The Real Story of Co-op City

In late July, Andrew Cuomo posted a video documenting a campaign visit to Co-op City. There are several reasons why he may have taken the trip out to the far reaches of the Northeast Bronx, the most likely being that Co-op City, a working- and middle-class, majority-Black outer-borough community consisting of over 40,000 residents living in over 15,000 apartments, represents one of his strongholds during the recent Democratic primary, which he lost to Zohran Mamdani. Indeed, on their first round ballots, Co-op City residents voted by a two-to-one margin for Cuomo. But Mr. Cuomo’s ostensible reason for visiting Co-op City was not his electoral strength in the neighborhood, but rather its place in the history of affordable housing in New York. In a video his campaign released commemorating the visit, Cuomo noted incredulously that it had been built “in 1970” and “if we can do it then, we can do it now.” His incredulity is warranted — since Co-op City’s construction, no affordable housing project has come anywhere close to the project’s size. Meanwhile, New York City remains mired in an affordable housing crisis even more severe than the one that led to Co-op City’s construction over a half-century ago. 

The real history of Co-op City’s construction is more ambiguous than Cuomo was willing to admit on this brief visit. For those who wish to construct affordable housing in the 21st century, Co-op City can serve as both a cautionary tale and the source of important lessons, revealing to government officials and voters alike the necessity of ongoing investment in order for affordable housing to flourish over the long term.  

Affordable housing is an important plank in both Cuomo and Mamdani’s platforms. Cuomo claims that he will “build more housing across all income levels,” while “leverage[ing] public land for housing development.” After a recent flare-up over Mamdani’s own rent-stabilized apartment, Cuomo has proposed means-testing this housing for new tenants. For his part, Mamdani promises to freeze rent increases in rent-stabilized apartments and borrow $70 billion to directly fund affordable housing construction, with the goal of 200,000 new units over 10 years. They are not the first New York City mayoral candidates to promise to solve the affordability crisis, but the number of affordable apartments built since Co-op City’s construction has clearly been insufficient. As New York City’s Charter Revision Commission states, “the housing crisis shapes what kind of city New York will be. It damages the local economy. It hurts the city’s standing on the national and international stage. And it undermines New York’s promise as a city of strivers, creatives, and entrepreneurs. It is sapping the vitality that has made the city a world center of business, arts and culture.”

Since 1980, half a million apartments have been built in New York. While this number sounds high, New York’s high rents and low vacancy rates show that it is clearly insufficient. Indeed, New York City constructed more housing in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s alone than in the last half-century.

Over 100,000 of those postwar apartments were financed by the New York State Mitchell-Lama Program, which became law in 1955. Expanding and building upon interwar initiatives, Mitchell-Lama sought to spur the growth of affordable housing by providing subsidies to both cooperative and rental developers. Developers could take advantage of mortgages at lower rates than the open market, along with tax subsidies and a guaranteed rate of return, while in return, they would have to keep rental or cooperative prices low for qualified renters. The largest developer to take advantage of Mitchell-Lama funding was the United Housing Foundation (UHF), a cooperative housing nonprofit with deep ties to labor unions and Robert Moses alike. The UHF was responsible for such projects as Penn South in Chelsea, Rochdale Village in Jamaica and their largest and final project, Co-op City in the Bronx. Co-op City alone makes up approximately 15% of the total number of apartments constructed in New York City over Mitchell-Lama’s 20-year lifespan (1955-1974). 

Especially compared to the snail’s pace that has marked affordable housing construction since, Co-op City was built at lightning speed. The development was approved by New York City in 1965 and ground was broken later that year, starting with a massive landfill to allow housing towers to be built on Co-op City’s marshy soil. By 1972, construction had concluded and the development’s 15,372 apartments were fully occupied by working- and middle-class New Yorkers living in modern apartments, mostly situated in Tower, Triple-core and Chevron high-rises, featuring panoramic views, large closets and central A/C. Initial residents paid an equity deposit of $450 per room and were promised monthly carrying charges of $22/room. 

There were complaints about Co-op City from the very outset. Some officials complained that Co-op City’s attraction of Jewish residents from the West Bronx, prompted white flight and destabilization of the neighborhoods around the Grand Concourse. Others complained that Co-op City was too boring and had poor transit connections to the rest of the city. Still others complained that the development’s high-rise towers and slabs were soulless and antithetical to any sense of authentic community. But from the outset, the biggest complaints about Co-op City were financial. 

