Booked on Planning

Homes for Living

• Booked on Planning • Season 5 • Episode 11

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This episode delves into the intricate world of limited equity cooperatives, social narratives, and the constantly evolving landscape of housing in America with Jonathan Tarleton, exploring his book "Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons." Tarleton begins by describing the concept of limited equity co-ops, which function as a form of de-commodified housing insulated from current market pressures. This concept comes to life in his book and our conversation through the Mitchell-Lama program in New York City, designed to keep housing permanently affordable for middle-income individuals.

 The discussion takes an introspective turn as Tarleton addresses the pervasive American narrative that true ownership equates to property that can generate profit. He argues that societal shifts have turned homeownership into a safety net for all life's financial perils, leading to a narrow view that success is only tangible through profitable ownership.

Show Notes:

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Stephanie Rouse: [00:01:00] Welcome back, bookworms. I'm Stephanie Rouse. 

Jennifer Hiatt: And I'm Jennifer Hyatt. 

Stephanie Rouse: And we're the hosts of the Booked on Planning podcast. In today's episode, we talk with author Jonathan Tarlenton on his book, Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons.

 So the whole book focuses on limited equity co-ops told through the story of two buildings or two projects in New York City under the Mitchell-Lama program, which something I'd never heard of before and was a really interesting read. I learned a whole lot about co-ops and their function.

Jennifer Hiatt: I don't think that most of our readers probably really think about residential co-ops in the United States 'cause it's not a- normal or more traditional form of housing outside of New York and maybe some of the larger cities on the Eastern Coast. So it was interesting to learn about.

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah. Here in Nebraska, or Lincoln specifically, we've been talking with a group of individuals who [00:02:00] are wanting to do co-op housing, a way to get into the market for 20, 30-year-olds who have been struggling to find affordable housing. Co-ops might be another model. And here it seems like this brand-new idea, something that we've never done, but it's really been in the US for many decades now.

In New York, the Mitchell-Lama program that built a bunch of these co-ops dates back to the '50s even. 

Jennifer Hiatt: Exactly. And also Jonathan does cover a few other types of cooperative ownership in his book as well, and we don't talk about it as much. So you should pick up the book to learn about Native American reclamation of land and what people are doing in Kansas City too.

But for now, let's get into our conversation with author Jonathan Tarlton on his book Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and New American Commons. 

Stephanie Rouse: Jonathan, thank you for joining us on Booked On Planning to talk about your book, Homes for a Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons. [00:03:00] To start, since most listeners are likely not familiar with Mitchell-Lama, which I was not before reading this book, or potentially even limited equity co-ops, what are they and what are their origins?

Jonathan Tarleton: Sure, yeah. Thank you. Limited equity co-ops are a form of cooperative housing that is de-commodified, meaning insulated from the market. The mechanism to do that is that, the residents who are owners, who own shares in this cooperative the resale value of those shares is capped.

 So when a resident wants to move out wants to sell their share, they're required to sell that back to the cooperative at essentially, what they paid for it plus some adjustment for inflation. And that is a mechanism to keep those shares, those units, that housing permanently affordable.

And this is a model that is fairly commonplace i- in Europe. But really came over to the US in the early 1900s [00:04:00] at least to New York from Finnish dock workers who started to form their own cooperatives. Of course, cooperative housing in the US isn't exactly widespread.

It's very common in New York. Most of the cooperatives in New York City are not limited equity co-ops now. You can sell those shares for, whatever you can get on the market, and, buy a place on Central Park for millions upon millions of dollars, and that is in a cooperative setting.

But the Mitchell-Lama program, which you referenced, was a program from New York City and New York State that got started in the mid-1950s. Which did two things. It funded the development of both limited equity cooperatives and rentals that were supposed to be affordable to middle income folks.

So this was really designed as a counterweight to suburban white flight. So as we'll, essentially subsidize middle income folks to stay in the city through both the creation of these rentals and this home ownership [00:05:00] opportunity through limited equity co-ops. And it's become one of the kind of- Shining examples of social housing e-enduring in the US.

I think we're often told that, we can't do this in the US or this doesn't fit in the American context, and this is a really good example of how that has in fact worked. And there are still, tons of those units in New York City today. The experience of the rentals versus the co-ops is a long story.

They're quite different but the co-ops really endure. 

Jennifer Hiatt: Yeah, I actually find it really interesting that people in the United States don't think that cooperative housing can be successful. Because all across the Midwest, which is where Stephanie and I are- 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah ... 

Jennifer Hiatt: we have cooperative businesses- Yeah

through everything, farming. My small town, our phone and internet is a co-op- Yeah ... at the end of the day. It's like, why do you think that housing is such a special thing when we have this model everywhere else? I know that wasn't a question . 

Jonathan Tarleton: No, it's a really good question, and I think, and, in the book I kind of trace the [00:06:00] origins of this program back in the same principles that underlie cooperative businesses born out of, the Rochdale principles born out of cooperative businesses in the UK are those that underlie cooperative housing.

 it's a good point that these are not so different, so why such a significant different end approach or opinion. I think it, it has a lot to do with narrative and policy around housing in the US. there was a time especially post-war, the US trying to create a home ownership society in which both rental housing and alternative forms of ownership were demonized.

 the good household was an individual homeowner in a suburban tract home. And it was considered dangerous or even, akin to this was the time of the Red Scare, so it was cooperativism was related to communism in the American ideological spectrum.

 I grew up in suburban Georgia. I had no idea what a cooperative was, [00:07:00] let alone cooperative housing. And when I started to hear about co-ops, I was like, oh, this is six people who are in their early 20s- Who are, like, sleeping in bunk beds in a group house.

Like I had no idea that this could be, you know, a 1,600 unit incredibly professionalized apartment building or complex. I think that sort of vision still endures, and so it, it stops people from, being curious about these models or thinking it could work 

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah, I think in our community, the idea of cooperative housing has been coming up a lot lately.

 ... it has generally been discussed with the early 20-somethings, 30-somethings- Yeah ... who are unable to buy your typical- Yeah ... single family because they're just priced out, so they've been talking about this. And it's always been in these smaller scales of maybe five- Mm-hmm ... 10, 15 units. And so then seeing the massive scale that some of the-

New York City projects like St. James and South Bridge, which is the story you tell- Yeah ... in the book. Yeah. What were the main differences [00:08:00] in these two different projects? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah. So you know, it's a great question and I'll actually start with some similarities, 'cause the similarities are curious.

Yes, they were both built under this Mitchell-Lama program. They actually both have the same developer, which is Tishman Speyer, which is a a huge... One would not think of them as a crunchy warm-hearted developer now. They are just a giant of New York City real estate.

And they were both built on urban renewal areas. So though those are, some interesting similarities between the developments. As far as differences, their scale, are actually substantially different from one another. South Bridge Towers has over 1,600 apartments. There are over 4,000 people who live there.

It's quite large. St. James is smaller. It has a little over 300 apartments. Also, the neighborhoods they were built on are, significantly different both today and when they were built. South Bridge Towers was constructed as part of a larger vision for a civic center in Lower [00:09:00] Manhattan.

It's in the Financial District today. It was built in what was predominantly seen as a commercial area that really didn't have any- Folks living there or activity after 5:00 PM. So it was constructed as this self-contained community. It has a lot of ground floor retail. The actual design of it, it turns in on itself.

It was supposed to be a place where, someone lives there, they can get everything they need there, and they will walk to work in this new civic center of New York City. And, the hall's not far away. The courts are not far away. Obviously, the financial institutions are right there.

There's a university that was also built part of the urban renewal area. St. James is substantially different. It was built as part of an urban renewal area associated with the Pratt Institute a university in Brooklyn in the neighborhood now known as Clinton Hill. At the time, the larger area was just known as Bedford-Stuyvesant or Bed-Stuy, which is still there in Brooklyn.

And it is a very residential [00:10:00] area. And this urban area was really seen as a way to insulate the university from the wider neighborhood. ... Bed-Stuy is known as a center for Black culture in New York.

The Pratt Institute wasn't a huge fan of that at the time, so this was a way of, a-almost creating a in my research, I saw the term used, a fire break to, the increased Black population of that part of Brooklyn. Joke on the developers of that concept is that St. James Towers and there are actually two other Mitchell-Lama developments that are an architectural copy of the building that are directly next to it are all predominantly Black developments today and became safe havens for Black residents, as, gentrification has really hollowed out that community in that neighborhood in the last couple decades.

So actually, that leads me to another key difference, which is the racial makeup of these buildings. So St. James Towers, a predominantly [00:11:00] Black community today continues to be. South Bridge Towers was a predominantly white community and also continues to be so today.

So South Bridge pulled a lot of folks in from Eastern European and other European immigrant communities in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And there was also a a substantial Chinese and East Asian population in the building, in part because of its proximity to Chinatown. And the last difference I will touch on is who gave the mortgage for these developments.

How the Mitchell-Lama program works is either the city or the state can be the lender essentially providing the mortgage, which was, very generous. It was up to 95% of the development cost. So this is a significant investment from the city or state. And based on , which of those entities provided that mortgage, the supervising agency is different.

St. James Towers is today supervised by the city, by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, [00:12:00] while South Bridge the mortgage was through the state and it was supervised by Homes and Community Renewal, New York State HCR. Which that's a, actually a key distinction in the experience of residents of what it means to be regulated over time, 'cause those agencies take a relatively different approach to administering the Mitchell-Lama program.

Jennifer Hiatt: Yeah. And so as you're talking about, these were always privately owned businesses or residential units- yeah ... just subsidized by a government mortgage or government support, When I was reading through the original documents for the Mitchell-Lama program, because I'm a lawyer and I couldn't help it- After you pointed out to me, I needed to know about it.

