No. 182 ISSN 1559-9736 Winter 2010

The Magazine of Planners Network Peter Marcuse and Critical Planning

Also In This Issue: New Strategies for Housing Rights

www.plannersnetwork.org “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions The Seventh on the next seven generations.” -From the Great Law of the G e n e r a t i o n Iroquois Confederacy From the Homeownership Trap to Alternative Forms of Tenure and Financing

by Michela Zonta

Open the newspaper on any day of the week segments of society could afford homeownership. and you will most likely come across a headline The collapse of the housing industry following the such as “U.S. Unemployment Rate at 26-Year Wall Street crash of October 1929 prompted the High,” “Hundreds of Workers Laid Off,” or “Area federal government to adopt a series of initiatives to Foreclosures Increase,” along with news about stimulate overall economic recovery by addressing business closures, bankrupt financial institutions and both unemployment and the shortage of affordable increasing rates of homelessness. housing. By sponsoring slum clearance and the construction of public housing in inner cities, the Such headlines and news are not very different federal government sought to boost employment in from those of the late 1920s. Indeed, the scale of the housing industry and provide affordable housing the current economic recession has often been for the poor. It also sought to ensure that more equated with that observed during the Great households could afford to own their own homes Depression. Ironically, the very institutions that through the establishment of low down payments, emerged as a response to the Great Depression reduced monthly payments and long-term mortgage have largely contributed to the recent housing loans, as well as with the creation of insurance crisis, along with the belief in homeownership as schemes designed to stabilize financial conditions for a potent symbol of the American Dream. And, yet homeowners and mortgage lenders. again, they have been at the core of a variety of policy responses. What we need instead today is Federal responses to the housing crisis of the late a progressive reexamination of homeownership 1920s are often associated with programs such and laissez-faire housing policies and practices as public housing, which were designed initially in favor of alternative forms of housing tenure for the “worthy poor,”—formerly middle-class and more aggressive techniques to preserve low- and working-class families in need of temporary income rental units. housing. Over the years, however, the direct provision of housing by the federal government Homeownership as National Policy turned into a means-tested solution for the poorest residents, which diminished both its public support At the core of the current crisis are a number of and its impact. It is the large, although less visible, institutions and mechanisms that emerged in set of federal programs supporting homeownership response to the Great Depression. Before the Great for white middle- and upper-income consumers Depression, the financing of home purchases that originated and crystallized in the wake of was very expensive and only the most affluent the Great Depression that has cont. on page 4

2 Progressive Planning Winter 2010 Issue Contents: From the Homeownership Trap to Alternative Forms of Tenure and Financing New Strategies for Housing Rights by Michela Zonta...... Page 2 Picture the Homeless Chases Chase by Lynn Lewis...... Page 18

Peter Marcuse and Critical Planning Alternatives to the Mortgage Trap: Household Savings and Peter Marcuse at 80: His Extraordinary Contributions to the Mutual Housing Association Progressive Planning by Michael E. Stone...... Page 22 by Clara Irazábal and Susan Fainstein...... Page 6 Land Banks, Mortgage Revenue Bonds and Market What We Can Learn from Peter Marcuse: “Think Critically, Regulation: Three Tools for Communities Facing Foreclosures Act Critically!” by Jesse Clark...... Page 26 by Jacqueline Leavitt...... Page 9 Direct Action Against Foreclosure and Eviction: Lessons Changing Times, Changing Planning: from the Great Depression Critical Planning Today by Daniel Pearlstein...... Page 29 by Peter Marcuse...... Page 13 Feature Articles From Fragmentation to Empowerment in a São Paulo Favela by Bruno Padilha...... Page 33

Remembering Jac Smit and Tom Reiner...... Page 37

New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate Review by Pierre Clavel...... Page 38

How to Join, Purchase Back Issues, etc...... Page 42

Correction: In the Fall 2009 issue we neglected to mention that a previous version of the article about the Right to the City Alliance by Jacqueline Leavitt, Tony Roshan Samara and Marnie Brady appeared in the Poverty & Race Research Action Council newsletter from September/October 2009.

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No. 182 / WINTER 2010 3 had the most substantial and level low interest rates—property homeownership in American lasting impact on the housing values rapidly declined across society, it is no surprise that market. These programs and the nation, making refinancing of homeowners have received most institutions, along with an overall existing mortgages unaffordable of the attention of the media and ideology, developed in support of for many homeowners. At the policymakers in the wake of the homeownership played a key role same time, rising interest rates current housing finance collapse. in the economic recession of eight in the subprime mortgage Without a doubt, homeowners are decades later. market made many homeowners being hit hard by the foreclosure unable to meet their financial crisis, particularly those with By facilitating access to mortgage commitments, threatening the limited financial resources and lending, New Deal policies solvency of several financial poor credit who succumbed to the contributed to the illusion of institutions. Similar to the Great illusion of homeownership at the homeownership by creating Depression, the housing and hands of financial institutions and a dependence on credit. This financial collapse precipitated practices that targeted marginal illusion, coupled with an over- a severe credit crunch, a sharp borrowers and a society that reliance on the private market rise in home foreclosures, loss oversold its benefits. For many, to be the primary provider of of savings by many households, however, foreclosed properties have housing and the cultural and declining stock prices, a drop in suddenly changed from a symbol social significance attached to housing construction, the collapse of the American Dream and of single-family homeownership as of financial institutions and other economic, social and psychological a potent symbol of the American businesses and skyrocketing security to a true nightmare and Dream, are the key forces that unemployment rates. financial point of no return. led to the current housing crisis. And, similar to eighty years ago, Here We Go Back to the The Squeeze Is On the Renters these have also been the basis Homeownership Myth for the most popular responses Much less attention has been to the economic recession. During the first year of the devoted to those segments Since the Great Depression, Obama administration, of the population who do homeownership became the a number of policies and not explicitly conform to the goal of increasingly larger programs were devised in single-family homeownership segments of society, thanks to the order to boost the economy norm—renters. Renting has restructuring and deregulation of and address the devastating historically been associated with the mortgage lending industry. impacts of the current housing low-income families and people The growth of the secondary crisis on large segments of the of color. Most importantly, mortgage market and innovations population. These included in a society where private in credit scoring, in particular, bailout legislation for troubled property is central, the right made it easier for lenders to lending institutions, tax credits to housing is non-existent and secure funds and assess risks of and foreclosure moratoria, homeownership represents the default. At the same time, the among others. Although much “passport” to full citizenship subprime mortgage market made of this policy agenda ought rights, tenancy has traditionally it possible for large numbers of to be praised by liberals and been associated not only with marginal borrowers to be part conservatives alike, proposed limited housing security but of the American Dream, despite housing-related programs and also with lower social and the high and hidden costs often policies, once again, seem to political status and less than full associated with such loans. emphasize homeownership. citizenship, especially for those who are permanently locked into Following the recent burst of the Given the importance historically this form of tenure because of housing bubble—fed by record- attributed to single-family very low incomes.

4 Progressive Planning As the National Low Income Toward Alternative Forms of Successful examples of Housing Coalition claims, low- Tenure and Social Housing alternative forms of tenure income renters had already and social housing may be been experiencing a housing The continuing reliance on found in other industrialized crisis before the inception of the the private market despite its societies where housing, like current wave of foreclosures; apparent failure, and on the health care, represents a social since the mid-1990s, affordable ideal of homeownership, may entitlement. Shared housing housing had been in short represent an effective response and cooperative housing, supply. Renters are also not to the current housing crisis for instance, have long been immune from the foreclosure only for those who were adopted in several European crisis. A large proportion of already better off at the onset countries as effective means renters are at risk of losing of the recession. When it to ameliorate market forces in their homes because the comes to marginal borrowers the provision of affordable and buildings in which they reside and low-income renters, good quality housing. are threatened by foreclosure. however, the dissolution of the Most importantly, as large welfare state makes economic Michela Zonta, PhD., is numbers of homeowners lose recovery and poverty a professor of urban and their homes to foreclosure, the alleviation more challenging regional planning at the L.D. pressures on the rental market than ever. These dynamics Wilder School of Government increase by further shrinking call for a reexamination of and Public Affairs, Virginia the supply of affordable rental the ideology and normative Commonwealth University. units, pricing those with very orientations that have justified low incomes out of the rental and continue to justify housing market and contributing to policies and planning. higher levels of overcrowding and homelessness. Progressive policymakers and planners along with grassroots Housing security for low- practitioners and advocates income renters is increasingly for the right to housing being jeopardized by an should take advantage of the ever-shrinking supply of momentum represented by the affordable housing. This current crisis to advocate for situation is exacerbated by the the preservation of low-income depletion of federal tenant- housing and for secure tenancy based housing subsidies and for all renters, especially those the net loss of affordable with very low incomes and housing units resulting from at risk of losing affordable the conversion of public housing. At the same time, they housing into mixed-income ought to urge a shift in national developments. Indeed, in policy to support the adoption contrast with the New Deal of social ownership and social era, the poor and society at financing policies and practices large can count on neither the along with alternative forms direct provision of housing by of tenure that have almost the government nor the series never been embraced by of other welfare subsidies that American society but that have used to serve as an important the potential of alleviating safety net. homelessness and poverty.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 5 Peter Marcuse at 80: His Extraordinary Contributions to Progressive Planning

by Clara Irazábal and Susan Fainstein

Peter Marcuse is known throughout the world. His writings are in ideas for alternative approaches, the world as a leading scholar and German as well as English. He offering fruitful comparisons with practitioner of progressive planning, has written or edited eight books European programs. The range but he has also been an outstanding and over 200 papers in over thirty of his work on housing extends member of Planners Network since professional and scholarly journals from compiling the New York City it was founded in 1975. and he is on the editorial board Housing and Vacancy Survey—a of several journals, including the critically important empirical tool—to Peter is an attorney, a practicing Journal of Planning Education and conceptual pieces, including his very planner and a teacher of planning. Research. His contribution, however, influential essay “Housing Policy He is truly one of the most is not simply a matter of quantity. and the Myth of the Benevolent multifaceted, committed and Rather, he has had a major effect State.” He has also made important productive planners anywhere. As on the field in a number of areas, contributions to scholarship on a devoted planner and educator, he including racial discrimination, housing in Eastern Europe. has worked extensively inside and housing policy, comparative outside academia and government planning and globalization. Peter’s recent works focus on to promote the highest ethical spatial divisions within cities. Also standards for the profession. He has Peter’s first major published piece, in important and widely cited is his also been a consistent advocate for the Journal of the American Institute of theoretical approach to the differing social justice. Planners (predecessor to the Journal meanings of neighborhood of the American Planning Association) homogeneity in neighborhoods The following review of Peter’s dealt with professional ethics, and with different social composition. scholarship, teaching excellence his interest in the subject has been This work reveals the connections and service in the field of planning ongoing. Peter’s writings on the between urban development and shows how significant his ethics of the planning profession globalization. His two edited books contributions have been. have been widely assigned in urban in this area have been seminal in planning programs and have helped developing this relationship. Marcuse the Scholar to shape the profession. He has pressed the American Institute of Frankly, the variety of subjects that Peter’s contribution to human Certified Planners (AICP) to improve Marcuse has studied and written settlements research, thinking and implement its professional code about makes any summary difficult. and practice is internationally of ethics. Despite this substantial scholarly recognized. He has written on a output and range of interests, Peter broad variety of topics and his Peter has consistently critiqued U.S. has been consistently guided in his work has been widely cited across housing programs and developed scholarship by a commitment to Also in this section: Peter Marcuse and What We Can Learn from Peter Marcuse: “Think Critically, Act Critically!” by Jacqueline Leavitt (p. 9) Changing Times, Changing Planning: Critical Planning Today Critical Planning by Peter Marcuse (p. 13)

6 Progressive Planning social justice. And his progressive Columbia and UCLA, Peter Peter has held a variety of public voice has been consistent, original has been a visiting professor at offices, including membership on and productive. universities around the world, the City Planning Commission of including in South Africa, East and Waterbury, Connecticut; president Teaching Excellence West Germany, Canada, Australia, of the City Planning Commission Hungary, Austria, Venezuela and of Los Angeles, California; and Peter taught at the University Brazil. He has also given guest chair of the Housing Committee of California, Los Angeles after lectures at many more universities, of Manhattan Community Board receiving his PhD, and since 1975 including in China, New Zealand, 9 in New York City. In Waterbury, he has been teaching at Columbia Portugal, France, Argentina, Israel, he helped spearhead a referendum University, where for many years England, Scotland, Wales, Croatia, establishing the procedure for the he was chair of the planning Vietnam, Singapore, Belgium, the use of governmental powers to program. Although now officially Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, improve blighted areas and served retired, Peter continues to teach Greece, Russia, Japan and Finland. as founding chair of the city’s anti- courses and is highly respected by His teaching has won widespread poverty agency (in the days of the his students. He has taught a great praise from students and colleagues federal War on Poverty). In his variety of subjects at the master’s for his conscientiousness in course work with local government he and PhD levels, reflecting the broad preparation, openness to the input always insisted that social factors be range of his scholarship. Subjects of others and the thoughtfulness in considered in planning and zoning include planning theory and which he presents his subject matter. decisions. In Los Angeles, he served ethics, housing and housing policy, on the Planning Commission in the comparative housing and planning Community Engagement early stages of development of the issues, social policy planning, city’s poly-nucleated long-range globalization issues and community Peter’s service to communities and plan. In New York City, he focused participation in planning, as well as the planning profession has been on the issue of the disposition of city- planning studios. extraordinary and exemplary for a owned property and was successful scholar. He has acted as amicus curiae in achieving the adoption of a Most recently he collaborated with (friend of the court) in housing cases, statement of principles committing a group of Columbia doctoral advisor to state and local governments the city to the redevelopment of students to edit the book Searching and framer of innovative policy city-owned property to meet the for the Just City (Routledge, 2009). approaches in places as disparate as needs of existing residents. He has In addition to his teaching at New York, Israel and South Africa. also been a consultant to the U.S.

Marcuse on Olympic Cities....

“Cities have pursued hosting the Olympic Games out of a variety of motivations, often more than one. Absent from these motivations in recent years has been the original purpose of the Games: to promote peace….When an Iraqi soccer team took the field in theA thens Olympics, there was no reference to the fact that their country had been invaded by a foreign power, the war was in fact being waged by participants in the Games against the peoples of other participants. But then the Games have become spectacle, entertainment, rather than a component of an international relationship among states and peoples based on universal moral principles.”

“In the end, New York City’s Olympics bid seems to be more about a huge real estate development on the far west side of Manhattan, anchored by a football stadium (and about the fixations of important people in government), than about Olympic sports competitions or, certainly, than about peace, even at a city level.”

From “New York City’s Olympic Bid—Why?” Progressive Planning 161, Fall 2004.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 7 Department of Housing and Urban chapter. He is one of the founders of his voice has persuaded many who Development, the New York State the Global Planning Educators Interest have served along with him or Division of Housing and Community Group (GPEIG). A few years ago, he subsequent to him on the innumerable Development and the City of New founded a group for New York City planning bodies and commissions for York’s Department of Housing urban scholars around the theme of which he has found the time. Preservation and Development. the right to the city. The group meets regularly and is linked with the Right Peter’s work was recognized by As an expert witness on planning issues, to the City Alliance, in which Planners two conferences in 2008 held in his Peter has testified or given affidavits Network serves as a resource group. honor. “The Right to the City: Radical in a number of important lawsuits, Urbanism” was held in New York including the Yonkers (NY) school The Legacy and Recognition of City and Berlin. Two issues of the desegregation case, the Department Peter Marcuse journal City: Analysis of Urban Trends, of Justice’s lawsuit against Island Culture, Theory, Policy, Action (v.13, Park (NY) for discrimination in the Peter Marcuse is known for his no. 2-3 & 4, 2009) discussed his work use of federal housing subsidies and extensive expertise in many areas of and legacy. The City editorial in issue for a number of low-income housing planning and his broad experience number 2-3 states, “The inspiration projects. He produced an important in analyzing the multifaceted for much of the work presented here affidavit and wrote a key article arguing challenges to sustainable and equitable is the continuing, theoretical and for the inclusion of social impacts in urbanization in many regions of the practical journey from Europe to environmental impact statements under world. He has been exceptional in North America (and back) provided New York State law. He is currently his ability to be both realistic and by the lawyer, planner and urban active on a number of housing and inspirational in his multiple writings, scholar Peter Marcuse—drawing on, planning issues in New York City, talks and service engagements. As a developing and applying the critical including the planning for Lower planner that has exemplified a lifelong theory and witness of his father Manhattan after 9/11, housing policy balance between thinking and acting, Herbert Marcuse.” and subsidies for low-rent housing. Peter has stimulated global dialogue that bridges new thinking and new Progressive Planning echoes these Peter has served on a staggering approaches intended to address the words to honor our mentor and number of boards and advisory challenges of our urban world. He has friend, Peter Marcuse. committees. He is a charter member affected generations of practitioners and elected fellow of the AICP and and scholars who take with them Clara Irazábal is an assistant professor serves on its Committee on Global a strong commitment to planning of international urban planning at the Planning. He has been active in the ethics and social equity. He stays in Graduate School of Architecture, Planning American Planning Association touch with scholars in a multitude of and Preservation, Columbia University. (APA), including as a member of the planning programs in the U.S. and Susan Fainstein is a professor at Harvard executive committee of the New York abroad. Within the practice of planning University’s Graduate School of Design.

Marcuse on Rebuilding New York...

“Public space and public use must be major goals; security concerns should not be allowed to interfere with accessibility and the free use of such spaces.”

“The frequent repetition of the undoubted importance of global competitiveness for the city must not be allowed to obscure the fact that serving the interests of those benefiting from global competitiveness, including real estate developers and financial interests in the financial district, may or may not be of benefit to the majority who are involved in the more local aspects of the economy.”

From “Planning after September 11: The Issues in New York” Planners Network Magazine 150, Winter 2002

8 Progressive Planning What We Can Learn from Peter Marcuse: “Think Critically, Act Critically!” by Jacqueline Leavitt

In his long and productive identify him by only one of many from a New Haven law firm for career as a planner, academic present and past occupations. his leftist views and activities. and lawyer, the writings and Whether as a lawyer-planner Freedom Summer brought civil speeches of Peter Marcuse or planner-lawyer, or as an rights activists to Mississippi question the foundations academic, Peter has also always and Peter worked as a lawyer of planning practice and been an activist, participating with the Lawyers Constitutional thought. Whether it is about in progressive events as far Defense Committee. ethics, housing, civil rights, back as the summer he collected the role of the state or social signatures for the Progressive It is likely that Peter’s outspoken movements, Marcuse advances Party candidate Henry Wallace defense of progressive ideas led our understanding of structural who unsuccessfully ran against to his defeat for a second term on conditions that create social Harry Truman in 1948. the Waterbury Board of Aldermen. change, i.e., are transformative In the 1960s, at the University in relation to the distribution Peter handled a lawsuit for the of California, Berkeley, where of power and wealth and not N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Peter received his doctorate in merely palliative exercises or Education Fund in the 1950s, planning, he joined anti-war superficial actions. was elected to the Waterbury protests and boycotted classes. (Connecticut) Board of Aldermen In more recent times, Peter Peter has been a major force in in 1959 and then became a participated in electoral campaigns putting forward the idea that member of the Waterbury City for progressive candidates and planning is critical thinking, Planning Commission and about helped in 1994 in drafting district and that planning tools can ten years later, when he began voting legislation for the African be used in ways to change teaching at UCLA, became National Congress (ANC) in conditions for exploited and president of the Los Angeles City Johannesburg, South Africa. dominated people. At the Planning Commission. Since 2000 he has continued to heart of his research, writing, work for democracy in planning teaching and practice lay basic Peter was arrested twice. First, in New York City. He served on ideas about values, and he in the summer of 1950, when Community Board 9 and was chair repeatedly challenges us to he organized a small factory of its Housing Committee and distinguish between right and with the United Electrical drafted revisions to the New York wrong. Workers (UE) and was arrested City Charter decentralizing power walking the picket line. His to community boards. He also Progressive Roots and Political Action second arrest came some co-initiated the Right to the City three decades later when East Study Group. His articles, books It may be that the development German police were sweeping and public lectures continue to be of these ideas is most apparent up those congregating in the in the forefront of controversial in the realm of housing, but to center of East Berlin just before planning issues, including separate Peter’s work by issue the Berlin Wall came down. In his ideas on the creative class, area is as wrong as it would be to the mid-1950s, Peter was fired gentrification and globalization.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 9 A Wide Scope of Writing education, providing a critical housing literature. Intuitively, frame for analysis of housing it belongs there, almost Peter’s writings, like his and urban policy. His articles on uniquely.” Peter identifies three occupations/professions, public housing and affordability types of alienation: residential should not be separated into parse the literature in order alienation as the “condition of silos. An early article of his on to arrive at deeper analyses estrangement between a person housing and planning identified of topics that are too often and his/her dwelling;” social twin paths in the fields of city generalized. The pity is that alienation as the “condition of planning and public health, far these writings, despite their estrangement between a person ahead of planning departments unifying threads, which would and his/her community;” and offering joint degrees in urban support more interdisciplinary self-alienation as referring planning and health. His teaching, likely only surface in “broadly to the state of articles on ethics extend to individual classes that fit into alienation in the individual.” current conflicts over space; topical silos. one example he cites is the In 2006, in an article called “The wall Israel erected to isolate Let us look at the broad scope of Permanent Housing Crisis: The the Palestinians and limit the Peter’s writings by examining Failures of Conservatism and opportunities for an effective some themes that he began in the Limits of Liberalism,” Peter peace agreement. An article of his early career and continues to and co-author Dennis Keating his on gentrification looks at refine today. conclude by stating that housing the twin face of abandonment policy in the United States has and gentrification to more Peter first made an important alternated between “liberal” deeply grasp the ways in distinction, for example, between and “conservative.” They note which the process for each alienation and amelioration in that the differences are only arises from “common causes.” his 1975 article “Residential at the margins, however, with He notes that “abandonment Alienation, Home Ownership “conservative policies often and gentrification both are and the Limits of Shelter Policy,” aggravating housing problems, reflections of a single long- which appeared in the Journal and liberal policies rather tending term process resulting from of Sociology and Social Welfare to ameliorate them.” Both neglect the changing economy of the and was also the basis for his more basic alternatives. central city.” Peter questions the doctoral dissertation. He relates myths of traditional planning the concept of alienation to Most recently, on the occasion of and his oft-cited article “The housing and comments, “It is his 80th birthday, a symposium Myth of the Benevolent State” indeed curious that the idea was organized in Berlin, was a breakthrough in planning of alienation is so scarce in the Germany, around theory and

Marcuse on Sustainability...

“’Sustainability’ as a goal for planning just doesn’t work. In the first place, sustainability is not a goal; it is a constraint on the achievement of other goals. No one who is interested in change wants to sustain things as they are now. Taken as a goal by itself, ‘sustainability’ only benefits those who already have everything they want. It preserves the status quo, making only those changes required to maintain that status.”

“Indeed, a just, human, and environmentally sensitive world will in the long run be better for all of us. But getting to the long run entails conflicts and controversies, issues of power and the redistribution of wealth. The ‘sustainability’ slogan hides these conflicts instead of revealing them.”

From “Sustainability Is Not Enough” Progressive Planning Reader (2004), pp. 62-63.

10 Progressive Planning practice in relation to the Right political action to achieve real formulation was identified in to the City. In the article based change” (emphasis by author). the 1970s when he spoke of the on his opening statement, This formulation links to work “perniciousness” of thinking “From Critical Urban Theory in other disciplines, especially that the “mere act of owning to the Right to the City,” Peter recent scholarship in sociology a home ‘transforms a man’.” argues that the selling of (for example, in the edited Other than changing the word homeownership as the American volume by Jeff Goodwin, James “man” to a woman/man, I Dream in many ways has M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta, doubt that Peter would change parallels with other policies and Passionate Politics: Emotions and anything else in this statement prejudices, all of which affect Social Movements). today. Alienation is both an people’s lives: anti-abortion individual and collective feeling and right to life, the right to Peter suggests why we should that is not only resolved by hold guns, anti-tax measures, and in what ways we need a shelter policy. In the article homophobia, racism, anti- to confront repressive but with Keating, the authors do immigrant sentiment, religious seemingly benign policies. not emphasize alienation but fundamentalism, family values, “The battle thus becomes ever identify assumptions held by chauvinist war-mongering, more a battle of ideology, both conservatives and liberals false patriotism and elements understanding, grounded in to different degrees; they are of sports fanaticism. Peter also material oppression but not rooted in an economy that gives writes: “It is tempting to use limited to it, combining the primacy to the profit-driven Freudian terms for the process, demands of the oppressed with market rather than human repression of discontent and the aspirations of the alienated.” development and a government its sublimation in the emotional that is held captive by the phenomena, a catharsis in which Linking Ideas and Actions powerful interests of the private emotion is attached to these real estate and housing industry. issues and removed from more Why do I emphasize these This reflects his critical thinking dangerous discontents, or even ideas? To begin with, the times about alienation as defined in realization of discontent. A direct call for direct action along the earlier article. In the more confrontation with this repression/ with far-ranging visions. Peter recent article Peter returns sublimation may have to be a very offers us ways of assessing, to the concept of alienation, concrete part of any practical analyzing and acting. His basic developing his ideas about the

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 11 role of critical thinking and artists, a significant part of the sense of negative criticism, action. First, he suggests ways the intelligentsia, in resistance but also critically exposing the to update ideas about class to the dominant systems as positive and the possibilities beyond simply the “terms of preventing adequate satisfaction of change, implying positions material interests . . . along of their human needs.” on what is wrong and needing lines of position in the relations change, but also on what is of production . . ..” Class Taken together, these articles by desirable and needs to be built on structure needs to consider Peter go outside the traditional and fostered.” “the excluded, the working planning formulations. When class, the small business people, this occurs, not surprisingly, it If in urban planning we learn the gentry, the capitalists, the is usually from a progressive from Daniel Burnham who said establishment intelligentsia perspective. But what “Make no little plans,” should we and the politically powerful.” progressives are currently not also learn from Peter Marcuse He then reformulates a “more saying goes beyond proposing something like “Think critically, modernized concept of class, an alternative to planning and act critically!” including “cultural” terms. includes more a reformulation It would include, he writes, of priorities that puts critical Jacqueline Leavitt is a professor of “relation to the dominant thinking at the center. Among urban planning at University of cultural, ethnic and gendered those pursuing this path, Peter is California, Los Angeles. society and ideology, [and] most eloquent. might be: the directly oppressed, the alienated, the In Peter’s own words, “‘Critical’ insecure, the hapless lackeys I take to be, among other things, of power, the underwriters and shorthand for an evaluative beneficiaries.” He identifies attitude towards reality, a the directly oppressed as the questioning rather than an ones “who will make demands acceptance of the world as it is, for the Right to the City” a taking apart and examining and the aspiration will come and attempting to understand from the alienated “of any the world. It leads to a position economic class, many youth, not only necessarily critical in Some of Peter Marcuse’s authored and edited books include [previous page]: Missing Marx: A Personal and Political Journal of a Year in East Germany, 1989-1990 (1991), A German Way of Revolution (1990), Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order? (2000), [this page] Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice (2009), Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space (2002)

12 Progressive Planning Changing Times, Changing Planning: Critical Planning Today by Peter Marcuse

Over the last fifty years, times have more directly involved than as well as with issues of economic changed and so has urban planning. themselves. Lawyers often slid justice like welfare reform and Our strategies for changing planning into such positions, not merely labor organizing. Students formed also need to change. representing their clients but left reading groups, a few taking telling them what they could on reading all three volumes In the 1960s, planning was seen and could not do (which became of Marx’s Capital. The War on as a way of harnessing technical what they should do). The Poverty bred the sub-field of social competence to achieve social temptation for many planners planning, which attracted some change, at the grassroots level and was similar. Advocacy planning professionals as well as academics nationally and internationally. was a movement given a name by and students, and was accepted It seemed to many a field in Paul Davidoff, a lawyer-planner. in professional associations and which one could be both a direct Advocate planners hoped to conferences of planners. P.E.O. participant in progressive causes avoid the “professional knows drafted a statement on The Social (civil rights, peace, justice and best” trap by volunteering their Responsibility of Planners and equality) and a professional, services, setting up storefront pushed to have it adopted as using training and technical community planning and part of the Code of Ethics of the competence in support of those design centers, participating profession. Though it was not, it causes. The combination of in legislative advocacy and was considered positively in most activist and professional seemed maintaining a commitment to of the planning community. feasible and rewarding even participation and democracy. if it was not easy. It had to be So while professionalism fought for at both ends: with At the same time, the social change remained in some tension with poor people in immediate need role of planning had to be fought social activism, it was widely of food and shelter, with workers for within the profession. The accepted that there was an fighting every day for fair pay, profession had a long history of inherent relationship between with African-American prisoners under-representation of blacks the two. Planning as a field had incarcerated in an attempt to keep and women, with an attendant a social role to play; the activity them down, with residents fighting neglect of their interests and of planning was a socially to preserve their communities views in the practice of planning. loaded one, an inevitably against the daily threat of eviction Militant caucuses of both women political one, a value-laden one. and displacement. and blacks were formed, pushing Its social role is historically both for full equality in the grounded, part of the DNA of Those who were struggling profession and for the profession’s the activity, with deep links to were also suspicious of full attention to the needs of utopianism and social welfare middle- or upper-class those constituencies. In response, and an expanded public role; whites telling them what Planners for Equal Opportunity it has historically been part of was best for them, and often, (P.E.O., the forerunner of today’s urban reform movements and consciously or unconsciously, Planners Network) was formed, social criticism. Professionalism taking over leadership roles and it set about engaging with in planning was not neutral, in organizations from those issues of equality in the profession but led to clear positions on key

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 13 controversial public policies of public to the private. The shift work is much more limited, the day. There could be debates in power and its accompanying through no fault of their own. as to whether the social role of changes have of course not been planning was broad enough straight-line, or without hard But how planners react to these to require planners to take a confrontations, but the direction changes depends on us; planners position against the war in of movement from the welfare can silently or even obsequiously Vietnam, but the question was state (never fully developed in the serve their masters, or they can a legitimate one debated in the United States) to the neo-liberal insist on their own independence, official journal of the profession. state (in which the United States is comment on goals as well as design a leading force) has resulted in a means, act as citizens as well as Changing Times quite different context for planning professionals and choose who today than fifty years ago. to serve, declining those whose Over the last fifty years there have principles conflict with their own. been major changes, and many have The implications for planners Independent advice is after all what not been positive. The relationships and planning are far-reaching. is expected of a professional; it’s of power between the establishment Planning techniques are tools; what distinguishes a professional and those subject to it have how they are used is based on from an employee. And for all those changed, in favor of the holders an on-going interaction between involved in planning, professional of power. This is true in almost the professionals and those they or not, the activity itself is based every field relevant to planning: serve. In the earlier period, the on a set of principles, such as capital vs. labor, developers vs. profession had a significant degree comprehensiveness of view, long- communities, landlords vs. tenants, of autonomy; even the most term vision, dealing with causes as financial institutions vs. citizens, service-oriented, non-political, well as symptoms and being clear corporate media vs. local sources non-ideological planning theories on values and goals and conflicts of information and entertainment, suggested that planning should among them. and in general, market-based and start with an interrogation of the profit-driven operations vs. public, goals of the client, perhaps only in Today, unfortunately, the pressures non-profit and individual work. the interests of efficient service, but of reality are on the side of Rapid technological development, at the same time opening the door servility rather than independence. effectively used in increasing to questions and value judgments, The escape route for planners, the reach of global markets, has at least making the social content of adapting to the new situation, is contributed mightily to this shift the goals open and visible. Today, to go technocratic (I will call it in power from local to regional, the scope for planners to exert technicism)—to make the efficient national and global, and from the independence in their professional use of the tools of planning an

Marcuse on New Orleans After Katrina...

“If developing wetlands reduce New Orleans’ ability to withstand hurricanes, shouldn’t questions be asked about who allowed the development? If African Americans are overly concentrated in low-lying areas, or have 50 percent fewer cars per capita than whites, or double the poverty rates, shouldn’t that be a matter of public discussion, with causes and responsibilities sought? If National Guard troops are needed today, and 3,000 Louisiana National Guard and 4,000 Mississippi National Guard are in Iraq, is it not appropriate for citizens to consider the implications? It is not some nameless forces of nature, but human agency, that has produced these results. Should not the humans that have produce the results be held accountable?”

From “Katrina, ‘Disasters’ and Social Justice” Progressive Planning 165, Fall 2005.

14 Progressive Planning end in itself, regardless of the community planning. Planners will frequently involve looking at purposes or the interests they are getting involved on the side land ownership patterns and the serve. Technicism is more than just of social justice in issues of racial way an untrammeled market has striving for technical competence discrimination and segregation, negative consequences. Issues of in the use of tools. Technicism is gender and LGBT issues, immigrant property rights underlie virtually limiting the activity of planning rights, social welfare, displacement any issue with which planners to the technical, to the means from gentrification and mega- have to deal, and they need to be for whatever ends are assigned, projects, environmental justice, made explicit. The mystification abjuring any responsibility for citizen participation, community of issues of property rights and ends. Technicists justify what they empowerment, community and the assumed superiority of the do on the grounds that they are economic planning that gives private sector in terms of efficiency just technicians, concerned with distorted priority to financial need to be addressed. Exposing finding the best means to ends businesses, homelessness, is, in Leonie Sandercock’s phrase, which are put before them, with affordable and public housing, making the invisible visible— whose character they have no mortgage foreclosures and exposing the underlying structural concern. Planning has always had evictions, infrastructure and land reality beneath the immediate three currents within it: a technicist, speculation and even squatting. and surface problems of the day. a reform and a utopian current. In Critical urban theory is a very the recent past we have witnessed A New Paradigm of Critical Planning useful tool for that purpose. a feeble retreat of planning away from its own reform and utopian As times have changed, so has Exposing means communicating origins towards the uncritical planning—partly retreating, but the results of the analysis, in service of the powers that be. also regrouping and pushing comprehensible fashion, to deeper into the sources of the the client, but also making the Alternatives problems it exists to address. results public and converting the I believe a new paradigm for findings into a weapon in the From the experience of the last progressive planning—I would struggle to achieve the desired fifty years, many planners are describe it as a paradigm of goals. Combining a documented, increasingly able to see an alternate critical planning but other names reasoned analysis with the exposé way of proceeding. Witness the would do as well—is emerging through a bit of muckraking can durability of the Planners Network, from this ferment. As a slogan be very effective. It should almost started in 1975 on a shoestring for good planning, it might be always include highlighting by Chester Hartman and now represented by: Analyze, Expose, the distributional consequences an established organization with Propose, Politicize. of the given project—just as activist planners in thirty-nine environmental consequences states throughout the United Analyzing means stepping back must now often by law be States. So is the birth and vigorous and analyzing the roots of the disclosed—perhaps in the form young life of Progressive Planning particular problem, making of a social impact statement. The Magazine. So is the linkage of clear what forces and actors social justice sought can often be many progressive planners with are responsible for it and what made dramatically evident by activist groups such as those in structural conditions bring it such a statement. the Right to the City Alliance. So is about. It may involve a bit of the reawakened interest in critical muckraking, showing the political Exposing also means urban theory and radical urbanism, connections or interlocking communicating to the group with approaches going beyond corporate interests or ethically being served the full range of even advocacy planning towards questionable lines of influence alternatives available, starting insurgent planning, planning for involved in producing the problem with the utopian and working a just city, critical planning and being addressed. Structurally, it backwards to the strategic and

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 15 the tactical. It means exposing power relationships. By the “On the Feeble Retreat of to them the realities of the plan same token, it means paying Planning.” Journal of Planning and the planning process: who attention to the strategies for Education and Research, Vol. 3, No. the planner is and what biases achieving change, which will 1, Summer 1983. he or she may be bringing to the involve organizing, grassroots process, what the opposition work, education, public “Social Justice in New Orleans: is likely to be, what the relations and a long-term Planning after Katrina.” consequences of losing may be approach to achieving the full Progressive Planning, Summer and what compromises might potential of feasible results. 2007, pp. 8-12. have to be made. Exposing should both permit informed Critical planning that follows “From Justice Planning to decision-making on strategy this model is obviously geared to Commons Planning.” In Marcuse, and provide a weapon for the the situation in which the group Peter, James Connolly, Johannes implementation of the plan once being served is pressing its plan Novy, Ingrid Olivo, Cuz Potter, strategy is decided on. in the interests of social justice. Justin Steil, eds. Searching for the Any planning project has at Just City: Debates in Urban Theory Proposing means developing a best an ambiguous relationship and Practice. Oxford: Routledge, vision. This vision should be to these interests. But even in 2009, pp. 91-102. neither utopian in nature nor an ambiguous situation, the the kind of vision that often principles of critical planning “Expose, Propose, Politicize: An comes out of the visioning can still be kept constantly in Interview with Peter Marcuse.” process—a picture of a hoped- mind and argued strategically. Critical Planning (UCLA), Vol. 15, for future divorced from any Principles can be adhered to, and Summer 2008, pp. 179-191. consideration of the politics and selectivity can be exercised in power relationships involved in choosing jobs and assignments. “In Defense of Theory in getting there. Proposing should And planners can always act Practice.” Analysis of Urban include a realistic idea of what a as citizens and join activists Trends, Culture, Theory, strongly hoped-for future might and community and grassroots Policy, Action. Vol. 14, No. 1. look like and a feasible path organizations in putting the (Forthcoming) to bring it about—pushing the technical in the service of the just. limits of the practical based on a conviction of the rightness of Related publications by Peter the future. Marcuse include:

Politicizing means squarely “From Critical Urban Theory addressing issues of power and to the Right to the City.” CITY: showing how the resolution Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, of a particular issue may Theory, Policy, Action. Vol. 13, No. lead to conflict and may 2-3, June-September, 2009, pp. require challenging existing 185-197.

Marcuse on The World Social Forum...

“The movement against really existing globalization is itself a global movement and one that is growing.”

“Planners Network at the US Social Forum: Other Cities Are Possible” Progressive Planning 171, Spring 2007.

16 Progressive Planning TOWARD A JUST METROPOLIS From Crises to Possibilities

A conference for planners, designers, activists, policymakers and citizens dedicated to a just future for all human settlements June 16 - 20, 2010 San Francisco Bay Area

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This first-ever joint conference merges the annual conferences of leading national and international organizations to unite planners, architects, designers, urban activists, educators, journalists, policymakers, academics, students and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds across North America who share a passion for social, environmental and economic justice.

Hosted by the Department of City & Regional Planning and the College of Environmental Design (CED) at the University of California, Berkeley.

http://justmetropolis.org Call for Proposals Now Open - Deadline March 1, 2010

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 17 New Strategies for Housing Rights Editor’s Introduction

Who says there aren’t better ideas out there, alternatives to the same old strategies and programs that have done little to guarantee the right to housing? The panacea of homeownership disappeared with the mortgage crisis. The token “affordable housing” programs are often unaffordable to low-income people and expire after short periods of time. This section offers some better ideas on the horizon: direct action, community land trusts, mutual housing associations, mortgage-free housing, and land banking.

Lynn Lewis of New York City’s Picture the Homeless, a member of the Right to the City Alliance, tells the story of a new direct action campaign linked to a community land trust in Picture the Homeless Chases Chase beginning below.

Michael Stone proposes two ways out of the mortgage trap – household savings and mutual housing associations in his article Alternatives to the Mortgage Trap: Household Savings and the Mutual Housing Association on page 22.

Jesse Clark sees new openings for land banking, mortgage revenue bonds, and tighter regulation, in Land Banks, Mortgage Revenue Bonds and Market Regulation: Three Tools for Communities Facing Foreclosures on page 26.

Daniel Perlstein closes this section with a powerful story from New York City in the 1930s, Direct Action Against Foreclosure and Eviction: Lessons from the Great Depression (page 29), reminding us that in times of severe economic hardship politically active people will organize to stop evictions but don’t always win. Picture the Homeless Chases Chase

by Lynn Lewis

Picture the Homeless is a decade-old grassroots financial institution to release vacant buildings and membership organization of homeless New Yorkers land to create housing for the very poor? and a member of the coordinating committee of Warehousing by Chase the New York City Right to the City Alliance. As one facet of the broader Housing Not Warehousing campaign staffed by Picture the Homeless, we have Part of the gigantic Chase portfolio includes vacant targeted the powerful financial institution Chase to buildings and lots, a profitable investment strategy, press for real changes in the way people are housed. especially in Manhattan. Land ownership –and being The campaign raises several questions relevant to a landlord—has always been a means to accumulate housing activism in the city, including: What power wealth in the United States. Warehousing vacant do low-income communities have to change the buildings at first glance may not seem like much of housing market? What strategies do we use to build an investment strategy, but compared to buildings that power? And how do we move a multinational filled with tenants paying low rents (and protected

18 Progressive Planning by New York’s rent stabilization law), vacant The Chase Corporate Campaign buildings can actually be very valuable—sold for a tremendous profit in gentrifying neighborhoods. But The Housing Not Warehousing campaign grew this is where homeless people, Chase and the City of out of our critique of the insane logic that created New York collide. huge numbers of warehoused vacant properties while tens of thousands of homeless individuals Unfortunately for Chase, the City of New York and families are warehoused in shelters and jails. and other banks and investment funds that Money is not the problem. The City of New York are holding on to vacant properties, homeless pays more per household to institutionalize poor New Yorkers are ready, willing and able to people than it costs to give them housing vouchers. take them over. We are talking about nothing We’ve documented cases in which, for example, the short of changing the housing market, or at city pays up to $3,300 per month for a couple in the least, creating space within the market to create Bronx to have one room and a bathroom shared with housing for poor people. It may seem counter- fifteen other families. intuitive, but shelters and jails create profits for investors while housing for the very poor The city has not moved forward to build on successful does not. As grassroots organizers and people housing creation programs such as sweat equity, displaced from their homes and communities, limited equity co-ops, community land trusts and we have had to confront the question of what mutual housing associations. Hard-fought struggles a winnable organizing campaign is. To this over housing, including squatting, moved the city to end, we are combining participatory research, create progressive housing programs for the very poor civil disobedience, public education, coalition- in the past. It is time to re-kindle struggles and force building and even legislative work. new changes in housing programs.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 19 Vacant Property Count currently researching Chase’s entire portfolio, but in July of 2009 we moved forward by occupying one of In 2005, Picture the Homeless started counting the its vacant lots, creating a tent city with hundreds of vacant buildings and lots that surrounded our office members of Picture the Homeless, its allies, artists in East Harlem, eventually coming to prove that there and neighborhood residents to illuminate the issue were enough vacant properties in Manhattan alone to and to force a dialogue. While ten of us were arrested house every homeless household in all five boroughs. for this action, we were released within hours, and Since then, we have been pushing the city to do an Chase refused to press charges when we went to annual comprehensive survey of vacant properties. court in October.

In the process of counting vacancies, we also learned We believe that publicly shaming Chase and other that the majority of vacant properties in Manhattan property owners, including the City of New York, who are privately owned. The city no longer takes hold onto vacant land and buildings as investments, over vacant properties—another neoliberal move is necessary to bring about change and win housing towards privatization that serves to enrich corporate for the very poor. We also believe that our alternative profits while offering no benefits to the majority of model of housing and community development is community members. Chase Manhattan Bank is the more democratic and benefits the community as a owner of record of several vacant properties. We are whole. Housing for homeless individuals and families

Community Land Trusts

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are community-based organizations dedicated to permanent stewardship of land to preserve its use for affordable housing in perpetuity. The CLT usually issues long-term leases to the land to a non-profit housing developer or individual homeowner meeting income guidelines. There are more than 160 CLTs in the United States today, and there is growing interest in this model to preserve housing affordability as many housing programs have allowed affordable units to be privatized.

The History of Community Land Trusts (from the National CLT Network):

The modern-day Community Land Trust, as both a model and a movement, is relatively new, with the first CLTs only appearing in the United States in the 1970s. The roots of the CLT are much older. From an ethic of land stewardship found in Biblical scriptures, Native American traditions, and the New England custom of the village commons, the CLT draws its inspiration for removing land from the speculative market and managing it for the common good. From the social theories of Henry George and the social experiments of the Garden Cities Movement in England and the Jewish National Fund in Israel, the CLT derives its mechanisms for leasing land and capturing socially-created real estate gains for the benefit of a larger community.

From Mahatma Gandhi and the Gramdan Movement in India, the CLT draws its concept of trusteeship, preserving access to land and housing for populations historically excluded from the economic and political mainstream. From the Civil Rights Movement in the American South, the CLT draws its commitment to open membership, inclusive governance, and direct accountability to the community it serves. This is a heritage shared by all CLTs, no matter how much their particular organizational and operational features may differ from one another.

For more information see the National Community Land Trust Network (www.cltnetwork.org) and Burlington Associates, a consultant to some 80 CLTs (http://burlingtonassociates.com).

20 Progressive Planning stabilizes the housing market for those at the lowest Furthermore, we believe that homeless New Yorkers, end of the economic spectrum, who are generally through the Housing Not Warehousing campaign, concentrated in the lowest-income neighborhoods. are providing real alternatives to private market development, shattering the conventional wisdom that While our vacant property count was done in 2006, we can’t do anything about homelessness. and our report released in 2007, since the financial crisis of 2008 there has been a new wave of vacant The Housing Not Warehousing coalition is creating properties. These tend to be luxury condos constructed the Homeless People’s Community Land Trust, for the higher end of the housing market during with the assistance of progressive urban planners, economic “good times.” Our count helped provide including Tom Angotti in New York and James Tracy a framework for the Right to the City Alliance to in the Bay Area. We have already moved two state undertake a count of vacant luxury condos in 2009. senators to introduce legislation that will facilitate the development of mutual housing associations, one Since Chase was a major recipient of government mechanism to create permanently affordable housing bailout funds, we believe this renders its assets public for the very poor. property. The bank owns vacant lots and buildings that have been warehoused for decades, and we We also continue to move forward with our Chase suspect that they also hold the mortgages on some of campaign, demanding that Chase donate their the newly constructed luxury condos. We are currently vacant buildings and land to a community land trust researching this. and provide pre-development and development funding. Since the July occupation of the Chase The fundamental question is whether or not housing vacant lot, we have continued our research into and land are commodities to be bought and sold, its real estate holdings and held two direct actions or public assets grounded in the concept of housing targeting Chase executives. We have also worked as a human right. The bailout that Chase and internally to flesh out a vision for housing in New other banking institutions received further begs York City—what type of housing people want the question, but the fundamental conflict remains to live in and are willing to fight for, what a just between housing rights and community development tenant selection process looks like, etc. We have practices that privilege land use for profit. The current been gathering the support of allies, including faith housing crisis has provided an urgent impetus communities. We are in the process of working on a to consider this question, but it is a question that meeting date with Chase and hope to sit down and homeless people were already asking. begin to negotiate a transfer of unused properties into the Homeless People’s Community Land Homeless People Plan, Create Community Land Trust Trust. For us it is a classic case of extreme need versus extreme greed. We believe that with enough We are working towards moving the City of New pressure, common sense will prevail. York to do an annual inventory of vacant properties so that communities can use this information to fully The Housing Not Warehousing coalition is poised to participate in the community planning process. By create a model for housing development for the very community we also mean the homeless, who, though poor. We are also poised to provide the City of New often portrayed as needing to be “reintegrated” York as well as Chase and other financial institutions into society, are already members of multiple the opportunity to make a real difference in ending communities, including geographic communities and homelessness by joining with us to open up the neighborhoods. Homeless New Yorkers have plans bottom end of the housing market for those currently for the disposition of vacant properties; it isn’t enough squeezed out. to just count them. We know that homeless and very poor people will not benefit from the development of Lynn Lewis is the director of Picture the Homeless in New vacant buildings unless we fight for their inclusion. York City.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 21 Alternatives to the Mortgage Trap: Household Savings and the Mutual Housing Association

by Michael E. Stone

In these times of mortgage foreclosures and high model is separation of the putative social benefits of unemployment, homeownership is not quite the homeownership from the economic ones. Residents American dream it was supposed to be. The housing would have the autonomy and control associated and financial debacle is making more people aware with homeownership in addition to security of tenure that conventional homeownership imposes risks greater than homeownership—there would be no and burdens that can be detrimental to families, mortgage at risk of default and foreclosure. These communities and the larger society and economy. social benefits would be vested in the residential tenure and assured through the ownership model Now may be the time to look at other ways people and financing. The economic benefits derived from can stay in their homes without relying on banks “forced savings” would not be through housing and mortgage debt. One of these is what I call the ownership, but through other investment vehicles. “resident-saver alternative.” This is an option that will preserve and extend what are regarded as the Modified Mutual Housing Association Ownership positive aspects of homeownership while avoiding or overcoming the negative ones. Instead of making The ownership model is based upon principles monthly payments for a mortgage, households embodied in the limited-equity cooperative (LEC), put their money towards savings, achieving one of community land trust (CLT) and mutual housing the presumed benefits of homeownership without association (MHA). These are forms of shared having to channel their money into bank interest resident-community ownership that exist in the payments. The resident-saver alternative is a U.S., albeit limited in scale. Since it is closest modified version of the mutual housing association, to the mutual housing association, I call it a which also ensures that homeowners have a Modified MHA (MMHA). community-based organization that works for their common interests. A MHA is a non-profit, cooperative corporation made up of residents, prospective residents and community The Resident-Saver Model leaders; CLTs, which own land and lease it to tenants, homeowners, cooperatives or MHAs, also have I propose a model of housing tenure and ownership this type of tripartite ownership. The MHA ensures that would provide housing choices and benefits resident ownership and control, balanced against now unavailable through the current alternatives community interest, as well as an infrastructure of private rental, social rental and conventional of expertise and support beyond the residents homeownership. This model would create a new themselves. A MHA can be set up independently, form of tenure that would provide people with or by an existing community housing provider as security, autonomy and control at least as great as a subsidiary or sister organization. A MHA can in conventional homeownership, and the possibility undertake housing development, or a community of comparable wealth accumulation with superior housing provider can develop the housing and security, stability and liquidity. convey title to the MHA upon completion. The resident-saver model consists of a modified mutual housing association form of ownership The MHA model as implemented in the U.S. with capital grant financing. The essence of the deliberately avoids outside profit-seeking

22 Progressive Planning investors and thus the pressures to sell the Resident-Saver Tenure housing into the speculative market at some later point. In addition, MHAs try to finance The resident-saver tenure model builds upon nearly all acquisition and development costs residents’ rights in MHAs, CLTs and LECs, through upfront capital grants. The goal is to but with some important differences. In these have no mortgage debt and hence no mortgage models, residents have lifetime security of charges incurred by the housing and imposed tenure as long as they meet their financial on the residents. This means that the housing obligations and do not violate the rights operates on a “cost rent” basis—residents have of others. They may designate a family or payments that cover the costs of utilities, local household member as the successor to their property taxes (rates), management, insurance, unit. They may sublet their unit temporarily maintenance and repairs and reserves for capital for periods of absence, but may not sublet as improvements and replacements. an investment property. Somewhat similar to LECs but quite different from CLTs, residents in Most MHAs in the U.S. have developed as this model would be expected to make an initial physically contiguous housing units, typically deposit or down payment, which is recoverable townhouses on a single site or several sites, with interest upon moving out, but which is not however, housing can take different forms. a marketable property interest. Units can be single-family units on scattered sites, indistinguishable from other housing What makes the occupants resident-savers rather in the area, as some Australian public and than social renters? First of all, while the goal community housing providers have done of MHAs has been for residents to put up 5 with their rental units, and as many CLTs and percent of the total cost, there is no reason why some LECs have done in the U.S. In this form, the initial contribution could not be comparable residents can be responsible for paying the to whatever is required for conventional operating expenses explicitly attributable to homeownership. Second, all residents would their individual units, rather than a pro rata be required to make mandatory payments over share of the entire MHA, and for much of and above operating expenses and capital routine maintenance and repairs, just as with reserves. This is the crucial and distinctive feature conventional ownership of single-family homes. of my model. Such payments would be in lieu This form also grants residents considerable of mortgage payments, and would be required freedom to modify and add to their units. for a period up to the term of a conventional mortgage. These funds would be placed into MHAs, as well as some CLTs and LECs, have individual investment accounts to accumulate as emphasized organizational development as much a savings alternative to equity in conventional as physical development. Residents are expected homeownership. to participate in decision-making and provide minor maintenance to their units, even though Such payments by residents would be “forced professional management has been an integral savings,” somewhat akin to mandatory retirement part of the model. While this may be a worthwhile investments. Similar to some 401(k) and goal, in the variation I am proposing, where 403(b) plans in the U.S., and superannuation housing would consist mostly of scattered-site, contributions in Australia, residents could have a free-standing units, this is not presumed to be an choice of investment vehicles, ranging from term essential element. It is conceivable that residents deposits at banks and money market accounts to themselves would have minimal organizational socially-oriented mutual funds. Unlike retirement obligations but maintain the right to select their fund investments, residents would be permitted representatives to the board, which in turn would to make withdrawals throughout their life span— hire professional staff to run the organization. thereby providing liquidity—but they would be

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 23 subject to restrictions on the rate and amount in MMHA model preserves affordability without order to maintain the “forced savings” aspect. limiting wealth accumulation by separating the social benefits of homeownership from the I have done a series of calculations comparing the economic ones. wealth accumulation rates for such hypothetical resident-savers with the wealth accumulation rates Though the social and economic benefits of the model for homeowners. Based on investment assumptions would be substantial and competitive even in relation that are conservative for resident-savers and to conventional homeownership, there remains the relatively favorable for conventional homeowners, issue of financing mechanisms. I have found that in general and on average, a resident-saver would do at least as well as a Financing: Capital Grants and Housing Trust Funds conventional homeowner over any time span up to twenty-five years. To reduce the burden of mortgage payments on homeowners and the overdependence of housing In sum, the resident-saver model offers residents: on the volatile and costly capital markets, non- speculative housing of all types should be financed to •control over their homes comparable to the greatest extent possible by public capital grants. conventional homeownership; •greater security of tenure because there’s no risk In the U.S., public housing and the federal of mortgage foreclosure; Section 202 program provide 100 percent capital •asset development comparable in magnitude, grants. In addition, over the past two decades on average, to conventional homeownership; and a very different approach to generating capital •superior security (rather than vulnerability), funding has emerged: Housing Trust Funds stability (as opposed to volatility) and liquidity. (HTF). HTFs are special-purpose entities created by governments to receive dedicated revenue I am proposing a model of housing tenure that streams to support below-market housing. In the would open up housing choices and benefits middle of 2008, a National Housing Trust Fund unavailable today through the alternatives of (NHTF) was finally enacted, after a very long private rental, social rental and conventional grassroots campaign led by the National Low homeownership. To be sure, for the lowest Income Housing Coalition. It was planned to be income renters this model would not be capitalized by a portion of the profits of Fannie affordable. But for moderate-income renters Mae and Freddie Mac, the huge government- who have no realistic prospects of achieving sponsored secondary mortgage market conventional homeownership, and for renters enterprises, but, with their near-collapse in the who might someday afford conventional financial crisis, that is no longer possible. homeownership but do not necessarily want to assume its associated risks and burdens, the Given this, I propose that the NHTF be capitalized advantages are obvious. through two other potential sources.

Furthermore, the resident-saver/MMHA 1. Reform of the housing tax expenditures. model is superior to so-called “shared-equity” These currently amount to an estimated $150- homeownership offered by CLTs and LECs. 200 billion a year, consisting mostly of subsidies In these models, residents are allowed some for homeownership. The benefits rise with the housing wealth accumulation, but it is limited tax bracket, house value, mortgage amount and in order to preserve affordability for future interest rate. Over half the benefits flow to the top residents. This feature has been a source of 10 percent of the income distribution; no wonder criticism and has limited the popularity of CLTs they have been labeled the “mansion subsidy.” and LECs. By contrast, the resident-saver/ Indeed, recently even conservative economists

24 Progressive Planning have been recognizing that they distort the housing Socially Responsible Housing and the Economy market, create perverse incentives to borrow and speculate and deprive the Treasury of revenue. If Housing, as we all surely know, lies at the core just 10 percent of the lost revenue were captured, of the dilemmas and challenges facing families, it could provide about $15-20 billion a year in communities, nations and the planet. The resolution dedicated revenue for the NHTF. of these dilemmas is to be found not through the celebration of selfish individualism, but rather 2. Tax on financial transactions. Since capital through the rediscovery of social responsibility and market speculation is deeply implicated in the transformation of our economic institutions. We the crisis, it is reasonable that financial reform progressive planners have a particular responsibility impose some social obligation on capital market to engage in this effort—as intellectuals, as participants. I propose a tax of a few tenths of a practitioners and as activists. percent on all capital market financial transactions, including stocks, bonds, mortgage-backed At this monumental moment, we have the securities, derivatives, etc. It has been estimated opportunity to begin constructing a new social that such a tax could raise over $150 billion a year, democracy for the twenty-first century, and I believe even a fraction of which could provide tens of more socially just forms of housing tenure can play a billions of dollars a year for the NHTF. significant role. I am not naively optimistic about the prospects politically, but I am nonetheless certain that Not only would such revenue sources generate it is a goal worth pursuing. substantial ongoing dedicated capital grant funding for housing, they would be progressively Michael E. Stone is a professor of community planning & redistributive and they would not be subject to the public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a whims of the annual appropriation process or add visiting scholar at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne to government budget deficits. University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

Call for Articles: Planning by Big Multinational Institutions

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No. 182 / WINTER 2010 25 Land Banks, Mortgage Revenue Bonds and Market Regulation: Three Tools for Communities Facing Foreclosures

by Jesse Clark

The collapse of the housing industry has left fundamentals with increased regulation and communities searching for ways to stabilize oversight of real estate markets. neighborhoods and prevent further decline of their local economies. Foreclosed properties are driving Land Banking down the values of those surrounding them and placing many homeowners in negative equity First proposed in the 1960s, land banks, which allow situations, which in turn fuels more foreclosures. local authorities to acquire foreclosed properties and Municipalities are being pressed to reduce their control their resale, are gradually becoming more tax assessments to reflect these diminished values, widely used in some cities. Land banks provide a tool further exacerbating budget deficits and jeopardizing for cities to stabilize declining property values, return public services in communities most in need. In vacant properties to productive reuse and recapture addition to the low-income neighborhoods typically tax revenue. associated with subprime loans, the crisis is having a growing impact on otherwise credit-worthy Frank Alexander, professor of law at Emory borrowers. According to HOPE NOW, a mortgage University, has assisted in the formation of land industry organization, there were over 538,000 prime bank authorities and written extensively on their foreclosure starts nationwide in the third quarter of benefits, most thoroughly in his 2005 report Land 2009, compared to approximately 207,000 subprime Bank Authorities: A Guide for the Creation and Operation foreclosure starts during the same period. Although of Local Land Banks. Land banks typically require the foreclosure crisis is often blamed on lower- the adoption of state enabling legislation that income homebuyers and communities, the pervasive allows them to expedite the lengthy tax foreclosure scale of the problem undermines this argument. process and provide a marketable title to properties previously encumbered by complicated liens. By Urban planners face the daunting challenge of controlling who the properties are sold to—usually stabilizing the supply of foreclosed properties, local community development corporations with facilitating demand for homebuyers in disinvested restricted use and timing agreements—the land bank communities and protecting the future of their can ensure that tax-foreclosed property is eventually neighborhoods against further market failures. In the redeveloped with the long-term interest of the absence of generally accepted market-based solutions community in mind. This avoids dependence on the that planners have traditionally relied on, Keynesian capricious interests of absentee investors. Each land tools of planning intervention should be considered bank is adapted to the local regulatory structure, with to help “arrest the slide” of their local communities. some operated under city or county government, and others as third-party non-profits. Municipalities are increasingly discovering the potential of land banking and mortgage Some of the more established land banks in the U.S. revenue bonds to restore market fundamentals. are located in Flint, Cleveland, St. Louis, Atlanta and Planners should also consider sustaining these Louisville. Arguably the most active land bank is

26 Progressive Planning the Flint-based Genesee County Land Bank, which subject, they were less likely to make the types of has facilitated the reuse of over 4,000 residential, risky loans that catalyzed the foreclosure crisis. Still, commercial and industrial properties through the tax CRA never represented more than a fraction of low- foreclosure process since 2002. Alexander notes that income lending and that may decrease even further its success can largely be attributed to the strength because it has become wrongly associated with of the enabling legislation, which granted it broad subprime lending. authority and provided for the capture of future tax revenue from properties after disposition to Created in the 1970s, MRBs are tax-exempt bonds that fund operations. While historically most foreclosed state and local governments issue through Housing properties have been tax-delinquent, land bank Finance Agencies (HFAs) to help fund below- authorities are beginning to partner with banks market interest rates on mortgages and offer down- that are willing to donate foreclosed properties and payment assistance for low- and moderate-income write off the loss in exchange for the elimination of homebuyers. By offering a tax-exempt investment property tax obligations. By implementing the use to third-party investors, MRBs create a funding of land banks, local municipalities can take control mechanism that is both appealing to investors and of the deteriorating supply of vacant properties and sustainable to financially constrained municipalities. recycle them as assets rather than liabilities. Eligible borrowers are typically restricted to first- time homebuyers with incomes below 115 percent of In an effort to stem the cascade of foreclosures, area median income, however, several HFAs, such the federal government created the Housing and as the Mississippi Home Corporation, have included Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and the exemptions to the first-time buyer requirement for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of certain “target areas.” Such an exemption could 2009 (ARRA), which created and then expanded become increasingly desirable in neighborhoods hit the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). hardest by foreclosures. While it is well-known that the NSP provides funds for cities to acquire, renovate and demolish Stephanie Moulton, assistant professor at the abandoned properties, its funds can also be used John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State to create land banks. University, is conducting a growing body of research that shows the financial sustainability Mortgage Revenue Bonds of MRB loans. In a 2009 report, Moulton found that in the fourth quarter of 2007, 9.9 percent of While the NSP and land bank authorities are focused Ohio’s MRB mortgages were delinquent, slightly on stabilizing the supply of vacant properties, they higher than the delinquency rate of 7.6 percent for do little to address the demands of homebuyers. all mortgages in the state but significantly lower Mortgage revenue bonds (MRB), another tool than the FHA delinquency rate of 15.5 percent and expanded by HERA, could help fill this void. nearly half the subprime delinquency rate of 19.4 percent. Moulton also found that loans originated To the federal government’s credit, it has attempted by independent mortgage companies were 61 to stimulate demand by enacting and extending a percent more likely to be delinquent and 50 percent first-time homebuyer tax credit of $8,000. In the wake more likely to be foreclosed than loans procured by of the subprime credit crisis, however, capital flow depository institutions. has been heavily constricted in communities that are most distressed. The Community Reinvestment Since the inception of the MRB program, it Act (CRA), since its passage in 1977, has provided has assisted more than 3.6 million low-income an effective mechanism for banks to extend credit to households, making it one of the largest publicly low- and moderate-income borrowers. Studies by the subsidized low-income homeownership initiatives law firm Traiger & Hinckley LLP show that, due to in the nation. By implementing this program the increased regulation to which CRA lenders were in their communities, HFAs can sustainably

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 27 build assets among low- and moderate-income Local housing oversight committees could monitor individuals while supplementing access to credit sales price fluctuations and loan activity within within underserved neighborhoods. their jurisdictions through Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data and impose regulations in Local Planning Regulation and Oversight the event of a housing bubble. Such regulations could include lower loan-to-value ratios, with the Urban planners were largely bystanders or passive intent that higher down payments would reduce enablers during the bubble’s inflation. Precipitous enthusiasm among potential buyers and mitigate price increases were fueled by federally stimulated foreclosure risk if values decline. Another effect capital flows, an insatiable secondary market, of real estate bubbles is perpetual overbuilding by unscrupulous underwriting by lenders and developers. Planners could monitor the existing irrational demand from buyers. Perhaps it is time supply within their communities and place for urban planning to respond to these endogenous moratoriums on building permits for specific antagonists in order to protect the future of their uses that appear to be overly saturated, ensuring communities. Planners could, for example, create the absorption of existing inventory before new local housing oversight committees to monitor and development is started. prevent irrational activity in their housing markets. These are just a few examples of how local Through the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory communities can help thwart the unintended Lending Act of 2009, the federal government has consequences that federal policy and irrational attempted to address fraud and force mortgage behavior can wreak on their cities. In order to originators to obtain unbiased third-party strengthen neighborhoods and protect their appraisals. This fails, however, to address the precarious futures, planners have the opportunity, structural inefficiencies of real estate markets and if not the duty, to expand their interventionist and the inability of the best-intentioned valuations to regulatory role within perpetually inefficient real address irrational exuberance. In his September estate markets. 2009 New York Times article, “How Did Economists Get it So Wrong?,” Paul Krugman recounts a parody Jesse Clark is a graduate student in the School of City and by Lawrence Summers about “ketchup economists” Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology. who “have shown that two-quart bottles of ketchup invariably sell for exactly twice as much as one- quart bottles of ketchup” and conclude from this that the ketchup market is perfectly efficient. Real estate appraisers, who candidly define market value as the price someone is willing to pay, will always follow the market even if it leads us off a cliff by relying on a sales comparison approach to determine market value.

In his 2005 book Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller recounts real estate cycles dating back to the 1800s, showing that a repetitive pattern of “animal spirits” leads to superfluous price appreciation and a deluge of excess supply. Shiller illustrates how, during the California real estate boom of the 1970s, federal monetary policy that increased interest rates to over 10 percent was ineffective in quelling the fervor of demand once the contagion spread.

28 Progressive Planning Direct Action Against Foreclosure and Eviction: Lessons from the Great Depression by Daniel Pearlstein

“Stay in your homes,” Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Suburban homes—and homeowners—were Kaptur exhorted from the House floor in January hardest hit. As the 1920s construction spree 2009. “If the American people, anybody out there, is dramatically inflated values on the urban being foreclosed, don’t leave.” fringes, the prices of suburban homes had the furthest to fall. Simultaneously, legions of With the home foreclosure crisis now entering suburban homeowners, many of whom were its third year, and in light of rapidly rising newly prosperous when they bought their unemployment and a popped real estate bubble, homes near the top of the market, became victims of unscrupulously marketed subprime destitute even more quickly, as the middle mortgages have found allies all over, from the U.S. classes swelled the ranks of the unemployed Congress to sheriffs’ offices in Detroit and Chicago, and underemployed. With no income to pay where officials halted foreclosures last winter rather their home loans and no way to recoup their than toss families out into the cold. Meanwhile, purchase prices, homeowners defaulted on their ACORN’s Home Defenders campaign is organizing mortgages and lenders foreclosed. networks of neighbors to converge at foreclosed homes in protest when the authorities arrive to evict What could today be said of the exurban and to summon reporters and lawyers to publicize, southeastern and southwestern United States slow or reverse the process. then held true for New York City, where many neighborhoods remained farmland or wetland until, These time-tested tactics were familiar to the in the 1920s, easy credit lured home developers. millions of New York City homeowners and renters European immigration and the mobilization who struggled to keep roofs over their heads the and aftermath of World War I brought millions last time the foreclosure rate was as high as it is of newcomers to the city, many of whom could today—during the Great Depression. Whether suddenly afford a one-, two- or three-family home. the various modes of confrontation will enable These were the options available in Sunnyside significant numbers of people to remain in their Gardens, Queens, for example, which became homes during the present emergency still remains a locus of resistance to foreclosure and eviction to be seen. during the 1930s.

Lessons from New York in the 1930s Sunnyside Gardens Becomes a Home for Radicals

After the unprecedented 1920s real estate boom, the With 1,200 housing units covering twelve city housing market went bust following Wall Street’s blocks, Sunnyside was a large project for its Great Crash of 1929. For a few years, investors time. The City Housing Corporation, a “semi- fleeing securities sought refuge in real property, philanthropic” developer that limited its investors’ briefly propping it up. But as the broader economy dividends to six percent and reinvested the sunk deeper into depression during the early 1930s, remaining proceeds in its homes, passing along home prices plummeted too, making homes across the savings to buyers, built Sunnyside as a model the nation suddenly worth substantially less than neighborhood. Beneficent investors, including the value of their mortgages. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, supported

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 29 Sunnyside as a prototype for an American garden city’s older tenements became uninhabitable city, based on the English model (and later as a result of neglect, landlords hiked their attempted by the City Housing Corporation at rents. Tenants responded by organizing not Radburn, New Jersey, before the firm went bankrupt only successful rent strikes but a sophisticated during the 1930s). political lobby. City Hall and the state government in Albany met tenant demands Sunnyside’s progressive origins, tidy homes and with the city’s first rent control law as well signature common green spaces in the interior as a property tax abatement to spur new of each block attracted working- and middle- construction, the benefits of which fell to class families (here referred to as Gardeners), the City Housing Corporation’s venture at principally from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Sunnyside Gardens. Thus the neighborhood was doubly destined to meet lenders’ strict repayment demands with These benefits came to an end in 1932, when fierce resistance once residents fell behind on the tax abatement expired, and as home prices their mortgage payments. Buyers seeking a left- dropped and unemployment rose, Gardeners’ wing community sought out Sunnyside; like the monthly payments also increased since they now larger city, the community had an active Socialist owed real estate taxes in addition to mortgage Party during the 1920s and Communist Party interest and principal. As increasing numbers of during the 1930s. Manhattan’s dense low-income residents fell behind, risking default, neighbors neighborhoods had originated the rent strike a banded together to form the Consolidated Home generation earlier to combat evictions during Owners Mortgage Committee of the already the Panic of 1907, and tenants struck again when established Sunnyside Gardens Community landlords raised rents as apartments became scarce Association. The Committee worked mightily at the conclusion of World War I. Community- over four years to keep the neighborhood whole. based collective action was thus a matter of the Though hundreds lost their homes to foreclosure, Gardeners’ ideology and recent memory. some out of necessity and others in protest of lenders’ refusals to restructure their mortgages, At the century’s outset, on Manhattan’s Lower their ingenuity and tenacity were extraordinary. East Side, women and men had borrowed the ideas and language of solidarity from the labor A Community Survey Starts a Campaign movement, bringing it home from their crowded garment factories, which sometimes stood side The Gardeners’ opening tactic of 1933 was to by side with their overcrowded tenements. As undertake a social survey, opening up years of unemployment peaked, whole buildings of renters pressure on mortgage holders and government went on strike when they were no longer able to officials. Two residents, an NYU economist and pay rent and were threatened with eviction. They an AT&T statistician, surveyed hundreds of picketed their own homes to prevent landlords their neighbors and confirmed the great extent from moving in new “scab” tenants. And they had to which the Depression had transformed their help: city marshals who belonged to the Hebrew economic well-being. Aggregating their indicators, Union refused to participate in evictions. In this the surveyors concluded that three-quarters way, many buildings won rent reductions and of Sunnyside homeowners were in critical or year-long leases to stop the rent increases that potentially critical condition and summarized landlords had imposed whenever the market with the call to action: “Fundamental Financial would bear them. Adjustment Imperative.”

A dozen years later, as veterans returned Remarkably, the Sunnyside survey results were following World War I and immigration reported in The New York Times, The New Republic resumed, and as a substantial portion of the and the policy journal Survey Graphic. One

30 Progressive Planning Gardener wrote to the Times editor to amplify on home foreclosures. Meanwhile, they also the paper’s coverage of the survey, declaring: conducted a statewide survey, based on their “My forebears fought against economic injustice earlier neighborhood-level analysis. Three from England, I fought against Germany, and Gardeners traveled 1,500 miles throughout New am ready again to fight against an economic York and confirmed that many upstate farmers destruction of the equity in my home.” were also facing foreclosure.

Gardeners sent their survey to local, state and In Albany, Governor Herbert Lehman (a national policymakers. They also used it to bolster former Lehman Brothers partner) and the New their petition to their mortgage lenders, which York State Legislature ultimately declared a demanded: moratorium, but limited its scope to loans for which borrowers were behind on principal To put Sunnyside Gardens on a solvent payments only, a minority of homeowners. basis and to make it financially safe for Throughout 1933 and 1934, Lehman resisted those of us who have invested our savings repeated Gardener entreaties to broaden New and our energies to make this an attractive York’s foreclosure moratorium. home community, the full program of (a) interest reduction, (b) three-year waiver of Confronting Foreclosures and Eviction amortization and (c) writing-down of the mortgage principal is absolutely necessary. By 1935, despite state and federal efforts, many Gardeners remained at grave risk of losing their Such modifications might have been more homes. Mortgage lenders had not acceded to complicated, though no less justified, than their demands of 1933 and showed no signs of the rent freezes and reductions they and their mercy. Thus, on March 24, Gardeners resolved forebears had demanded in Manhattan. to withhold all mortgage payments until lenders cut their interest rate from six to three percent. In April 1933, Gardeners traveled from Sunnyside Lenders retaliated by beginning foreclosure to Washington, where they met with New York proceedings against the strike leaders, who were Senator Robert Wagner and urged amendments honored by their neighbors with service flags for to the Home Owners’ Loan Act, the first piece of their courage. New Deal housing legislation, which ultimately bailed out one in ten U.S. homeowners. Gardeners A Communist Party circular urged a “united advocated for higher limits on the property value struggle for our full demands.” A companion below which homes would be eligible for federal bulletin promised: loans. They also insisted that government aid be calculated according to pre-Depression home [F]oreclosures are a gigantic bluff on the prices, the prices upon which most mortgages part of the City Housing Corporation to in default were based. Both changes were scare the homeowners. THEY CANNOT incorporated into the law when Congress enacted AFFORD TO GO THROUGH WITH THE it that June. FORECLOSURES. All we need to do to beat them is not to pay City Housing a single Federal relief, however, would be long in nickel. Let us keep our lines fast. coming. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, authorized under the Home Owners’ Loan Act, In December 1935, the home of Gardener Charles did not begin assisting homeowners until 1934, J. Laue, Secretary of Taxes and Assessments in so immediately after the Act passed Congress, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s Administration, was Gardeners shifted their lobbying efforts to sold at auction on the steps of the Queens County Albany, where they demanded a moratorium Courthouse. The New York Times reported: “A

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 31 dozen housewives, dressed in gingham gowns and artists and writers. While some took political sunbonnets and carrying brooms, performed a folk stands against the financial institutions they held dance on the sidewalk, singing a song to the tune responsible for the Depression, others acted on of “John Brown’s Body” […]: personal commitments. Sophia Mumford struck and lost the home she shared with her husband, social Sunnyside is on a mortgage holiday and architectural critic Lewis Mumford. A half- Sweeping six percent philanthropy away century later, she recalled: “People simply couldn’t Second mortgages can’t make these houses pay make the payments on their houses. [W]e just felt Although their sales go on we had to stand by our neighbors and we joined in, sadly and reluctantly. We withheld payments for a CHORUS year, then we left.” Glory for the six percenters Who are out to make us renters The Mumfords permanently relocated to their What a pity we’re dissenters country house in the Hudson Valley. Other We’ll stay in Sunnyside. Gardeners were not so lucky and, like millions of former homeowners today, sought rental They did not end up staying, but the Gardeners met accommodations nearby. Many maintained the evictions head on. They installed an alarm system progressive convictions that they had brought to to alert neighbors when city marshals arrived. In Sunnyside from the Lower East Side. one instance, three women and three men were arrested rather than leave one neighbor’s home Today’s foreclosed and evicted have been denied this upon the order of the Sheriff. One family mailed out inheritance, displaced over several decades by the embossed invitations to their eviction. Three more myth of individual success and personal responsibility. held a joint funeral, replete with eulogies and a Thus it comes as no surprise that ACORN, with its coffin containing the deeds to their homes. Another Home Defenders campaign to organize neighbors to evicted woman, the mother of a newborn baby, prevent foreclosures and evictions, has met such stiff brought a pound of flesh—hamburger meat—to the political resistance of late. May this story of Sunnyside Manhattan headquarters of her obstinate mortgage Gardens embolden today’s Home Defenders to strike lender, the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the and, this time, to win. United States. Daniel Pearlstein holds a master’s degree in regional The Sunnyside Gardens mortgage strikers who were planning from Cornell University and is currently studying ultimately evicted included city officials, professors, at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Planners Network on the Web Currently available at www.plannersnetwork.org:

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32 Progressive Planning From Fragmentation to Empowerment in a São Paulo Favela by Bruno Padilha (Translated by Salvador A. M. Sandoval)

The leaders of community organizations from the emphasizes the following: empowering lower- Real Parque favela of São Paulo were suspicious of income communities via disenfranchised peoples’ the group of students who proposed to work with recuperation of their historic memory, building up them. “We are tired of beginning a project and then community resources, advancing research methods having to leave it because our partners leave,” said on popular consciousness, submitting everyday Messias, one community leader. “We understand experiences to closer examination and promoting that it is difficult to work without any money, but popular organizations as instruments of self- we get left with our hands empty in the air.” Added determination. Maria, another favela leader, “I am tired of seeing these people go away after two months of work. They In 2004, a group of undergraduate and graduate always have an excuse. What are the guarantees that students (including me) from the Catholic you will continue with us?” University (PUC) of São Paulo, members of a liberation social psychology-based university It was a rocky start for the students inspired movement called PUCNovaEscola (New School by what Latin Americans call liberation social PUC), sought a community project. We chose psychology and for the community activists the Real Parque favela at the suggestion of an beaten down by repeated disappointments. And entrepreneurial philanthropic organization, it soon got rockier. But, at the end of the process Brazil Community Action (ACB), which had an the community and students surprised each other, office close to the favela that offered facilities and building new unity among favela residents and activities to residents. jump-starting economic development. Through ACB, the team met the coordinators of Ideals Meet Reality in the Favela the existing community-based organizations. Real Parque was already organized in eight Since the 1970s when Brazil was under military local associations: the Residents’ Association, dictatorship, projects aimed at developing socially the Bluebird Daycare Center, the SOS Youth vulnerable communities have been widely carried Sport and Cultural Association, the Sun Ray out, but without much success. These projects were Bakery, the Housing Association, Real Parque based on a paradigm that classified communities Recycling and two organizations of native people, by the degree of resource scarcity, generally Pankararú Indigenous Cultural Action and the measured by traditional quantitative socio- SOS Pankararú Indigenous Association. Despite economic indicators. the number of organizations, as is often the case with poor communities, these organizations A number of Latin American psychologists, were individually weak and dispersed, and they including Salvadoran Ignacio Martín Baró competed with each other for resources, leaving and Venezuelan Maritza Montero, proposed the favela prey to the stronger interests of the liberation social psychology as an alternative larger society. approach. This movement, akin to others such as the popular education and participatory action In our first contact with the leaders, we research of Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda, proposed collectively building a network of local

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 33 All photos Kennedy by Marie organizations to promote activities of interest to all. The leaders initially accepted the proposal, but then began voicing a critique based on past experiences with outsiders: researchers would begin projects, but then abandon the community once they gathered the information for their studies, claiming lack of funding or simply no further interest in working with the community. To calm these concerns, an ACB representative guaranteed financial support. But when the student team submitted a formal workplan, to their great consternation ACB rejected the proposal, citing changed priorities.

“Stop Following What They Tell Us to Do”

Ironically, the shock of rejection catalyzed the community into action. Community activist Messias, of SOS Youth, declared:

It’s time that we stop following what they tell us to do. We have to unite, once and for all, we have to unite. We, the community leaders, have to know where we want to go and invite those who we want to work with. We have to stop lowering our heads to ACB and to those that come from outside the community. We have associations here, even though few know about it, alas. That is one of the main thing we have to do, give more visibility to our work.

Messias and other association leaders decided to go ahead and form a group to coordinate their efforts.

Left: Real Parque, surrounded by luxury highrise condos, is under threat of displacement (top) The children of Real Parque (middle) The author (second from left) with community leaders and youth activists (bottom)

Right: The Real Parque favela and a local daycare center (far right)

34 Progressive Planning The student team, too, chose to continue its residents, and planned and coordinated the collaboration even without funding, proposing favela associations’ activities. The associations specific projects for each association that would themselves came to function as units multiplying allow for greater cooperation and overlap knowledge about the community. The network in the face of scarce resources. Community allowed broader participation in actions leaders welcomed the students’ decision. implemented by forum member associations, Soon the student team was working side-by- with an opportunity for community-wide side with the community, no longer seen as reevaluations, planning and discussions. outsiders attracted by funding possibilities but as collaborators joining with the community One joint activity began when SOS Youth initiated in the struggle to transform the favela. The a craft workshop with recycled waste called student team believed that if the leaders and the Transformation Atelier. The associations their organizations built up enough strength, supported this endeavor by taking the crafts to eventually the team could withdraw and the local shops surrounding the favela. By combining community would continue developing itself. forces, the organizations were able to create a craft fair every two weeks aimed at displaying In the absence of external funds, the student community culture and selling the goods team adopted a new strategy. Each student produced by community members. Another went to work with one of the associations, major achievement of the Forum was obtaining making the team itself a new channel of linkage the Banco do Brasil sponsorship of a project that between associations. As the associations began placed favela youth in bank jobs, guaranteeing to work together and help each other more, the them an entry into the job market and income for group of leaders looked for a name to baptize their families. the emerging network. At one meeting, activist Madalena declared, “All of us should unite and Empowerment in Action work together, because in fact, we are all in the same boat.” The reaction was instantaneous The Real Parque project teaches us lessons about and emotional: All agreed to baptize the new organizational strategy. The approach of linking organization as the Forum de Entidades BARCO, up existing organizations most definitely bore the Boat-Forum of Associations. fruit. And the student team became effective and accepted as a community partner precisely Over a two-year period, the forum became the because it undertook the work voluntarily, intersection that provided the information flow without commitments to external economic or needed for consciousness-raising among the political institutions. All photos Kennedy by Marie

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 35 All photos Kennedy by Marie But more importantly, the favela’s transformation helps to make concrete the concept of community empowerment. Liberation social psychologist Maritza Montero, in her 2003 book Theory and Practice of Community Psychology, defined community empowerment as “a process through which members of a community develop together capacities and resources to control their life situation, acting in a committed manner, conscious and critical, in constructing the transformation around them according to their needs and aspirations, transforming themselves at the same time.” We saw that community empowerment can begin simply with discussing and planning actions around the problems of everyday life. It flowers through consciousness-raising and as the individual and the group learns to confront the obstacles imposed on them by society and devise actions to overcome these. In this sense, empowerment is a form of individual and group maturation.

Although the timing of individual and community development differ, confronting challenges collectively, based on ties of friendship and solidarity, increases the likelihood of success. At its best, collaborative work helps community actors to simultaneously become more autonomous and more interdependent, attenuating competition for scarce local resources while favoring mutual help and solidarity. This is precisely the process that unfolded in the Real Parque favela.

Bruno Padilha ([email protected]) is a doctoral student of social psychology at the Catholic University of São Paulo. He has been working with community organizations in the Real Parque favela in São Paulo since 2004 and is currently working with the youth to take over the management of their own organization, SOS Juventude.

36 Progressive Planning Remembering Jac Smit and Tom Reiner

Jac Smit, 1929 - 2009

I knew Jac Smit, a progressive planner and one of the in vertical farming, where crops are grown in coolest people I have ever met. I can’t remember one multi-story buildings. Jac thoroughly researched instance of his getting upset, angry or bitter. Inside, the background before he jumped into anything, the mark though, Jac was passionately concerned with justice, of a good planner. fairness and human rights. His planning work was always bent in that direction. We used to meet at APA national conferences. They offered various field trips to view projects: housing Back in 1978, when Jac was working in Egypt, he invited rehabs, coop housing schemes, people’s markets, small me to stay with him in Cairo. Through some connections, local industries and the like. Invariably we would I got to work a bit on his project, the Suez Canal Regional choose the same venues. That’s how we usually met at Plan, a dream of Nasser’s. One of the programs Smit a conference and it was great to be together on those helped develop was milling in transit. The idea was to adventures where we always had a lot to talk about. use the vast shipping passing through the canal to supply factories on the shore with raw materials. The materials Progressive planning lost a staunch advocate for people’s would be processed and loaded on empty ships coming needs with the passing of Jac Smit. ---Lew Lubka through. This took a lot of programming but worked well. Later on, Jac did planning in Baghdad under From www.jacsmit.com: Frequently referred to as the Saddam Hussein’s government. “Father of Urban Agriculture,” Jac Smit is the founder and past president of The Urban Agriculture Network, Inc. One day I got a postcard that Jac sent from Zanzibar. This was (TUAN). Begun in 1992 in Washington, D.C., TUAN is a one of the things that sparked in me a desire to travel the non-profit urban agriculture information and consulting world. Some years later, when I got to Dar es Salaam and organization. Jac has visited over thirty countries in his Zanzibar, I sent Jac a postcard. That’s how I evened the score. advocacy of urban agriculture programs and policies. He is the principal author (with Joe Nasr and Annu Ratta) In the last ten years of his life, Jac became involved in of Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities, the urban agriculture. What a great concept—growing best-selling book published in 1996 by the United Nations more food locally, reducing the costs of transportation Development Program (UNDP) and launched that year and refrigeration, utilizing local, vacant urban land, at the World Urban Forum in Istanbul. This seminal book putting people to work, providing fresh produce. was the result of a 20-nation survey of urban agriculture He helped organize networks of urban agricultural undertaken by Jac beginning in 1991 under the auspices operations and co-ops, and even got involved of UNDP and the World Bank.

Tom Reiner, 1932-2009

Tom was a founding member of Planners for regional science and he wrote various articles on Equal Opportunity, the predecessor organization poverty and social planning. to Planners Network, in 1964. According to Walter Thabit’s PEO History, he was a member Dr. Thomas A. Reiner received his Ph.D. from the of the Delaware Valley Fair Housing Council, University of Pennsylvania in 1963, where he became a Quaker Yearly Meeting, Friends Abolition professor of regional science in the School of Arts and Committee and he was active in a local Sciences. He directed the Urban Studies Program there expressway fight. His area of specialization was in the early 1980s and retired in 1993.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 37 New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate

Review by Pierre Clavel

New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate Tom Angotti. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008

New York for Sale, winner of the Paul Davidoff Award for the “best book in planning” from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, is a landmark book, maybe a masterpiece, on progressive planning in the United States. In it, Tom Angotti documents the transformation of the city from one in which a chaotic, bureaucratized government could not control its finances or, more importantly, the real estate development industry, to one in which community groups in some cases found a way to fight the developers to a standstill—or in other cases to at least exert a powerful voice of dissent. In this we see the outlines—drawn on the map of the nation’s largest city—of planning as a seriously pluralist process. This is noteworthy.

As he recounts the history of successful and not so successful struggles for community control of development and analyzes these efforts, Angotti draws out lessons for progressive planners and community organizers. It is an accessible, analytical book, a fascinating read. then, more than 100 neighborhoods throughout the city have developed their own community plans. Here is the history, as Angotti lays it out: • By the end of the twentieth century, what had been • As far back as Peter Stuyvesant in the 1600s, a neighborhood-based, if Manhattan-centered, real big developers had always been at the center of estate and land development elite had given way to New York City politics, though they had to beat a small number of giant, multi-billion dollar firms back resistance from working-class wards and backed by international investors. political machines. • By 2008 (when New York for Sale was published), • Starting with Cooper Square at the end of the community planners had built significant momentum 1950s, community groups found ways to counter and capacity. Real estate interests, however, now government plans that favored big investors. Since more sophisticated in their tactics and knowledgeable

38 Progressive Planning of ways to divide community groups and buy off Commons plans prevented massive displacement opposition, had become even more of a threat to from low-income and working-class neighborhoods, neighborhood life given their connections to the Angotti is careful to point out the messy and conflict- global financial industry, connections unavailable in ridden nature of the process when you take planning earlier decades. out of the office and into the midst of struggle.

Angotti ends the story in suspense, but along the In turning to more recent examples of community way provides rich insights into the conflicts between plans, Angotti particularly highlights the story of neighborhood interests and the globally backed real the city’s environmental justice movement, which estate-City Hall alliance. mobilized scores of groups and had the potential, when protest turned into community planning, Angotti describes in detail several community to create coalitions with other groups who saw planning efforts, illustrating a set of unfolding the broader impacts of sludge plants, incinerators themes: the transition from local to global real and solid waste stations. The best example is the estate, the evolution from neighborhood protest Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods (OWN), to resident-led community planning, the central which garnered support for a citywide plan that role of the environmental justice movement, challenged city practice in solid waste disposal—an the creation of a charter amendment to make increasingly expensive proposition in the 1990s, community plans “official” and the developing— involving the use of 200 trailer trucks to carry waste but apparently not yet conclusive— cooptation of to upstate landfills. community planning efforts by newly powerful real estate–City Hall alliances. In the course of a rich, even overpowering narrative of specific efforts, Angotti makes In describing two early examples of successful general observations. Of the over 100 community community plans, Angotti explores the relationship plans, most were initiated in poor neighborhoods. between neighborhood organizing and advocacy Contradicting the common perception, these planners. The first notable community plan adopted groups were not simply dedicated to the “not-in- by the city, that for Cooper Square, resulted from the my-backyard” approach or to exclusionary goals, combination of resident resistance led by Frances but rather they saw the possibilities of joining Goldin, starting in 1959, and the assistance provided with other neighborhoods, often less poor, in the by pioneering advocate planner Walter Thabit. After face of depredations that affected them all. Rather many years of “radical and sometimes militant” than resisting the location of an incinerator, organizing, the city adopted the residents’ plan, for example, they sought to reduce the number preventing the demolition of eleven blocks of the of disposal facilities across the city in favor of neighborhood that would have displaced 2,400 recycling—against the recalcitrant New York City tenants, 450 single room occupancy (SRO) units, 4,000 Sanitation Department. homeless beds and 500 business establishments with 2,900 units of middle-income housing . By the 1990s, in Angotti’s chronicle, community protest and alternative plans had become effective In Melrose Commons, South Bronx activist Yolanda enough that city officials took a new tack, adapting Garcia brought together a set of protest and local a charter amendment that gave neighborhoods an interest groups to fight a 1992 city proposal to official sanction for the so-called “197a” plans. Here redevelop thirty blocks. With support from the the mandate, initiated by City Hall progressives borough president’s office and the help of Ron like Hortense Gabel and Beverly Spratt, was diluted Shiffman of the Pratt Institute Center for Community by practice: city bureaucracies failed to provide and Environmental Development (PICCED), the technical support to the plans, and under Giuliani community produced a more neighborhood-friendly and Bloomberg after 1993 there was little mayoral plan. While both the Cooper Square and Melrose support either.

No. 182 / WINTER 2010 39 The most instructive section of the book is the later plan for the area, looks at the potential environmental chapters that discuss the post-9/11 reconstruction impacts of the plan, decides what to do and then either efforts and the Atlantic Yards proposals in Brooklyn, takes action by itself or puts the plan out to private which attracted the really big money backed by Real developers to bid on. In Atlantic Yards and increasingly Estate Investment Trusts and international finance. In in other megaprojects throughout the neoliberal city, both cases there were vigorous local voices, but also the reverse is happening: the private developer does newly sophisticated manipulation by City Hall and its the plan, persuades government officials to back it backers. Most of Angotti’s account presents a picture and then announces a done deal. This ideology of the of neighborhood planning as, if not a populist ideal, at fait accompli becomes a key instrument for moving least as a process where the small powers seem to have through all stages of the planning and public approval a fighting chance and occasionally win. But in Atlantic process. It poses a serious challenge to community Yards, at least, the picture is of a planning process turned organizers because even those who find the project to be on its head, to the disadvantage of the neighborhoods: unacceptable are led to believe that nothing can be done to change or stop it. (p. 216) Like Alice in Wonderland in her looking-glass world, the planning for Atlantic Yards was all backwards. In Angotti wonders what to do in the face of the new planning without the mirrors, government creates a conditions imposed by the deep pockets and political

Angotti on the Davidoff Prize: Join the Struggles for Social Justice

I would like to thank the Davidoff award committee and the many friends and colleagues that I have learned and gained strength from. I would like to especially thank the many activists in New York and beyond who, in striving for a just utopia, are reinventing community planning. They are the ones who have earned and truly deserve the Davidoff prize.

As told in New York For Sale, the sad truth is that community planning and participation most often promote racial and ethnic exclusion and the supremacy of real estate values over human values. But progressive community planning comes out of community struggles by working class communities and communities of color against displacement, environmental injustice and exclusion. It goes far beyond setting up an open and transparent process but deals with realigning economic and political power.

The roots of progressive planning today are in advocacy planning, to which we owe a debt to Paul Davidoff. But let’s not forget that advocacy planning came out of the Civil Rights struggles, and to carry forward Paul’s work we must connect with today’s movements. Too often the profession and planning education have whitewashed Davidoff’s brilliant work in the same way that Martin Luther King’s legacy has been purged of its revolutionary spirit. Planning offices are still pushing real estate and planning faculty are still too white. I know Paul would be the first to welcome all of our efforts to rekindle the struggles for social justice, inside and outside our universities, through the World Social Forum, Right to the City Alliance, Habitat International Coalition, Planners Network, and many other venues. Please come along with us, and thank you.

This comment was delivered during the awards ceremony at the 2009 conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference.

40 Progressive Planning authority of the real estate developer–City Hall alliance. One can ask another question: given the accretion of He reflects on the years of effort by community groups experience represented in these accounts—hundreds of to defeat such megaprojects as the Lower Manhattan groups over, say, thirty years or more—and the capacities Expressway and Westway. “To what extent would that have built up, are we better able to use community community-based organizations have better served their plans to accomplish greater change than was possible, neighborhoods by retreating from such struggles and say, at the beginning of the Dinkins administration when focusing on the relatively peripheral areas where they the Cooper Square activists finally achieved success? may have greater ability to actually influence outcomes?” One guesses we are further ahead but that we still have But it was good to defeat Westway, too, and Angotti does not found a way to change New York government in a not try to answer this. decisive way. Or perhaps Angotti’s activists have found it, and are only waiting for one further push. There is the question of what the planning profession can draw from these experiences. One lesson would be All in all, New York for Sale is a splendid book. It simply to notice the disconnect between the “planning” stands alongside such iconic works as Percival and roles played by, say, the architects in charge of the various Paul Goodman’s Communitas (1947) as an exemplar proposals to rebuild the World Trade Center and the of what planning can be or might be. As that book community planning professionals, sometimes trained as documented post-war hope by assembling the architects as well, working with groups like the Cooper historical and then current record of planning Square or the Melrose Commons activists or those involved ideas, this book documents a remarkable record in the OWN solid waste plan. The megaproject planners, of community planning experience drawing on working in the upside-down context Angotti describes— more recent efforts. And he tempers hope with even the world famous architects given carte blanche to realism because he understands profoundly what create monuments like in the case of Daniel Libeskind and community planners are up against. He sees both the the World Trade Center site—operated in a diminished immense force of the real estate “growth machine” sphere as professionals because, in contrast to Thabit or that grew to international dimensions, particularly Shiffman, they had to accept the dictates of their masters in New York, and the creative energy that can come rather than interact with the people in the street. They did when community organizers and planners work in not have to think about “equity” or “environmental justice.” partnership to advance community interests. They could not provide the legitimacy of client contact the community planners had, or pass it on to their employers, SPECIAL OFFER: Planners Network members receive who were content to construct essentially inauthentic 30% off when ordering from MIT Press, using discount visions. This deprived the city of projects connected to the code ANGNEW. To order call 800-405-1619 or http:// real interests of its residents. mitpress.mit.edu

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