Imagine this. You are walking down 108st today. Around you, you would see a culturally and economically diverse setting where Latino-Americans, Soviet-Union immigrants, African-Americans, and White-American people from different economic backgrounds can come together to the stores and buy the necessary groceries for dinner. However, this wasn’t the 108th of the 1970s. During the 1970s the middle-class white American’s opposed the idea of multiculturalism and socio-economic equality. This opposition is seen best in the, almost forgotten, history of what is now known as the Queens Community House and the three low-income 12 story co-op apartment buildings.
In 1967, New York City Mayor John Lindsay announced his idea of “scatter-site housing.” The goal of this program was to develop low-income housing projects in middle-class neighborhoods to allow for social mobility (2). Following this, a plan to build a low-incoming housing project was on its way in the Forest Hills neighborhood to hopefully those families who needed financial assistance, but the middle-class white Americans would not have it. They made protests, and picketed holding signs saying “we won’t let Lindsay bury the middle class,” “no hi-rise slum,” and “Lindsay: we won’t let you rape Forest Hills.”(3)
The leader of this coalition went by the name Jerry Birbach, a political activist and at the time the president of the Forest Hills Residents Association. In his thesis titled “The cost of government interference in the housing market,” which he completed being an urban study graduate student at Queens college, Birbach recounts what took place in the Forest Hills feud vividly. In stating the fears of the people, Birbach claims that the people are scared of “hard-core welfare families with many children (some with drug problems) would not only threaten but change the character of the neighborhood.”(4) At first, after reading this, I thought it’s a reasonable concern for the people not to want drugs in their community. However, by juxtaposing the “hard-core welfare families” and drugs, it seemed to me that Birbach was trying to hint toward the fear of an influx of African-Americans into the community because of a horrific and inaccurate, but common stereotype given to black people, which is that they are poor and drug addicts.
Although Birbach and his campaign said that they “were not racists; rather, they said, they feared that a sudden influx of hundreds of poor tenants would cause a crime wave in what they saw as a stable, middle-class sanctuary.” (6) However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. By looking at what the people of Forest Hills had to say about the racial integration plan in Forest Hills high school at the time, it becomes clear that the Forest Hills “protectors” were not looking to protect their community from crime, but rather from minority-low-income citizens. In a New York Times article, titled “Race Plan For Schools Protested in Forest Hills” Shiela Potashnick, the at-the-time president of the parents’ association of Forest Hills high school was quoted saying that “[t]his is the last stand for Forest Hills. If the school tips, it will mark the end of our community.” (6) In this quote “tips” refers to the ratio of white to minority students going from a majority of white students to a majority of minority students. Furthermore, one of the reasons presented for why these people were afraid the school would tip is because of the “new low-income project that is being completed” referring to the low-income project Birbach and his followers were violently opposing (6).
Another text which indicates that this battle was about race is the 1970 U.S census data that Birbach presented in his thesis. By placing these maps which show the mean violation per dwelling unit per census tract in Queens and the Black population per area in Queens, Birbach is trying to show that the regions populated densely by black people there is a high crime rate to further progress his campaign that the low-income housing shouldn’t have been built. From here, it is seen that it was racism that motivated the “protectors” to fight against the proposed plan of the three low-income 12 story co-op apartment buildings.
So how did this whole argument end? Mayor John Lindsay appointed at the time an obscure lawyer Mario M. Cuomo, the later 52nd governor of New York and father of Andrew Cuomo, the 56th governor of New York, to come to a compromise between Mr. Birbach and his crew of white middle-class Americans and Mayor John Lindsay about the size and distribution of the projects. The initially planned three 24 story apartment buildings housing 840 units, were shrunken to three 12 story apartment buildings housing 420 units. Furthermore, the apartments were made into co-ops, a Forest Hills community center, which later became the Queens community center, was built and a quota on the number of older adults and more impoverished people were placed (7).
During this heated time the “protectors” argued that the quality of life of the residence would decrease, that crime would increase in the community, that drugs would be more prevalent in Forest Hills, that the schools would worsen (8). They further argued that because of these outcomes the white people would leave Forest Hills, a phenomenon most commonly known as white flight. These fears were attributed to what the protestors saw on TV, one of the protestors even said: “[w]e fought the Forest Hills project because all we knew about public housing was what we saw on TV.”(5) Furthermore, 12 years after the project was built statistics were run, and it became evident that the neighborhood “remain[ed] undeteriorated, uncriminalized and unaffected.” (5) Furthermore, looking at the change in crime from 1990 to 2018, its seen that the total crime decreased 91.5% from 7348 crimes to 621 which shows that even after 50 years of those low-income buildings were built the crime rate has only been decreasing. (9) This protest mirrors many of the themes that we, as a society, still struggle with today: the oppression of the low-income earners, minorities, and the media instilling fear into the people creating a “we versus the other scenario.”
Today, this history has been almost forgotten. Nobody stops to think how these buildings came about or what the struggle that Mayor Lindsay and his campaign had to go through to provide people in need a place to live. In recent years, the affordable housing that was built as a result of this compromise has “left the New York City Housing Authority to become its own entity as Forest Hills Mutual Housing,” (10) and now runs a lottery for the vacant apartments. As part of being affordable housing, the lottery is made specifically for those that have a low income earning, and the offers a stabilized rent. Overall, the community doesn’t seem to mind let alone even pay attention to these buildings, which can be a testament to the fears of this neighborhood being run down with crime because of this building being nothing more than paranoia and delusion. After seeing the results of this project, it is unfortunate that such a compromise was come to as the incorporation of more housing units would give more families in need a place to live without being scared that they wouldn’t be able to pay rent.
Work Cited:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lindsay
(2) “History.” History | Queens Community House, www.qchnyc.org/about-us/history.
(3) Roberts, Sam. “Jerry Birbach, Leader of Fight to Block Poor Tenants in Queens, Dies at 87.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Mar. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/nyregion/jerry-birbach-dead-led-forest-hills-protest.html.
(4) Birbach, Jerry. The Cost of Government Interference in the Housing Market. 1976.
(5) By J.S. Fuerst. “Forest Hills, 12 Years Later.” New York Times (1923-Current file), Sep 24, 1983, pp. 23. ProQuest, http://queens.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/122181132?accountid=13379.
(6) By, ARI L. “Race Plan for Schools Protested in Queens.” New York Times (1923-Current file), Mar 16, 1975, pp. 1. ProQuest, http://queens.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/120455163?accountid=13379.
(7) By, MURRAY S. “City Approves a Low-Income Co-Op for Forest Hills.” New York Times (1923-Current file), Oct 27, 1972, pp. 45. ProQuest, http://queens.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/119370873?accountid=13379.
(8) By, MICHAEL T. “Forest Hills: From Rage to Tranquillity: Public Housing Wins Acceptance in Queens. Forest Hills: From Trauma to Tranquillity in 17 Years.”New York Times (1923-Current file), Sep 15, 1988, pp. 2. ProQuest, http://queens.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/110473913?accountid=13379.
(9) “Borough and Precinct Crime Statistics.” Borough and Precinct Crime Stats – NYPD, www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/crime-statistics/borough-and-precinct-crime-stats.page.
(10) Woodward, Danielle. “Affordable Housing Lottery Opens For Massive Forest Hills Co-Op.” Forest Hills, NY Patch, Patch, 8 Aug. 2018, patch.com/new-york/foresthills/affordable-housing-lottery-opens-massive-forest-hills-co-op.