And though it’s sometimes celebrated today as an unalloyed success, Co-op City had massive cost overruns. Its initial $235 million mortgage had ballooned to $390 million by the time that Co-op City’s construction concluded in 1972. While corruption and a poor understanding of the engineering required to build a massive housing development on top of a landfill on top of a swamp played an important role in Co-op City’s ballooning construction costs, much of the problem was due to rising interest rates and inflation during Co-op City’s construction period. Co-op City was not the only Mitchell-Lama project in financial trouble in the early 1970s. In fact, Mitchell-Lama’s financing woes played a not-insignificant role in New York City’s near bankruptcy in 1975. To pay off Co-op City’s massive debt, the state demanded a series of carrying charge increases in 1970, 1971, 1973 and 1974. Co-op City residents had initially been promised carrying charges of $22/room. By 1975, the state was calling for yet another increase that would have resulted in carrying charges of $53.50/room, or an increase of 250% over this initial figure. 

Co-op City residents balked at the seemingly endless series of carrying charge increases, and organized the largest rent strike in American history. Approximately 80% of Co-op City’s residents withheld their carrying charges for thirteen months, from June 1975 to July 1976. UHF’s leadership immediately resigned from the board that governed Co-op City, and management was taken over by New York State. The sheer size of Co-op City meant that the rent strike nearly bankrupted the New York State Housing Finance Agency. Ultimately, the rent strike ended with a deal that gave control of the development to its residents. The deal that ended Co-op City’s rent strike prompted dire warnings about the consequences of bowing to the demands of rent strikers. One editorial in the Wall Street Journal warned that the deal to end the rent strike could serve as “the coup de grace to New York City’s plans for recovery.” Financial concerns led the Mitchell-Lama program to stop construction in 1974. New York entered a period of financial recovery after the depths of the mid-1970s crisis, leading once again to a dearth of affordable apartments. The austerity that followed from New York City’s near bankruptcy of the mid-1970s, combined with fears of resident activism inspired by Co-op City, meant that neither New York City nor New York State would again embark on an ambitious affordable housing program such as Mitchell-Lama. The construction of affordable housing slowed to a trickle. 

The end of the rent strike did not solve all of Co-op City’s problems. Its new resident managers would still struggle to contain costs and mismanagement, and corruption remained an endemic issue. However, it would be the first slow step to normalization. Today, Co-op City is an increasingly rare haven of affordability in an increasingly unaffordable city. Co-op City residents pay rates that other New Yorkers could only envy. A resident of the largest 6.5 room apartment pays a maximum of $1,875 per month, an amount which includes utilities. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Co-op City’s congressional representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez heralded Co-op City as “a testament to…financial and social sustainability.” 

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see why Co-op City is no longer seen as a lodestone but as a symbol of bygone ambition and achievement. But due to its tumultuous early history, it offers lessons for any new mayor interested in constructing affordable housing during their tenure.  

Cuomo does not specify any numerical targets in his housing plan, but if Mamdani were to realize his plan of 200,000 affordable apartments in 10 years, that would mean an annual construction of 20,000 apartments per year, or a level of approximately 125% of Co-op City’s entire size each year. This would be a monumental task on almost every level and a welcome return to the ambitious public works projects of pre-austerity era New York; but Mamdani and his supporters should be clear-eyed about the fact that fulfilling something even close to this plan would require ongoing funding and commitment on the part of the government. 

The Mitchell-Lama program rested on the presumption that while it was important to fund construction, affordable housing would not require ongoing subsidies. This was likely a pipe dream regardless of circumstances, but proved to be especially misguided in the 1970s when Co-op City and most other Mitchell-Lama developments faced financial challenges. Keeping housing affordable requires ongoing investment. In Co-op City’s case, that investment has always been begrudging, pushed first by the rent strike itself and later by the fear of renewed resident activism. Since its initial construction, the state has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars on maintenance and the repair of construction defects. Despite this investment, Co-op City’s mortgage is now even larger than it was at the conclusion of construction. There is no quick or conclusive solution that will fix the affordable housing crisis once and for all, and recognizing the need for ongoing investment — especially if and when there are inflationary pressures — is vital. 

The story of Co-op City shows that constructing affordable housing at scale and keeping it affordable for the long term is both difficult and possible. This is a story that Cuomo, at least, should know well. After all, it was his father, Mario Cuomo, who negotiated the deal with Co-op City’s resident leader to end the rent strike nearly a half-century ago.