Homelessness is a crisis in NYC. Time to build public housing again
This article is based on a speech given by Christine Culpepper-Ruiz at a public hearing on a new homeless shelter in the Morris Park neighborhood in The Bronx.
By Christine Culpepper-Ruiz
For the last 40 years, the city and state has diverted public funds towards subsidies and abatements for private capitalists to build private affordable housing as a racket to grow the for-profit housing sector, and increase profits for real estate. Homelessness has reached a crisis level in New York City.
If you live here, you can see it anywhere you go and it is becoming a bigger problem every day.
Everyone deserves a safe home where they can rest their head at night. Housing is not a luxury; it's a human right and we all have a responsibility to see that homelessness, and the idea that it is acceptable, are eradicated.
In Manhattan, the homeless shelters are full, and the luxury skyscrapers are vacant. Housing appears to be now a commodity exclusive of the rich.
It’s inhumane that in the richest city in the world any man, woman or child lives in such a precarious situation. Any faith leader should be outraged that children of god are being left out in the cold, without food to eat.
Public housing became majority Black and Puerto Rican by the 60s after Civil Rights measures to combat discrimination in public housing, and housing discrimination. That population was employed largely in civil, industrial, and manufacturing jobs due to hiring discrimination. When deindustrialization occurred it devastated those populations which led to greater welfare dependency and the rise of conditions of poverty.
At that point, lawmakers began seeing public housing as minority housing, thus they chose to disinvest in NYCHA. For the last 40 years, the city and state has diverted public funds towards subsidies and abatements for private capitalists to build private affordable housing as a racket to grow the for-profit housing sector, and increase profits for real estate.
Free market housing policy nursed by corporate welfare was a racist choice made by policymakers to let public housing fall apart, and has fueled the displacement that contributes to the homelessness crisis today.
We all need to be outraged but not when shelters are coming to our district, and fall under the assumption that they will increase crime in the neighborhood and decrease the value of our property.
Instead, we should be outraged when rezoning all over New York City is being proposed and approved by City Council members and the mayor.
Between 2018 and 2020, approximately 2,500 households and businesses were evicted from the Jerome Avenue Corridor following the rezoning. These evictions accounted for about a third of all evictions across the Bronx. Tenant groups say that these evictions are sadly underreported.
The city has a responsibility to make sure that people are not being displaced from their communities. We need to make sure that city officials who are proposing more shelters being built also guarantee that this be a temporary, not permanent, option for people who have fallen on hard times. That housing laws are just and equitable so that the people who are being most affected have a real opportunity for permanent housing.
We need to repeal the Fair Cloth Amendment and start building public housing again. We need to do the necessary maintenance and repairs on our current stock, or we can expect our homelessness problem to continue growing.
Privatizing NYCHA is not the solution. Our government at all levels has a moral obligation to its citizens to be good at housing management, and anything built should be done with union labor and local hire. Providing good paying jobs with benefits is essential to eradicating homelessness.
Christine Culpepper-Ruiz is a member of LIUNA Local 79, president of the Local 79’s Women’s Committee, and a founder of Building Trades for Workers Democracy. She is a candidate for the Democratic State Committee for the 80th Assembly District in The Bronx.