There did not seem to be any intent to privatize these buildings at all. 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah. 

Jennifer Hiatt: But that did shift, it looked like, in the late '80s? Early '90s. A little fuzzy on the timeline. So as you point out in the book, there is this myth of [00:13:00] privatization, that was always the goal of Mitchell-Lama from the start.

Where did that come from- ... and how did we end up with a road to privatization at the end? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah. It's a, it's an excellent question, and I'm I'm edified that you dug into the raw materials there. So yeah. privatization here, as you mentioned, Jennifer,

It's a misnomer. These have always been private developments. So even for a private development to be, quote-unquote, privatized doesn't make sense. But I think it is an, a sort of accurate term in the sense of privatization here refers to removing that restriction on the resale value of a share.

So in some sense- it is privatizing because it removes the public purpose of the program, which was to, create permanently affordable homes for middle-income folks. That, as you said, never included in the original legislation. It was not even possible. there was no mechanism for that cap to be removed.

 When this starts to enter the equation is in [00:14:00] the late '50s when a new governor, Nelson Rockefeller wanted to spur increased rental development under the Mitchell-Lama program. So in the rental side of the program the only shareholders are the landlord of that building, again, a private company.

 And they had no mechanism to remove, in that case, rent restrictions from those developments. The state said, " Hey, if we give that developer an out," as is very common in, in affordable housing development today you thirty years, some sort of time period on which these affordability restrictions remain in place and then after that, the owner can do what they want.

If we provide that will actually incentivize additional development under this program. so they introduced this idea of, quote-unquote, " privatization" to the legislation, and it was intended to only relate to rentals. you can actually think conceptually, it it would not do anything to [00:15:00] incentivize development for co-ops because the developer or landlord is immediately out of the picture once the building is built and sold to the owners.

And the residents of these Mitchell-Lama co-ops are not going to be developing housing on their own even if we would love that. so that was introduced. The legislation is actually, I think, quite poorly written so that it could be interpreted to be able to be applied to either co-op or rental.

But the conversation around this the sponsors of these bills, et cetera, are all fairly clear that, oh, that was just about rentals. This had nothing to do with the co-ops. It was not a good deal none of these co-ops would have wanted to privatize for many decades.

Like, Being in Mitchell-Lama is a really good deal for residents. They pay a really reasonable carrying costs on their units. They have good support from the city and state. There was no real profit motive on the other side in New York City real estate. Until, of course the real estate environment in the city drastically [00:16:00] changes in the '90s and beyond.

So that's when this question of, oh, if we could remove the resale restriction on our share, we, as individuals, could stand to all of a sudden ha-have an "asset" on our hands that's worth, 10 times what it was, 100 times what it was. A- an insane sort of markup. Just to give a sense, there were folks who in the '70s bought a share, bought a unit for $3,000.

 And that family today, and of course we can adjust for inflation of, what that value means today, but, they could sell these units for a million dollars. So that profit motive enters the equation. Then this sort of idea of privatization enters from a number of different ways.

One, there are people within city and state government who kind of wanna get rid of this program. there are reasons. They are still, in some ways, even the, though these are private developments, they're in some ways still on the hook for making sure that they are successful. And so there are a number of things that happen [00:17:00] with different buildings over time where it's oh, the city and state really have to cough up some money to help these buildings in distress.

There are different ideologies at play about, what should the role of government in housing be. So the idea that, a city or state government might want to push privatization enters into the public conversation. That never really becomes policy, but it's something that's floated.

And then you have residents within the developments start to see that horizon. They start to craft narratives among themselves and say, "Oh this is an auction. That means it was always the intent of the legislation that this take place. This was supposed to occur."

And that, that enters into all of these co-op discussions. Little essentially proto-political parties form within the co-ops because, folks are running for the board. That's where all of these decisions start to be made. You have whole political coalitions built around this one single issue, and then you just start hearing it and it spreads throughout the city.

there are all of these kind of interesting moments where, at one point [00:18:00] I learned that, the person who read the privatization campaign at South Bridge Towers, they were chatting up the folks who were leaving the privatization campaign at St. James Towers.

Totally different neighborhoods. And the same goes for the folks who are trying to maintain these co-ops. As Mitchell-Lamas, as limited equity co-ops. that is a, not a full answer, but gets to some of how that idea of privatization was the point started to spread.

Jennifer Hiatt: Yeah, and one of the things that kept striking me as I was reading through it is this idea of ownership. And you started to touch on this at the beginning of the conversation, of how America specifically, or the United States specifically, actual fee simple ownership is the only form of good ownership.

 But why wouldn't most people think that they- Mm-hmm ... had ownership-... 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah ... 

Jennifer Hiatt: of their co-op? They had exclusive control over the unit in which they lived, right? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah. Yeah, this is something I'll say that when I started doing interviews around this with cooperators, and [00:19:00] the book is, substantially based on kinda ethnographic work with them, I did not see this coming at all.

I kinda went into it and I was like, "This is really interesting." Some folks wanna profit from this, other folks wanna maintain this. Like, why? Why do some want to do this? Why do some not? I wanna tease that out. And the idea that essentially the entire idea of what true ownership or what ownership actually entails or means is up for discussion was surprising.

Because, as you're saying, they do have ownership. There's no doubt. There's absolutely no debate to be had. They are owners. They elect their board, and the board makes decisions, and they can sell their share and all of these things. But what was really interesting to me is that there seemed to be another idea of what, quote unquote, "true ownership" was at hand.

And that ultimately came down to, one, a kind of like regulationless ideal. people thought, "Oh, we are regulated by a city or state agency." there are some of these [00:20:00] co-ops if you're doing work, if you're getting a contractor for a job over a certain dollar value, you have to get that contract blessed by the city or state.

we can debate whether that is a good role for the city and state, especially with their current capacity, but that's something they're in place to make sure, what are ultimately not- Housing professionals making decisions, complex financial decisions on a board, making sure that they're not being taken advantage of.

That's the intent at least of that legislation or that rule, regulation. But many thought the very fact that they had to ask the city or state for anything, or that they were under any sort of, supervision was an abrogation of ownership. and of course we know that's not the case.

 if you own a house in the suburbs you can't do anything you want with it, you have to abide by all sorts of regulations. And you are under the supervision of, the jurisdiction and under the the regulations of the state or [00:21:00] city. So that was one piece of it.

The other idea was that, oh, we are not true owners if we cannot profit from our housing. And this was fascinating to me because, they can sell it. They know they can sell it. But the whole point and the whole deal of this limited equity co-op is that, no you're not going to profit from it.

And people in theory knew that coming in. They knew that this cap on the resale value was in place, and at least in the early days of these co-ops, that was something that was, a point of pride. People n- had a lot of pride in the kind of public role that these developments were supposed to play that they were going to, remain middle-class bastions and in a sea of either unaffordability or otherwise.

And the idea that, you are not a true homeowner if you can't profit develops later on. I think at first I was a bit befuddled by this, I thought, "This is kinda ridiculous." Like, why would you think that? We know people sell their [00:22:00] homes all the time, and they lose all kinds of money, and they are true homeowners.

But, thinking through what homeownership in the US has come to stand in for how folks are taught to use owning a home as a means to pay for all manner of sorts of things, that they should instrumentalize their homes to pay for healthcare, for education, for eldercare. you start to see why folks would say, "Oh wait."

The entire kind of society and- Housing as the safety net, homeownership as the safety net has changed over the course of the lives of these development, and we got left behind. And now we can't do that. We are barred from instrumentalizing our housing in that way, and therefore we are not true homeowners.

 I don't agree with it, but I can see the logic of it to some extent, and I think it's a, it is just a really fascinating dynamic of these debates that I, didn't see coming and I found, had a lot of richness. 

Jennifer Hiatt: [00:23:00] Yeah. I helped establish a community land trust here in Lincoln, and our property values- are in no way increasing the way property values in New York City are. But it's one of the things that makes me nervous for our land trust because we also- Yeah ... cap equity. Yeah. And we try to set it at about 35%. Mm-hmm. But that first generation seems to get it, but we have had- Yeah ... two houses turn over and the next people are kinda like I don't understand- why you're capping." I'm like, "Because if I make it affordable to you, and then I don't make it affordable to anybody else- 

... 

Jennifer Hiatt: What was the point of creating- Yep ... a land trust?" So it's an interesting concept. And education just always has to be touched on. Like, Every year we have a meeting about that.

Jonathan Tarleton: Absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I will say I touched on the one idea of ownership which is, underlied the motivation to privatize or to profit from this housing. There was a very strong strain another idea of ownership that pushes [00:24:00] back on that, and that is, rather than thinking of ownership as an entitlement to profit from these homes other owners were like, "No, I'm a steward of this model.

No, in fact, I have a responsibility to maintain this public good for future generations. That's actually, as an owner, that's my responsibility." And so those competing ideas of ownership, which, I will say that there are plenty of folks who wanted to privatize who feel extremely strongly and work very hard to steward their communities in other ways.

 so there is some overlap there, but ultimately were these two competing ideas of ownership that played out in those debates.

Stephanie Rouse: So there were politicians that were advocating for a Mitchell-Lama 2.0. And you can see this a little stronger in the South Bridge versus St. James- Yeah ... Place, They advocated for this 2.0 version, but then they stayed out of any debates around- ... privatizing in these buildings that would essentially reduce the number of Mitchell-Lama projects.

