Just City: Growing Up on the Upper West Side When Housing Was a Human Right

by Jennifer Baum

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Artfully blending the personal with the political alongside a deeply engaging narrative voice, this is the story of how life is improved socially, culturally, economically and spiritually by residing in a subsidized, integrated cooperative. It’s a poignant examination of the housing crisis, and it’s as accessible as it is compelling.

A captivating memoir of New York’s Historic Upper West Side at a time when community and unity defined the neighborhood

Step into the world of Just City and embark on a poignant journey to a time when ideals were woven into the very fabric of a neighborhood. Jennifer Baum’s evocative storytelling brings to life an era in New York City’s history where affordable housing wasn’t just a concept, but a reality that defined the essence of community.

Within the pages of this captivating memoir, you’ll find yourself transported to the historic Upper West Side—a place where diversity flourished and a shared belief in the importance of a home for all bound the residents together. Through personal anecdotes and heartfelt accounts, Baum illuminates her own upbringing alongside the stories of those who shared her neighbor­hood. She describes how as an adult, she came to appreciate that being raised in an integrated collective was a unique and exceptional experience. As she moves around the world for school, a husband, and work, she tells the story of her search for a home that would embody the values and community she grew up with.

Just City goes beyond the physicality of housing; it unveils the emotional tapestry of housing for an entire generation. As you immerse yourself in the stories of rallies, grassroots efforts, and the sense of kinship that defined this era, you’ll witness a generation that stood united for justice and fairness. The book captures not just moments, but the ethos of a time when the city was a testament to the power of community.

Celebrate the legacy of an era when a city was truly a home, when principles of social respon­sibility thrived. Just City isn’t just a memoir—it’s an invitation to revive the spirit of unity and create a city where everyone belongs. So open its pages and let its words rekindle the flame of a just and inclusive city once more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781531506216
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	414,453
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Baum is a filmmaker turned writer. Her writing has been published in New York Daily News, Guernica, Jacobin, The Village Voice, The Phoenix Jewish News, Canadian Jewish Outlook, The Jewish Observer Los Angeles, MUTHA, Hip Mama, and Newfound, which nominated her essay “A Different Set of Rules” for a Pushcart award. Baum teaches composition at Montclair State Universityand occasionally works as a freelance editor, most recently for a series of reports for the World Bank on poverty in Ghana.

Table of Contents

Preface | ix

Introduction | 1

1. Moving into the Just City | 3

2. Community, Collectivism, and Tolerance | 15

3. On the Street | 26

4. Breathing Life into the Sanitized Columbus Avenue Strip | 35

5. Class Consciousness | 46

6. Grappling with Death | 65

7. Salvation in Socialism | 84

8. Two Utopias | 105

9. Gentrification Turns into Revanchism | 118

10. Could I Ever Return to Utopia? | 126

11. No Next Time | 147

12. Relinquishing the Apartment | 163

13. The Crucial Necessity of Affordable Housing | 180

14. Battle over Privatization | 194

Acknowledgments | 215

Notes | 217

Index | 229

Photographs follow page 132

Editorial Reviews

05/13/2024

In this poignant debut, filmmaker Baum tracks 80 years of U.S. government subsidized housing policy and draws on memories of her own childhood, when her family benefited from a government-built affordable home. In 1967, Baum’s parents purchased an apartment in a limited-equity, racially integrated, cooperative building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They joined a diverse community of owners that together managed the building, where everyday experiences were defined by a sense of “collective action,” and where daily existence was characterized by diverse friendships, political talk, and spontaneous encounters. After Baum moved away from the city in the late 1970s, New Yorkers’ relationship to housing began to shift. As restrictions on the resale of coop apartments expired, many cooperatives allowed their buildings to become privately owned; meanwhile public housing for the poor was starved of funds and open-market rents soared. The result, according to Baum, was that regular people no longer were custodians of their own housing, and the ultra-rich took over the city, replacing local color and collective decision-making with “chain stores and banks.” Baum excels at capturing the allure of interdependent, close-knit communities, and affectingly joins her lament over their decline in New York City with her grief over the deaths of her parents. Informative and nostalgic, this makes for a bittersweet look at a time when America’s cities were affordable. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Just City provides a deep and thoroughly contextualized understanding of subsidized housing for the middle- and lower-class in postwar Manhattan: the goals that brought politicians to create it; its actual development on the streets of New York; its rise and fall in popularity; and the broader state of mind that made such widespread urban policies possible. The book is a fascinating combination of memoir and urban studies.—Jennifer A. Low, professor emerita at Florida Atlantic Universityand author of Dramatic Spaces: Scenography and Spectatorial Perceptions

Mitchell Lama housing was always more than low-cost apartments in tower blocks. For many sponsors and residents, cooperation and mutual aid were just as important as shelter. Jennifer Baum captures that broader spirit in this readable autobiographical account, integrating personal memoir and housing policy analysis. For a rising generation excited about housing cooperation, Baum's vivid description of the promise and challenge of earlier efforts is instructive.—Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Hunter College, City University of New York

In Just City Jenny Baum has achieved something memorable: she has excavated her own specifically etched memories of growing up in the subsidized housing of Manhattan's Upper West Side and allowed them to open up into a broad and deeply researched exploration of this remarkable urban experiment. This perspicacious book speaks as much to New York of the 1970s as it does to modern America as it invites all of us city dwellers to look back to our points of origin and ahead to the kinds of cities we might long for—and work to bring about—in the future.—Michael Frank, author of One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World

Jennifer Baum’s Just City conjures up a vivid not-so-distant past where working- and middle-class families of all races shared a landscape of collective vision, common good values and abundant social capital before the forces of privatization and gentrification consumed most of the Upper West Side. Baum’s family, friends and neighbors live again in this historical memoir, showcasing marvelous and surprising ways Urban Renewal and public policy worked as a tool for building an urban middle class in the second half of the 20th Century, with Mitchell-Lama housing anchoring a diverse neighborhood where both grit and glamour flourished.—Gregory Jost, Writer & Speaker, Inside the Redlines

Since the 1960s, the RNA House Mitchell Lama cooperative has provided affordable housing on the Upper West Side to a diverse mix of New Yorkers. Jennifer Baum's Just City provides a thoughtful reflection on how this development was a vital part of New York and a vital haven for New Yorkers over more than a half century. Baum is a passionate advocate for the importance of affordable housing, and her book tells an empathetic and readable story of her family, her community and her city.—Annemarie Sammartino, author of Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York

Baum excels at capturing the allure of interdependent, close-knit communities. . . Informative and nostalgic, this makes for a bittersweet look at a time when America’s cities were affordable.—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher