Anne-Marie Sammartino

In most other places, municipal governments sort of pursue like a two-pronged strategy for building new housing after World War II.

On the one hand, there's housing projects for the very poor that are in the urban core.

And then there's single family, you know, sort of mortgage support for single family homes.

New York's a little bit different because the mayor and other people in city government, they want to keep the middle class.

And when they're saying this, they don't just mean the white middle class, but they mostly mean the white middle class living in New York City.

They saw the world in kind of class terms.

Now, of course, the world does not just exist in class terms.

There's also racial dynamics here.

And the leaders of the United Housing Foundation from the beginning were clear that they were fine with anybody of any racial background if they could afford to pay the equity deposit.

Because they saw that this gave people a stake in the community that they would not have if they were mere renters in their minds.

And what she was saying is like, no, no, no.

You know, these places that you're so quick to condemn, both physically condemn and like morally condemn, are actually functioning communities.

And that when you build new housing, what you're doing is destroying community and you're building something sterile from which no community can emerge.

Co-op City is the largest project for the United Housing Foundation and the largest by far mortgage that is ever sponsored by Mitchell-Lama.

And the story goes that people leave the buildings, they come, they're helping stranded travelers.

They're bringing them in, they're giving them like hot tea or hot cocoa.

Meanwhile, kids are having like snowball fights.

And so it becomes celebrated in this kind of co-op city mythology as like the creation of a community.

It was kind of proving the critics wrong.

Yeah, exactly.