While the process detailed on the Reclaim Land page details what will be required to protect Staten Island from rising sea levels and increased storm surges, it is important that the project do more than simply protect the status quo. This opportunity should also be leveraged to help address the racist issues surrounding climate change and Environmental Racism. To that end, this project will also address the issue of housing inequality and inequity. Staten Island currently has 4,510 public housing units spread over 10 project sites housing a total of 9,322 people. These projects were built between 1950 and 1971, with the exception of one, New Lane Area, which was built in 1984. These projects are in a bad state of disrepair and the NYCHA already has a $18-25 Billion project conceptualized to deal with bringing the existing buildings up to standard. I propose, rather than just providing a very expensive band-aid that will leave the existing projects to the mercy of the existing issues inherent in their current design that radiate dysfunction and social problems outward, building a new style of affordable housing, that will not only address housing inequality, but provide a structure that actually creates communities and safety, rather than destroying them.
In Slovenia, a development known as The Tetris Apartments, provides not only housing solutions that addresses inequality in access to affordable housing, but is constructed in such a way that addresses housing inequity. Housing inequality refers to people not having equal access to obtain affordable housing, which is what current housing projects are designed to address, while housing inequity, is the idea that not all houses are the same and that some housing provides better security, health and wellness and standards of living than others do, this is an issue that the current public housing system perpetuates. The current design of public housing, very tall apartment buildings that serve to alienate people rather than bring them together, needs to be re-thought entirely to ensure that inequity as well as inequality is being addressed. We need to destroy these community-killing houses and build people-orientated homes.
Rather than stack as many people as possible on top of each other in formless boxes in the same way that current housing projects do, the Tetris Apartments are only four stories tall. The original idea for public housing came from the radical ideas of French architect Le Corbusier. In building public housing throughout New York City, which served as a blueprint for housing throughout the world, Robert Moses got the Le Corbusier’s idea completely inverted. Corbusier intended for people to work in huge building that reached up to the sky, but he intended people to live in housing no taller than five stories. He also anticipated very densely populated city centers that were serviced by a well-functioning public transportation system with individual vehicles have little-to-no part to play in the future of urban centers. While there are arguments that can be leveled against Le Corbusier for his designs that ultimately would provide a form of totalitarianism, his idea of people living closer to the ground still holds true. By keeping people closer to the ground, it encourages communities to gather outside, at ground level, on the streets. This is the type of city scene that Moses’ projects destroyed when they cut through living communities to put in highways and push poor people into high rise apartment projects that discouraged a street-level community. This will be rectified by the new Staten Island public housing proposed here.
These new structures and communities are described on the New Affordable Housing page.
As people will be moved from the existing housing projects on Staten Island to the new apartments on the reclaimed land, the existing housing projects will be razed and replaced with new Tetris Apartment developments. These communities will feature a slightly different demographic make-up, which is described on the Old Affordable Housing page.
