Selling the Commons
The Systematic Erasure of Section 9 Housing
In a deal cloaked in the language of “revitalization” and “affordability,” the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has once again put public land on the auction block. This time, it’s the Manhattanville Houses in West Harlem—a public housing campus home to thousands of New Yorkers who have, for decades, weathered systemic neglect, disinvestment, and the hollow promises of redevelopment.
In October 2022, NYCHA sold seven parcels and 280,000 square feet of air rights from the Manhattanville complex to Grid Group, a private developer, for a total of $28 million. This includes $6 million for the land and $22 million for the air rights. The buyer plans to erect a 26-story tower at 1440 Amsterdam Avenue—393 units of mostly market-rate housing, with a modest 120 rent-regulated units and a few community-focused amenities sprinkled in to dress the project in the camouflage of “inclusivity.”
This is not just another real estate transaction. It is a symptom of a deeper pathology: the systematic dismantling of Section 9 housing in New York City under the guise of "preservation" and "public-private partnership."
The PACT Faustian Bargain
The Manhattanville campus is also undergoing a transformation through NYCHA’s PACT (Permanent Affordability Commitment Together) program. Pitched as a way to funnel desperately needed repairs into aging NYCHA stock, PACT shifts management to private entities and converts properties to Project-Based Section 8 under HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program.
On paper, it maintains affordability. In practice, it converts collective public ownership into fragmented, privately managed assets—housing where tenants have fewer rights, less oversight, and where the promise of permanence is only as good as the next fiscal downturn or policy shift. The $445 million in financing raised for Manhattanville's rehabilitation sounds impressive, but we must ask: at what cost, and to whom?
This is not preservation. This is privatization. It is a slow, methodical displacement, carried out not by bulldozers but by contracts, conversions, and complicit bureaucracies.
Air Rights as Austerity Tool
The sale of air rights to Grid Group is often presented as a clever, non-intrusive way to generate revenue. But this logic is steeped in austerity. Why should NYCHA—created to provide public housing—have to cannibalize itself to fund basic maintenance? This is not financial ingenuity. It is fiscal surrender. The $28 million generated by the sale is being reinvested into the Manhattanville Houses, yes—but this is money extracted by selling off pieces of the commons, not through adequate, sustained federal or municipal funding.
Once that land is gone, it’s gone. Once those air rights are monetized, they cannot be reclaimed. What remains is a fractured landscape, where luxury towers loom over subsidized tenements, and the public realm shrinks under the weight of private profit.
A Manufactured Scarcity
The political class often insists that we must make hard choices—that there simply isn’t enough money to maintain Section 9 public housing, so we must “partner” with the private sector. But this scarcity is manufactured. The same city that grants enormous subsidies to luxury developments, rezones entire neighborhoods for speculative capital, and bails out banks, tells public housing tenants that their only path to decent living conditions is to surrender control.
This logic must be resisted. Section 9 housing is not a failed model—it is a deliberately underfunded one. And the ongoing conversion of public housing to private control through RAD and PACT is not neutral policy. It is a political choice that prioritizes asset extraction over housing as a human right.
The Illusion of Inclusion
To mitigate tenant backlash, the 1440 Amsterdam project includes 120 rent-regulated units, some of which will be “prioritized” for Manhattanville residents. But this is not real inclusion—it is optics. It’s a fraction of affordability embedded within a structure whose existence is fundamentally hostile to the social and economic ecosystem of public housing.
Grocery stores, community facilities, parking garages—these are all useful, perhaps even necessary. But when they are packaged within developments that exacerbate inequality and accelerate gentrification, they function less as amenities and more as pacifiers.
We Must Name the Crisis
What’s happening at Manhattanville is part of a broader, national trend: the systematic erosion of public housing through privatization masquerading as policy reform. The slow death of Section 9 is not inevitable. It is engineered—through disinvestment, through administrative neglect, and through the incremental surrender of public land to private developers.
As architects, urban designers, and housing advocates, we must stop treating these transformations as technical problems to be managed. They are moral and political failures that demand resistance. We must name this for what it is: a dismantling of public infrastructure under the guise of public benefit.
Section 9 is not perfect. But its value lies not only in its affordability—it lies in its principle: housing as a right, not a revenue stream. Once we lose that, we’re not just selling land or air rights—we’re selling the very idea of a just city.
Citations:
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Crain's New York Business. "NYCHA sells West Harlem site to private luxury developers for new tower." October 27, 2022. Link
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NYCHA Journal. "$445 Million in Comprehensive Renovations Coming to Manhattanville Houses." December 13, 2024. Link
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NYC.gov. "Mayor Adams, HUD, NYCHA Announce PACT Program on Track to Improve Living Conditions for 76,000 NYCHA Residents, Deliver $7.2 Billion in Building Upgrades." January 5, 2023. Link
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HarlemView. "Manhattanville Houses Tenants Oppose Imminent PACT Conversion." October 2022. Link
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NYCHA Journal. "Manhattanville Development Rights Transferred to Adjacent Site." October 2022. Link
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NYCHA Journal. "Manhattanville Development Rights Transferred to Adjacent Site." October 2022. [Link](https://nychajournal.nyc/nycha-closes-on-transfer-of-manhattanville-development-rights-to-adjacent
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