 H-how was this dynamic playing out [00:25:00] or how did this, how were they able- Yeah ... to justify this? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah. It is such a interesting dynamic. So the main justification for folks staying out of these debates was one of maybe a definition of this that I agree with, but an idea, a certain idea of democracy.

And it was to say, "Oh, these are the owners of their co-op. It's their decision. We as politicians should not be getting into the middle of that. They should be able to make decisions about their home. There's a clear process about how to do this. There are, legal thresholds. if they want to decide to privatize, that's their prerogative."

 I think that's a cop-out, to say the least. And in part because it really defines the group of people for whom these co-ops are relevant to only be the residents of the co-op at that particular point in time. And it evades the fact that, this is a public good that the city and [00:26:00] state and, by extension residents of the rest of the city are continuing to invest in.

Of course, for the benefit of the residents who live there now, for future generations, for themselves, for, the sense that actually, having housing affordable to folks benefits, most everyone in the city whether they're in that particular unit or not. And so it leaves all those folks out.

It says the "we" that we care about is just the people who are living in the co-op at the time. I also think it's, it was politically expedient for them. And, Stephanie you mentioned the Southbridge example. Southbridge is big. That's 4,000 people. It's a voting block.

And there were folks who were scared of alienating a significant voting block as they, pursued their own kind of electoral hopes. it was expedient for them to stay out of that, say, "I'm not gonna weigh in here. That's your decision."

Back up the proposals for Mitchell-Lama 2.0, it's something that comes up in almost every election cycle- in New York City. [00:27:00] And it's not always exactly clear what people are calling for. it's become this Mitchell-Lama as a term, people know it exists in New York City, and what that calls to mind is, wow, this is really affordable, pretty high quality housing that, I might be able to actually buy into in a otherwise extremely expensive city.

 it's uncontroversial. It's like this is a great thing. So it's an easy thing to throw out as we should do Mitchell-Lama 2.0, and then it's what does that exactly mean? Are you saying that we should, build more of these co-ops?

Are you saying we should just develop more middle income housing that's homeownership that's affordable to folks? And those proposals have shifted and, changed all across different timescales and by who is proposing it. So it's this vague, proposal that people put forth in electoral cycles because it's broadly popular.

And so it's much easier to pitch something like that and to say, "We're gonna build more of this stuff," than it is to pick a side in [00:28:00] these pretty messy, very heated debates within existing communities. There are no people living in those future theoretical Mitchell-Lama 2.0 buildings to get upset about, what you're saying about their homes.

Whereas there are, at le- the, in South Bridge's case, 4,000 people you might piss off if you weighed into that debate. And ultimately some elected officials didn't see a benefit in doing so. Others did, and that made a big difference especially in the St. James example.

Jennifer Hiatt: we're talking about affordable housing, but affordable housing is a very nebulous concept. And I do think it's important to point out here that the Mitchell-Lama program was actually meant to be a middle income program- Yeah ... not what people traditionally think of when they think of, quote-unquote, affordable housing, which is typically low to moderate income.

But no matter what, every time you identify affordable housing you have to means test in some way. 

 Why is this potentially stifling expansion of- ... social housing both in New York and just [00:29:00] across the United States? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Really good question. I think from a basic standpoint, the minute you means test something and, we've seen this as a strategy for all sorts of different kinds of government benefits when you means test you immediately shrink- the political constituency who has a dog in the fight for promoting something or maintaining something.

If, you're doing affordable housing and saying, "Oh, this is only gonna be, for folks, thirty to sixty percent AMI or eighty percent the folks who are just above that threshold are immediately like this isn't for me. Why do I care?"

And those people might not come out, advocate for it, fight for it. And, this is one of the kind of political arguments for promoting different forms of social housing that is very mixed income, might do some means testing to ensure a diversity of incomes, but is not necessarily restricted to only certain income bands, is [00:30:00] that you build a constituency that will fight for that housing long term.

And, this is what people talk about. People love to talk about Vienna which can get a little tiresome, but, and this is a bit in the book of hearing from one organizer in Kansas City who is trying to push forward some social housing proposals there is that, you want touching that housing or privatizing that sort of social housing is a complete third rail in Vienna.

no politician would survive suggesting it. No, no community push for doing that would necessarily survive that. So the minute you means test, you shrink that body. I think you also see the other sides of shrinking that constituency is stigmatization. So you can immediately sort of other people who live in that housing, see them as, different than you.

 And that can be a way of assaulting this sort of public benefit. And it's interesting, I saw this happen at South Bridge Towers. Residents there were very [00:31:00] concerned about being lumped in with other affordable housing. Lower Manhattan has all kinds of, as does a lot of New York, but a lot of different kinds of housing.

There's now the most expensive housing you can find designed by Frank Gehry, directly next to South Bridge Towers, which is, middle-income directly next to NYCHA public housing development. And they had this fear of being seen as, quote-unquote, "tipping towards the projects".

