Archinect - News

New York State passes bill allowing NYCHA to acquire funding from private investors

2022-06-06T14:47:00-04:00

City leaders and lawmakers say thousands of public housing residents in New York City who have been forced to live with leaks, mold, broken elevators, and busted boilers may finally see better living conditions in what could amount to a fundamental shift in how public housing is funded in the city.

Last Thursday, the state Legislature passed a bill that would allow the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to establish a public-benefit corporation that could raise billions for much-needed renovations across 25,000 apartments. Called the Public Housing Preservation Trust, the entity would allow NYCHA to issue bonds and borrow money from private investors to pay for repairs. Under the program, the Authority would move away from direct federal subsidies, converting housing units from public housing under Section 9 of the U.S. Housing Act to the voucher-based system known as Section 8 that allows access to additional federal funding. Through Section 8, eligible low- and moderate-income families are provided assistance to rent housing in the private market.

Previously on Archinect: Private developers to renovate 1,673 NYCHA public housing units in East New York

Many tenants and some legislators oppose the plan, however, citing concerns that the legislation could threaten certain ...

Private developers to renovate 1,673 NYCHA public housing units in East New York

2022-01-11T15:00:00-05:00

A consortium of private developers recently closed on a $600 million loan to complete renovations and infrastructure upgrades across a 1,673-unit NYCHA public housing portfolio. Boulevard Together Developer LLC, a joint venture with The Hudson Companies, Property Resources Corporation, and Duvernay + Brooks, is undertaking the refurbishment of a total of 29 buildings in East New York.

The properties include the Boulevard Houses, Fiorentino Plaza, and the Belmont-Sutter Area Houses. This project is being facilitated through the NYCHA’s Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) initiative, in which selected developments receive needed renovations, along with expanded vocational and economic support services. It ensures that these homes remain permanently affordable. PACT depends on partnerships with private and non-profit development partners, who are selected based on resident input.

Previously on Archinect: NYCHA privatizes management of 5,900 units to fund needed repairs

Improvements to the housing developments will include new bathrooms, upgraded kitchens with Energy Star appliances, lighting systems, enhanced entryways and communal areas, both indoor and outside, and repairs to the façades and building envelopes. When complete, Boulevard Together Management LLC will serve as the new on-site property manager.

NYCHA privatizes management of 5,900 units to fund needed repairs

2020-02-18T13:02:00-05:00

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has struck a deal with five different private developers that will hand over the management and repair duties for seven public housing complexes to the selected companies in exchange for $1.5 billion in repairs.

The deal will impact 5,908 housing units spread across NYCHA's Linden Houses, Boulevard Houses, Williamsburg Houses, Bethune Gardens, Marshall Plaza, Audubon Houses, and Harlem River Houses 1 and 2 in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

In a statement highlighting the deal, NYCHA chairman and CEO Greg Russ said, “We are excited to announce the development teams that will partner with us in meeting the capital need of more than $1.5 billion associated with these NYCHA campuses ... [the developers] will be instrumental in completing the renovations our residents need and deserve.”

The Harlem River Houses, one of the complexes being handed over for private management. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user Beyond My Ken.

New York City Deputy Mayor Vick...

NYCHA swaps air rights for $25 million, 21 affordable units in Brooklyn

2019-10-18T12:31:00-04:00

A first-of-its-kind deal to sell the air rights at a Fort Greene NYCHA development is nearing completion after months of negotiation. The deal would transfer nearly 100,000 square feet of building rights from the Ingersoll Houses to a yet-to-be-built private development next door. In exchange, developers would provide nearly $25 million for maintenance at Ingersoll as part of NYCHA’s new long-term strategy to leverage private funds for the repair of its beleaguered housing stock.

The deal will help a 183-unit mixed use development located next door to Brooklyn's Ingersoll Houses grow to 400 units in size. In exchange, the number of affordable housing units designed into the project will increase from 79 to 100, New York YIMBY reports.

The proposed 202 Tillary Street development as designed before the acquisition of additional air rights. Image courtesy of New York YIMBY.

