24 October 2007

Turn the projects into condos!


The Fed wants to make much needed cash by selling the projects. Hooray!

There was a forum yesterday to discuss how New York City will save its public housing.

The Daily News reports that Sean Moss, the Regional Director for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, offered a suggestion that "prompted shocked murmurs."



Sean's idea: Sell some of the Housing Authority's buildings in expensive neighbourhoods. Queue the rusty riot police.
"It may displace some people, and that is a concern...That is not necessarily a bad thing if you can create more housing with that. Instead of having 300 units in a project, maybe there is a way to increase that if they are able to...sell those assets so that you can create more housing."
There are some NYCHA developments in neighbourhoods full of new, luxury development, but would that mean lower-income families would be shifted more remote places?


They should design some new Transformers toys that are like big red brick projects and you spin them around like a Rubik's cube and they become fancy Phillippe Stark condos. It'll be all the rage this Christmas on the Upper West Side; like the Tickle-Me-Elmo of yore.

Its funny because I was starting to wonder how long all the projects along the FDR on the East side would last. I mean the waterfront views of just the Jacob Riis Houses alone, are you kidding me!? You know how much money they could charge for those apartments? Same goes for Lillian Wald, The LaGuardia Houses and the Tompkins Houses. Fuck the poor. We'll just push them into the river, right? Sure. Why not!?

BEFORE:


AFTER:

(featuring the East River kayaking team)

I pass by those housing projects everyday on my way to and from work and I can see the dollar signs that The New York City Housing Authority sees. Turn the projects into luxury condos with Whole Foods supermarts on the ground floor, sky lobby gyms, Olympic size swimming pools and white glove service. It's a fucking cash cow just waiting to be milked and dudes at the Department of Housing and Urban Development are starting to drool like Pavlov's dogs. The land those public houses sit on is a fucking gold mine time bomb on a powder keg fault line for the city. If only we could just kill off the poor, then it would be an easy decision.

The New York City Housing Authority, which is the city's primary sources of affordable housing to 400,000 residents, has an annual shortfall of $225 million. That's not much at all. You could get $225M from just one or two floors of units in a single new condo! And you know that's what they're thinking. People would give limbs for those views of the bridges and the river. You really can't get any closer than the FDR Drive.
Gentrification - gen·tri·fi·ca·tion (noun) circa 1964: 1. the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents. 2. pushing the poor into the East River to build more condos on the last slivers of land on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

fuck you money hungry assholes

Anonymous said...

Hellllllllll yeah. Sell, sell, sell.

Anonymous said...

fuck you who sed sell sell sell how can u say that its people who were living there they whole lives u fuckin rascist dick head