And so you see this stigmatization happening within the development You see it happening against Southbridge residents who then take on that mantle of stigmatizing others to separate themselves. That obviously has massive racial dimensions. there were Southbridge residents who, were very concerned that their was becoming Blacker even though that wasn't really happening.

But even just having more Black residents in the complex gave certain residents a sense that, oh, we are quote unquote becoming like the [00:32:00] projects, or that there are too many lower income people living there, or people of color living there. So actually, means testing does open the door for that kind of stigmatization.

It's obviously not the cause of it but it does inhibit some efforts at a broad-based approach to housing and affordable housing in the US. 

Stephanie Rouse: So at the end of your book, you give the positive news that legislation- ... was enacted that- 

... 

Stephanie Rouse: Didn't necessarily close the door around privatization, but it did have- Yeah

some positive outcomes. What did the bill accomplish? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah, it was great news. And, it's, It was a testament to the organizing across that cooperators from a number of different Mitchell-Lama developments came together to push forward over many years. And in fact, one of the leaders at St.

James Towers who pushed back the privatization push there, he was also instrumental in this sort of statewide push for enhanced Mitchell-Lama rights. So what they did was they raised the voting thresholds [00:33:00] at the co-ops that are necessary to privatize the development. And I won't go into all of the details of that process 'cause it, it is complex, but it's essentially a series of three votes that first you're voting on a feasibility study if privatization is possible based on the financials of the development.

Then you're voting on spending money to draft an offering plan for that privatization, because th- again, this is a cooperative. There are shares. You're offering shares in it, with different rules, and then you're ultimately voting to enact that offering plan or not. So at each of those points the co-op has to vote at a certain threshold in order for that to move forward.

So this bill essentially raised the threshold for each of those three votes. And that has made it- Not impossible, but much, much more difficult for any privatization campaign to actually garner the number of votes from cooperators they need to move this forward. There [00:34:00] were other changes in the bill as well that I think are actually quite significant.

There's sort of a a waiting period between privatization votes. So if those privatization votes fail there has to be at least a one-year period before the board can bring additional ones. that's key because you actually have these cycles where, oh, the vote failed this time around, we're gonna go right back into it, and it'll dominate the whole conversation of that development and gobble up all the air. And, other things start to fall by the wayside, like the actual maintenance of the development because people are so focused on these privatization fights. It's interesting. They didn't close this loophole entirely, in part because of concerns that it might trigger takings lawsuits that, residents who no longer have the possibility of voting for privatization might claim that is a takings under the law.

So that's why they didn't pursue that avenue instead chose to raise those voting thresholds. But, there, there still are other mechanisms for [00:35:00] privatization to occur. there's something that's just starting to happen with some Mitchell-Lama developments, which is called an Article 2 to Article 11 conversion, which is changing these cooperatives into a different kind of cooperative, which in New York City is called an HDFC or a housing development fund cooperative which have looser restrictions on income and sale of shares.

And some advocates are very concerned that this is a kind of privatization light that is now on offer now that full privatization is much harder. So there still continues to be these fights despite this change. Some of these privatization advocates are very dogged and are not dissuaded from pursuing this even though it's become harder.

So it's still taking up a lot of time in certain co-ops.

Jennifer Hiatt: There were certainly some pro-privatizers that I kinda hated in your book. But with almost all of them, save a few people in St. James how were they able [00:36:00] to mentally tap dance around the idea that they were able to utilize and access this social housing- Yeah ... and benefit from it while still- Yeah

arguing that they should be able to exclude others and they deserve their payout? what happened 

Jonathan Tarleton: there? Yeah. I like the term mental tap dance for it, 'cause there's certainly a lot of dissonance going on. it varies by person, but some of the kind of main strains.

One is a sense that they created the value in this real estate, and I think this is actually a really interesting argument because I do in fact think they have... we talk about this actually with gentrification a lot. It's oh, the residents who live there now, they have created this neighborhood.

They have, quote unquote, "created the value in this neighborhood to some extent." The distinction between folks arguing or making sure, saying, "We don't wanna be displaced from our neighborhoods," and this is that, anti-gentrification activists are saying we wanna keep this value in this place.

We just wanna stay." Versus these folks who are trying to privatize and saying, "We created [00:37:00] this value," they really wanna take that value and leave. And the only way they can actually realize that value is by selling. Yes, when privatization occurs, they have an asset that may be worth something, but they have to sell and leave to realize that kind of, quote unquote, "value."

So yeah, this idea that they created the value is really potent for some. There's also just a lot of folks who make a reasonable argument, and we talked a little bit about this before, that's "I need this money for different things that we actually value." There are folks who were pro-privatization who would say I don't know how I'm gonna pay for my mom's care.

She has a, this major health issue. I can't borrow against my share like I could in another kind of housing arrangement, and privatization is my mechanism to do that." So there are some folks who are just saying that "Hey, I don't necessarily think this is the best thing ever, but, this is a means to an end and I need this."

And no, that's... I empathize with that. That's a extremely difficult [00:38:00] situation to be in, and honestly, I would never wanna have to make this decision myself. I Regardless of, which side these folks were on I was like, "This is a terrible decision that these people should have never had to make and were never really supposed to make."

There are other folks who would and this was particularly present at St. James among certain older Black cooperators, Kind of painting privatization and the profit that could come from that as a form of reparations, which is obviously a very individualized form of reparations in the sense that it would only accrue to very specific individuals.

 But they made this argument of as, Black individuals, we've been systematically locked out of other mechanisms of building wealth in this society, and this is our chance to do so. And, one resident Winna at St. James Towers, and at the time that most of this is going on, she's now in her eighties, but the only reason she lives there is because her father, who also, in an interesting coincidence, happened to be an architect on the building [00:39:00] had tried to buy a plot of land in the Bronx to build his dream home on, and when the seller found out he was Black, they pulled out of the sale.

So they ended up, moving into St. James when it was new against his desires. So she sees it as an insulation from a racist real estate market where some of her neighbors view privatization as a mechanism for reparation. So that's another really interesting strain. And then there are folks who are like and this gets back to the, which we really matters here, is that we'll claim that this is good for everyone who lives in the co-op right now, which is not true especially if you wanna stay and live there because your costs will increase, and you might end up getting priced out of a home you actually own now.

 But they'll say, "Oh like all of the folks who are my neighbors right now, we're all gonna benefit, so this is good for everybody." And that's again, a, I don't think it's a true argument, but it's potent. And, a really curious aspect of these debates was what was considered ideological and what was not.

And there were folks who would say anytime [00:40:00] someone tried to make an ethical argument, this is especially the case at Southbridge, about why one should remain in this program folks would say why are you bringing ideology into this?" And I was like whoa, it's like there was ideology on all sides of this debate.

The ideology that we should be able to profit from this is very potent. But this kind of charge of being ideological was really quite influential at Southbridge, to the point which, the folks who were trying to preserve that co-op in Mitchell-Lama, stopped making- Those ethical arguments out loud.

They were arguing everything on sort of dollars and cents, and what would be good financially for the residents, and I think that was a big loss to that campaign. So mental tap dance indeed. There are a lot of interesting ways that people justified this decision to themselves and to their, fellow cooperatives.

And a lot of people who, you know, you mentioned the politicians who would advocate for Mitchell-Lama 2.0, but not necessarily, advocate for maintaining these co-ops. There were plenty of [00:41:00] cooperators who would, out of one side of their mouth, say, "Mitchell-Lama is the best.

We love Mitchell-Lama. They should build more Mitchell-Lamas." And then out of the other side of their mouth say, " And we wanna privatize this one." So it was, yeah, fascinating. 

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah, it really gets back to what you said earlier about homeownership as a safety net, and you return a few times in the book to this idea that we need to change the culture of ownership.

 really massive feat- ... and this question's gonna be really probably challenging to answer, but- ... any ideas on how we'd start pushing against the tide and change this approach to housing? 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah. Definitely a massive feat. And I think the important thing to remember and try to, highlight in this book and in, I looked to Brian McCabe's book, No Place Like Home, a lot for this is to recall that this idea of ownership is itself constructed.

Our current culture of ownership, it was, created through very specific narratives that were pushed out by [00:42:00] very specific bodies at different times. And so that was made and so it can also be unmade. It's difficult, but it can be done. One place to start that I've been thinking a lot about recently, and, I've worked in CDCs myself, I've done affordable housing development myself, and I was always struck by this, is, we have this quite big program across the country that's federally supported, these first-time home buyer classes.

And, I remember going to one of these. I don't own a home myself. I probably would if I could right now. But remember going to one of these and hearing the narrative that one, this is the pinnacle. This is what everyone should be aspiring to. It's good for all kinds of different people, which is not true.

And a really potent thing in that narrative was, when you're an owner, you can do whatever you want. and that's also not true. And so actually, that kind of first-time home buyer base- Is to me actually k- maybe is a place to start. Maybe it is a place of revamping [00:43:00] how we talk about ownership to people who are coming into it considering it.

Maybe we talk about other forms of ownership beyond the kind of traditional idea of, white picket fence da, suburban house, and we talk about, limited equity cooperatives. You talk about community land trusts. We talk about the benefits and drawbacks of all of them, and we can be very honest and frank about all of that.

There are different forms for different folks who want different things, and that's, that, that should be a good thing to have that diversity. So I do think that might be a place to start. and there's a, person in the book who writes these dispatches from St.

James full of ideas of what ownership means in American society and what it means about the person. And he says at one point that, "You're only a person of substance in the US when you become an homeowner." He is a homeowner, but he doesn't think he is a true homeowner. And that's just nonsense.

