Sale of New York City housing complex highlights social polarization

Stuyvesant Town, located between 14th and 20th Streets and from First Avenue to Avenue C in lower Manhattan, is known all over the world. Planned during the Second World War as affordable housing for returning veterans, it opened in August 1947. It was built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which remains its owner today. Some 100,000 applications were submitted for the 11,250 units in Stuyvesant Town and the smaller Peter Cooper Village, directly to its north.

The story of Stuyvesant Town, along with Parkchester in the Bronx, a similarly massive complex built about five years earlier, is also noteworthy for the outrageous racial discrimination practiced by MetLife, which refused to rent to black families, a policy that was upheld in July 1947 by the US Supreme Court. Though it was not integrated until some years later, Stuyvesant Town was successful in providing decent housing in a desirable and convenient area, within walking distance or a trip of minutes by bus or subway from Manhattan’s major business, shopping and entertainment districts.

MetLife’s decision to sell the complexes has understandably aroused the concern of many of the 25,000 people living there today. The newspaper headlines portraying the impending sale as a sudden threat to affordable housing, however, were somewhat misleading. The loss of reasonably priced apartments at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village was already well underway.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/nyci-o06.shtml