housing system. It was also very interesting to see the instances of conflict. For example, how the welfare policy actually worked counter-intuitively to the goals of the housing department. I agreed with the city’s proposal to try and implement a policy to have the welfare checks cashed upon signature from both tenant and rent collector. As exemplified by the Pruitt-Igoe debacle in St. Louis, lack of revenue from rents can be devastating to buildings. Thus, it was a good decision on the part of the city to make rent collection an absolute priority. 

Another interesting connection that can be made here is that the extensive abandonment of certain neighborhoods that Mr. Braconi talks about would be exactly the kind of situation that would call for measures suggested by Roger Starr in his article, “Making New York Smaller.” When middle class families rushed to leave inner city neighborhoods for the suburbs, it would have expanded the city’s borders while simultaneously making it harder to carry out administrative functions by making more neighborhoods in special need of  support from the government. Loss of revenue combined with the rise in areas to be taken particular care of, I think, made this a draconian task for New York City’s government. In this case, it is clear why Roger Starr would see the expansion of cities to be wasteful and impractical.

It’s incredible how the New York City government responded to the abandonment crisis but, at the same time, I think that these events signal a larger problem. Mr. Braconi mentions early on in his writing that New York is peculiar in the fact that unlike other major cities, the ratio of residents who are tenants in their homes to those who own their homes is quite high. I don’t believe that this has changed even to this date. Most New York City residents are tenants and thus the threat of such a period of abandonment happening continues to exist.

This is why, contrary to what Mr. Braconi seems to be suggesting, I am fully in support of the aggressive measures taken by the city to shrink its In Rem portfolio during the Giuliani administration. Perhaps the timing of these efforts wasn’t entirely convenient, but I believe it is the correct policy to adopt. It was the city’s responsibility to take care of these abandoned buildings to ensure that the infrastructure of inner city neighborhoods didn’t fall into total disrepair. But, once a neighborhood is stabilized, private investment should be encouraged, even aggressively sought after.

“In Re In Rem: Innovation and Expediency in New York’s Housing Policy” talks about the the huge amount of foreclosed housing that is owned and managed by the city. I find it very interesting that during a single year, New York City became the manager of nearly 40,000 occupied apartments, resulting in the second-largest public housing authority in the country. However, this expense became too much for the city to bear and contradicted what its progressive housing tradition tried to avoid.

I also find it interesting that many new public initiatives come about as a result of global tragedies, such as World War II in this case. Another example of such an event was the legislation passed after the Stock Market Crash in 1929. New York has and most likely will remain dependent on rental housing since it gives them less requirement to take care of the living space.

Another factor that I found important was that operating costs were increasing for maintaining apartments in the city since heating oil prices increase drastically and overall operating costs of apartment buildings in New York City rose which did not make home ownership attractive. This also influenced the city to play a bigger role in the housing market and have a control of the rentals and pricing since it had a responsibility of fair but profitable housing.

The city owned buildings were not able to be well taken care of because they were not funded enough since the city did not have the resources for it. They had to provide affordable housing for low-income families so they were not able to ask for rents to raise funds to maintain the housing buildings. The city also would quickly realize that it would not be able to auction off its buildings to housing investors. This would force the city to continue to hold the apartment buildings that it was not able to make repairs to and fix up to make them better for its residents to live in.

Finally, I was also very interested by the effect of policy-generated homelessness and the increasing deepening of the culture of dependency. This culture has even become prominent in today’s New York City since people have become dependent on public housing and even financial aid. Some people give false information to take advantage of the city’s programs for social welfare. Although these programs have good intentions, they can be abused by people.