We know, but, that's a still really potent idea and at any turn we have to [00:44:00] kinda push back against that narrative and yeah. certainly no small task, but maybe a place to start.

Jennifer Hiatt: Even to the end of people who could afford to be traditional homeowners but choose not to.

 One of my friends, she financially could absolutely own a home, but renting is what makes sense for her. Yeah. She has to go take depositions across the country. Keeping her yard mowed isn't going to be for her. And so- 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah ... 

Jennifer Hiatt: but people think less of her 'cause she doesn't own a home. Yep. Doesn't make any sense.

Jonathan Tarleton: Nope, not 

Jennifer Hiatt: So what are some of the takeaways you have from the outcome of South Bridge's privatization? And of course, we've never really come out and said it, but St. James continues- ... in the cooperative. or any other takeaways from other forms of stewardship that you covered in the book?

Because we, the book did primarily focus- Yeah ... on the co-ops in New York, but you also touched on a Native American of land, I guess maybe. Yep. And also some looks at KC,

Jonathan Tarleton: yep. 

Jennifer Hiatt: We wanna get some- ... sunshine to that too. 

Jonathan Tarleton: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I love that section of the book and I don't talk about it [00:45:00] enough.

Definitely all kinds of takeaways. One thing that I, really think is key is we talk often about the physical maintenance of housing, about, financial maintenance, making sure that buildings have the money they need to do the repairs they need or in, you know- Good shape.

 And I think we, and you mentioned this something along these lines earlier with the education piece, is that kind of the social maintenance of housing is, I think really key as well. And I think about that as oh, this generational passing down of this is what housing is for.

It's for these folks to live here. It's not necessarily just to profit from. This is why we built this. And that kind of maintenance is really key especially for communities like this where the residents have control and can make key decisions about their homes, as they should be able to.

 So investing in that kind of social maintenance through education, technical assistance, really important. I think that gets to an idea about, what should the government role in these kinds of [00:46:00] developments be going forward is that you can't just fund these and then leave them be. You can't just set it and forget You need to be involved in their maintenance over time and to support that. And, one of the key things about these developments they exist in an ecosystem that is pretty hostile to their existence. So not only do you have the situations where people are forced to instrumentalize their homes to pay for things that are basic needs in life you also have, a financial system, a legal system that isn't necessarily all that familiar with this model.

And so you have to work a lot harder to bring people along and get the support you need. And, residents, again they have a lot going on beyond needing to figure out how to run a massive enterprise like this, and they need support. So those are some, key takeaways. could go on all day, 

Stephanie Rouse: We'd recommend that all our listeners read your book- Mm-hmm ... and they can get the details. And as this is Booked on Planning, what [00:47:00] books would you recommend our readers check out? 

Jonathan Tarleton: how many do you wanna give me? How many recommendations do I get? 

Stephanie Rouse: We've had people give us one all the way up to maybe eight or nine once.

So- 

Jonathan Tarleton: Okay. 

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah. All 

Jonathan Tarleton: right. I'll- Try 

Jennifer Hiatt: to 

Jonathan Tarleton: keep it under 10. Okay. I'll keep I'll try to hit five. I'll try to hit five. I'll exercise restraint. A key book for me in this research is another ethnography, and it's about limited equity co-ops in DC, which are quite different from those in New York.

It's called Carving Out the Commons by Amanda Huron. It's really great. Really recommend it. I think, you know- Understanding how race fits into any sort of housing debate or policy in the US is really key. And I think Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit is a wonderful introduction to that and focuses in on very specific federal programs and their implementation locally that feed into that.

I think it's wonderful. Some slightly less plannerly books still [00:48:00] plannerly. Boomtown by Sam Anderson is this incredible book about Oklahoma City. It's one of my favorite books about a city in a l- long time. Eula Biss's Having and Being Had is a great sort of personal approach to thinking about what it means to live in kind of a capitalist society that really prizes ownership.

And I really like how she unpacks that. And the last one I'll give is by Sarah Hendren. It's called What Can a Body Do? And it's all about how we physically meet the built world of the city. it's just a really beautiful book. 

Stephanie Rouse: I also really enjoyed reading Boomtown.

I thought it was a fun read 'cause it dueled the development of the city with the basketball team and- Yeah ... how all that worked out. So another 

Jonathan Tarleton: great read. Yeah, Boomtown's so good. Yeah. And timely right now given the Thunder. 

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah. Jonathan, thank you for joining us again on Booked on Planning to talk about your book, Homes for Living: The Fight for [00:49:00] Social Housing and a New American Commons.

Jonathan Tarleton: Thank you. Really appreciate it. 

Jennifer Hiatt: we hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Jonathan Tarlton on his book Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and the New American Commons.

You can get your own copy through the publisher at Beacon Press, by supporting your local bookstore, or support the show through our page at bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review, and share the show. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning. 

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Jennifer Hiatt

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Stephanie Rouse, AICP

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