NYC’s housing needs beg Soviet-style solutions
Briarwood: I believe that private ownership of residential properties, including co-ops and condos, which are undemocratic structures in the American capitalist system (despite their claims of the historical democratic Rochdale principles), should be abolished and replaced with government-owned apartments leased out by the state.
In 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, USSR premier 1958-’64, formalized an all-union housing policy (single-family apartments for all families) for eliminating the housing shortage within 12 years. These “propiska” were permanent residences and rent ranged from 8-10% of family income, with no direct payment but instead with rent plus “communal” (utility) charges deducted from salaries by means of underpayment. In Moscow, 64,000 units were built from 1961-’68. The 1977 Constitution of the USSR guaranteed the right to state-owned public housing. No private landlord or co-op/condo aggrandizement with constant rent or maintenance increases, no hundreds of annual evictions, as in New York City Civil (Housing) Courts, which substantially contribute to homelessness.
Co-ops and condos also deplete the stock of private rental housing with totalitarian boards disenfranchising residents of rent regulation laws and constitutional redress. State and city regulations as countercultural initiatives to reform housing within the capitalist system are Band-Aids. Present NYC right-to-shelter laws still restrict temporary public-financed housing to 30 and 60 days based on a criterion of age.
The present socioeconomic situation of tenants paying huge percentages of their salaries on rent plus the migrant influx clearly point to the inadequacy of any housing reforms short of total government-owned apartments. In a word: Khrushchevka.
Joseph N. Manago