Working-Class Utopias: A History of Cooperative Housing in New York City. By Robert M. Fogelson

Abstract

With market-based solutions failing to address the severe housing affordability crisis across the U.S., Robert M. Fogelson’s history of cooperative housing in New York comes at an opportune time. The author outlines Abraham E. Kazan’s work organizing cooperatives through labor unions and the nonprofit United Housing Foundation (UHF), and provides an account of a thirteen-month rent strike at UHF’s largest project, Co-op City. Fogelson’s monograph complements books on urban renewal in New York by historians such as Joel Schwartz and Samuel Zipp, as well as research on postwar apartment construction by scholars including Matthew Lasner and Nicholas Dagen Bloom. Housing cooperatives relied on state subsidy, resident support, and nonprofit organization. They targeted middle-income families, those earning too little to afford market-rate units but too much to qualify for heavily subsidized public housing. Residents would pay a relatively low fee to purchase their units as well as carrying charges that paid for taxes, maintenance, and community amenities. Low-interest financing provided by governments, limited equity taken by builders, and state and local tax exemptions for a set period of time after construction reduced the monthly fees paid by residents. Cooperatives were also income tested: one needed to earn a certain percentage of the median income of an area to qualify.