Owners of Last Resort: The Track Record of New York City's Early Low-Income Housing Cooperatives Created between 1967 and 1975

Abstract

As housing abandonment became a major problem in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a program emerged which both rehabilitated abandoned multiple dwellings and created a system of cooperative ownership by low-income former tenants. This became the first program in the United States which transferred ownership of privately held buildings to low-income tenants. The program expanded rapidly so that by 1973 there were 136 properties, which included a total of 286 buildings, at various stages of the process. However, only 42 of these properties had completed rehabilitation and conversion when the program was aborted as a result of the New York City fiscal crisis in 1975. This paper assesses the track record of the 42 cooperatives over the years since that time. It finds a mixed, but disappointing, record, and explores the reasons for this. It then weighs the viability and significance of the strategy to the current crisis in the private low-income rental housing market. Finally, it raises questions concerning recent HUD initiatives encouraging both management and ownership of public housing developments by their tenants in the light of the track record of these early low-income cooperatives.