The landmark deal is a preview of NYCHA's long-rumored plans to monetize unused development rights in exchange for funds that could help address unmet capital needs like maintenance and repairs.

The $25 million garnered through the deal, however, falls far short from the projected $300 million in repairs the Ingersoll Houses will require over the next decade.

Interview Magazine talks with architectural heavyweights Ellen van Loon and Elizabeth Diller

2019-03-11T13:26:00-04:00

Q: How would you describe our particular time, architecturally speaking? Elizabeth Diller: It’s more a time of collaboration, and a deeper contemplation about what buildings can mean and how they can have more social value. I think it’s a time where you have to make a case for architecture to still be relevant.

Interview Magazine sits down to talk with OMA partner Ellen van Loon and Elizabeth Diller of DSRNY. Both are currently working on projects for long-awaited cultural spaces—van Loon on the Factory Manchester, a £110 million theater and arts venue, and Diller with the Shed, a major new arts center opening at Hudson Yards in New York. Through the discussion, the two address an array of topics: New York and Berlin in the 1970s, club design, anti-glass sentiments, the privatization of public space, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the role of a client, and fighting to keep your voice as an architect.

Patrik Schumacher calls for a 'capitalist revolution' to fix housing

2018-05-15T15:06:00-04:00

Housing is one of our most essential and cherished commodities. It is rightly one of our biggest markets, but unfortunately one of the most politicised, suffocating under quasi-socialist political interventionism. The loss of prosperity in our whole society is enormous. Not only because of poor housing provision, but because of its stifling impact on all economic activities. That’s why the need for a capitalist revolution is so urgent.

It's been a bit quiet around Zaha Hadid Architects principal and outspoken free-market evangelist Patrik Schumacher since his last big public statement calling for the elimination of social housing caused an overwhelming backlash, but now he's back with a new commentary piece on how to fix housing via privatization and deregulation, published in The Guardian.

Mallification: The shopping mall isn't so dead after all

2018-01-23T14:13:00-05:00

[...] the ever increasing mallification of our environment threatens to undermine the public common ground on which our societies were founded: public places should address an abstract, inclusive notion of the public, instead of a defined, limited, and exclusive (in the literal sense of the word) audience. Conversely, we should not confuse or conflate trite stores (even if they place trees inside and call themselves town squares) to be an ersatz public domain.

Janno Martens' essay for Failed Architecture explores the many deaths and resurrections of the shopping mall and highlights three phenomena of mallification — the creeping privatization of public spaces and replacement of the organically grown city with an imagineered 'experience' of what only resembles an urban, collective space.

Patrik Schumacher addresses backlash against his statements on eliminating social housing and privatizing public spaces

2018-01-17T13:29:00-05:00

When Patrik Schumacher spoke at the 17th World Architecture Festival back in 2016, his speech, calling for an end to social housing and the privatization of public space, caused serious push-back, even from the firm he currently runs. Since, Schumacher has been trying to lay low—at least as far as spewing his politics is concerned.

“I was a bit shocked. I mean, I have a thick skin, but it was unexpected and troubling. And it did for a while make me pull away a bit and calm down, to hide my polemics for a little bit and let that storm kind of fly over. I was really ducking under for a while" the architect told the Guardian.

Now, however, Schumacher wants to clarify his stance, arguing that he has been misunderstood. In this recent article in the Guardian, the architect once again touts his neoliberal, privatization scheme clarifying that "it’s not about me attacking vulnerable groups in society and wanting to throw them on to the street...The headline premise here is how can we actu...

The privatization of public space in London, investigated by the Guardian

2017-07-26T04:30:00-04:00

Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves.

The abundance of pseudo-public spaces, namely outdoor, open and publicly accessible locations owned and maintained by private companies in London is alarming. To this day it's largely unclear what regulations people passing through privately-owned 'public' land are subject to, and where members of the public can view those regulations.

The Guardian conducted an investigation, contacting landowners of more than 50 major pseudo-public spaces in London, asking an identical set of questions: what restrictions are in place covering users of your land, how are these enforced, where can members of the public see a list of these restrictions, and what conditions are there in the relevant planning agreements regarding public access to your land? Also inquiring whether a series of public activities – including peaceful political protest, non-commercial photography, non-commercial artistic performances and rough sleeping – would be permitted on their site, the Guardian received responses from ...

Uniting the idea of public art and private space

2016-07-08T00:48:00-04:00

The phenomenon is propelled largely by the same factors that are making it more difficult for artists themselves to live and work in the city: a concentration of global wealth with its eyes trained on real estate and luxury developers trying to stand out to attract a piece of that wealth.

Randy Kennedy tours some of the most recent examples of luxury commercial and residential architecture in Manhattan that incorporate "public" artworks.

Alphabet's secret plan to overhaul public transport in the US

2016-06-28T20:07:00-04:00

Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to radically overhaul public parking and transportation in American cities, emails and documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. Its high-tech services, which it calls “new superpowers to extend access and mobility”, could make it easier to drive and park in cities and create hybrid public/private transit options that rely heavily on ride-share services such as Uber.

"But they might also gut traditional bus services and require cities to invest heavily in Google’s own technologies, experts fear."

In related news:

On the rapid privatization of public space in post-communist cities

2016-04-21T15:12:00-04:00

From 1917 to 1991 in the former Russian Empire, and from 1945 to 1989 in the countries it dominated after the war, there was no real private ownership. No landowners, no developers, no “placemakers” - in half of Europe. Did this mean public space was done differently, and are attitudes to it different in those countries? [...] observed more closely, public space here is every bit as complex as it is elsewhere in Europe.

Entrepreneurs look to tackle Austin's traffic woes

2015-11-01T12:24:00-05:00

*Obviously Austin needs a transit system championed by a game designer.

Back in August, Michael Theis highlighted plans by "a few private-sector entrepreneurs — including some with deep pockets", to address transit needs, especially in Central/downtown Austin. He also spoke with spokeswoman Cathy Conley of USA PRT Inc and later attended a presentation where Richard Garriott (CEO) is proposing "a fleet of automated podcars".

For more info about PRT, read 'Emerging Rapid Transit Technologies Introduction, State of the Art, Applications', from the Proceedings of the AATS conference, Bologna, Italy, 7-8 Nov.2005.

h/t @Bruce Sterling

Who Shapes Cities and for Whom?

2014-03-03T12:41:00-05:00

The commercialisation of the urban landscape has resulted in the privatisation of public space. As city centres have become tributes to consumption, private interests have permeated these spaces. They have become awash with pseudo-public consumer spaces which belong to corporations rather than the citizenry. Although these places hold the semblance of being “public”, they are owned by corporate interests and are therefore under private control and not accountable to the public.

From The New Left Project's series on The Contemporary City.

Eko Atlantic - privatized vs. collective, ecological survival

2014-01-22T10:02:00-05:00

The disaster capitalists behind Eko Atlantic have seized on climate change to push through pro-corporate plans to build a city of their dreams, an architectural insult to the daily circumstances of ordinary Nigerians.

Martin Lukacs argues that Eko Atlantic, a new privatized city to be built near Lagos, Nigeria, is the perfect illustration of how the super-rich will exploit the crisis of climate change to increase inequality and seal themselves off from its impacts.

Our Parks Are Not for Sale

2013-02-17T17:15:00-05:00

Community activism that simply nibbles at the edges is not enough. Small-scale rebellions can raise consciousness and help bring needed improvements to cities, but what we really need is a revolution.

In the Winter 2013 issue of Dissent (the quarterly magazine of politics and ideas), Alex Ulam follows a thread From the Gold Coast of New York to the Venice Biennale. He argues Spontaneous Interventions "was not an outlier at the Biennale" but indicative of a general movement in support of the "Right to the City". Mr. Ulam then lays out a frame, wherein, the fact that many "municipal parks agencies have become charity cases", a new awareness of POPs, plus the continued selling off of corporate naming rights, are all examples of cities "being redesigned to benefit moneyed interests".