It’s been over two years since New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced “Housing New York”: his administration’s 10-year plan to integrate 200,000 units of affordable housing into the city’s stock. By their account, the plan is on track, as the administration claims creating or preserving 53,000 units since then.
With residential development in the city at a fever pitch, especially at the highest end of the market, many high-profile buildings with units set aside as affordable have recently been completed or are under construction. Because the plan is predicated on prescribed income-mixing that creates intentional economic disparities in close proximity, and is being executed at a superlatively large scale, these projects represent the preeminent social-engineering experiment of our time.
New York City is constantly evolving, both physically and socially; image via National Geographic
This method is entirely opposite to the largely discredited, income-segregated approach taken toward affordable housing in the mid-20th century. It’s also being greeted with the same level of optimism that initially surrounded those efforts, and while the new method can be seen as a well-informed course correction, its full effects won’t be discernible for several decades. For architects and planners — who should be painfully familiar with this history — the actualization of the latest wisdom in subsidized housing is cause to take stock of the issues surrounding this experiment that tend to be omitted from its promotional discourse.
“What are the long-term societal effects inherent in locating subsidized housing within super-luxe buildings in prohibitively expensive neighborhoods?”
In the case of New York City, the housing market has skewed unbelievably upward over the last decade, with record-breaking apartment sales becoming so common that they hardly garner the sort of attention they did just a few years ago. In an era when the city’s affordability is being balked at by all but its wealthiest citizens, what are the long-term societal effects inherent in locating subsidized housing within super-luxe buildings in prohibitively expensive neighborhoods?
Certain benefits of income-mixing have been unequivocally established. Overall, lower-income residents in such developments report a high degree of satisfaction with the quality of their housing and the level of maintenance it receives and tend to value its location in relatively safe neighborhoods with well-funded services — especially public schools. But the long-term viability of residents in certain New York neighborhoods can easily be called into question with regard to the level of locally available commerce.
435 West 31st Street; via New York YIMBY
Take for example 435 West 31st Street, an SOM-designed tower in the Manhattan West development, adjacent to Hudson Yards, with 169 affordable housing units — 20 percent of its total apartments. The lowest income-level-affordable units available here are around $32,000. It’s difficult to imagine someone with this salary valuing the convenience of their proximity to a development anchored by luxury retailers such as Coach and Neiman Marcus or feeling welcome to dine at any of the restaurants on their block when they’re all staffed by celebrity chefs.
“ … How will this experiment in income-mixing fare after the last low-cost grocery store leaves the neighborhood?”
As the retail tenants of areas around Hudson Yards and its neighboring Chelsea begin to gentrify as much as their residents, how will this experiment in income-mixing fare after the last low-cost grocery store leaves the neighborhood? Strategies such as subsidized commercial tenants and tax incentives for below-market retail leases should be on the radar of urban planners and designers if they want income-mixing to become a long-term success.
Another issue that tends to escape the promotion of this plan is the social dynamics in mixed-income developments. More than one study has found that despite their proximity, interactions between residents of different income levels is low to none, and that, even over several years, residents tend to keep their social relations limited to others within their own economic strata. How this might affect income-mixing as a path to prosperity is yet unknown, but so far all the originally theorized benefits of such interactions (like behavior modeling) are completely unfounded: Different classes are still living in the same style of socioeconomic isolation they were before, just physically closer to each other.
626 First Avenue by SHoP Architects; via Curbed
This finding should be ringing alarm bells for architects. If a whole class of developments in New York will be mixing some of the city’s wealthiest residents with some of its poorest — and a lack of true integration is already expected — what can be done? Design is a bit limited in this respect, but best practices regarding access to public space can alleviate some of the otherwise unresolved tensions in this area. While many building amenities such as gyms tend to be pay-to-play for residents — and thus potentially unaffordable to subsidized renters — outdoor common areas can be positioned for equal access by all classes with the hope of boosting interactions, however small they may be.
“ … Most affordable units are still specified with the cheapest available fixtures and furnishings.”
Finally, the social divide between subsidized and market-rate residents may be most visible to architects during the design phase of a new building, when the layout and specifying of affordable units are approached separately from market-rate units. Recent laws in New York have prevented the cordoning-off of affordable units with separate entrances, but most affordable units are still specified with the cheapest available fixtures and furnishings. If social stigmas are to be erased, this practice should be banned, as well. In the meantime, architects can pay close attention to the long-term durability of the products they select for affordable housing units.
One Riverside Park by Goldstein Hill & West; the building caused controversy with its use of a “poor door”; via The New Yorker.
Despite clear benefits in terms of housing quality and neighborhood services available to low-income residences, income-mixing has been shown to have its limits in terms of social integration. If design professionals involved in this effort want it to succeed in the long term, they’re going to need to constantly reevaluate its effects and alter their tactics relatively quickly. With the first major works of this plan coming into being in New York City, now is a great time do so.
