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Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York
In Freedomland , Annemarie H. Sammartino tells Co-op City's story from the perspectives of those who built it and of the ordinary people who made their homes in this monument to imperfect liberal ideals of economic and social justice. Located on the grounds of the former Freedomland amusement park on the northeastern edge of the Bronx, Co-op City's 35 towers and 236 townhouses have been home to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and is an icon visible to all traveling on the east coast corridor. In 1965, Co-op City was planned as the largest middle-class housing development in the United States. It was intended as a solution to the problem of affordable housing in America's largest city. While Co-op City first appeared to be a huge success story for integrated, middle-class housing, tensions would lead its residents to organize the largest rent strike in American history. In 1975, a coalition of shareholders took on New York State and, against all odds, secured resident control. Much to the dismay of many denizens of the complex, even this achievement did not halt either rising costs or white flight. Nevertheless, after the challenges of the 1970s and 1980s, the cooperative achieved a hard-won stability as the twentieth century came to a close. Freedomland chronicles the tumultuous first quarter century of Co-op City's existence. Sammartino's narrative connects planning, economic, and political history and the history of race in America. The result is a new perspective on twentieth-century New York City.
314 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 25, 2023
By a long chalk the better of the two recent books on Co-Op City and the United Housing Foundation, this is a nuanced, detailed history of this mammoth democratic socialist/petit-bourgeois Ville Radieuse in the Bronx, and an exemplary history of how (a kind of) social housing has endured in NYC through decades of austerity and neoliberalism. Ends rather optimistically, too.
December 7, 2024
My comments here are more about what I learned from Freedomland rather than a conventional review. Regarding the books literary and historical merits, I think it is well-researched and well-written. The author's personal experience is disclosed in the opening section and I think it adds value to the book. She admits that as a teenager, she found Co-op City to be boring, especially compared to the more fashionable neighborhoods of her schoolmates. In retrospect, she admits, that's a positive reflection on the community than a criticism.
Co-op City had its critics even before it was completed. Architects and city planners disliked the concentration of high rise towers ; they considered them to be cold and alienating, very different from the lower density, more human scale neighborhoods like Greenwich Village. Others opposed it because it was facilitating "white flight" from the west Bronx. Despite its critics, it was warmly received by its intended constituency: middle to lower middle class New Yorkers, predominately white but not exclusively so. It's racial composition at the time it opened was close to the City's average.
Within a few years, the criticism came from within. As the name implies, Co-op City was a housing cooperative that in theory is owned collectively by the residents. It was financed by the NY State Housing Finance Agency through the Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program and the mortgage was to be repaid by the "carrying charges" from residents. (To an outsider, these carrying charges were similar to rents or monthly mortgage payments.)
Because of inflation, rising interest rates and shoddy construction, which was discovered after the opening, the carrying charges began to escalate. For most residents, Co-op City's affordability began to wane, though there was little evidence that the rising carrying charges were causing people to move out of the community. This suggests that though Co-op City was becoming less affordable, it was still more affordable than comparable housing in NYC. Regardless, residents directed their anger at UHF's inability to address this problem and initiated a rent strike during the mid-1970s that lasted for 13 months.
Eventually the strike was settled with the residents assuming control of the community. However, even though residents were now managing the community, the rising carrying charges persisted. While the UHF may have understated the costs of construction to potential residents and may have been guilty of some corruption that led to shoddy construction that necessitated costly repairs later on, the UHF was not responsible for the rising inflation and interest rates that burdened Co-op City during the 1970s. Consequently, replacing UHF with resident control could not address the real reasons for rising carrying charges. Unrest continued through the 1970s but did not result in another rent strike.
In effect, what the rent strike was about and what the residents were advocating was for the HFA to reduce the community's debt burden. At this time, both the NYC and NYS were dealing with their own fiscal problems and neither was inclined to forgive Co-op City's debt, especially given its more middle-income residents. (Co-op City always had minimum income requirements for residency that were out of reach to lower income applicants.) NYS eventually some financial assistance to fix construction defects, which provided some relief but did not reduce carrying charges. By the mid-1980s, Co-op City was able to reach financial stability and it regained its nickname as "The Biggest Housing Bargain in Town."
While carrying charges problem never disappeared, the book shift aways from financial issues to the changing racial composition of Co-op City. At its inception, approximately 80% of the residents were white and 20% were Black or Latino. Over the subsequent decades, the community became a predominately non-white community, as white residents died or moved out and were replaced by African-American and Latino residents. Much of the middle portion of the book discusses this shift.
In writing this book, the author spoke to many residents along with researching statistics on crime, test scores at the Co-op City schools and other indicators of quality of life. She reports that some white residents felt that the community was becoming less safe and more like the city neighborhoods they previously lived in. While reported crime did increase during this period, as it did in most NYC neighborhoods, Co-op City' s crime rates compared favorably to most neighborhoods in The Bronx. It was definitely the case, that the social and cultural events there reflected the changing racial composition
Co-op City had its critics even before it was completed. Architects and city planners disliked the concentration of high rise towers ; they considered them to be cold and alienating, very different from the lower density, more human scale neighborhoods like Greenwich Village. Others opposed it because it was facilitating "white flight" from the west Bronx. Despite its critics, it was warmly received by its intended constituency: middle to lower middle class New Yorkers, predominately white but not exclusively so. It's racial composition at the time it opened was close to the City's average.
Within a few years, the criticism came from within. As the name implies, Co-op City was a housing cooperative that in theory is owned collectively by the residents. It was financed by the NY State Housing Finance Agency through the Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program and the mortgage was to be repaid by the "carrying charges" from residents. (To an outsider, these carrying charges were similar to rents or monthly mortgage payments.)
Because of inflation, rising interest rates and shoddy construction, which was discovered after the opening, the carrying charges began to escalate. For most residents, Co-op City's affordability began to wane, though there was little evidence that the rising carrying charges were causing people to move out of the community. This suggests that though Co-op City was becoming less affordable, it was still more affordable than comparable housing in NYC. Regardless, residents directed their anger at UHF's inability to address this problem and initiated a rent strike during the mid-1970s that lasted for 13 months.
Eventually the strike was settled with the residents assuming control of the community. However, even though residents were now managing the community, the rising carrying charges persisted. While the UHF may have understated the costs of construction to potential residents and may have been guilty of some corruption that led to shoddy construction that necessitated costly repairs later on, the UHF was not responsible for the rising inflation and interest rates that burdened Co-op City during the 1970s. Consequently, replacing UHF with resident control could not address the real reasons for rising carrying charges. Unrest continued through the 1970s but did not result in another rent strike.
In effect, what the rent strike was about and what the residents were advocating was for the HFA to reduce the community's debt burden. At this time, both the NYC and NYS were dealing with their own fiscal problems and neither was inclined to forgive Co-op City's debt, especially given its more middle-income residents. (Co-op City always had minimum income requirements for residency that were out of reach to lower income applicants.) NYS eventually some financial assistance to fix construction defects, which provided some relief but did not reduce carrying charges. By the mid-1980s, Co-op City was able to reach financial stability and it regained its nickname as "The Biggest Housing Bargain in Town."
While carrying charges problem never disappeared, the book shift aways from financial issues to the changing racial composition of Co-op City. At its inception, approximately 80% of the residents were white and 20% were Black or Latino. Over the subsequent decades, the community became a predominately non-white community, as white residents died or moved out and were replaced by African-American and Latino residents. Much of the middle portion of the book discusses this shift.
In writing this book, the author spoke to many residents along with researching statistics on crime, test scores at the Co-op City schools and other indicators of quality of life. She reports that some white residents felt that the community was becoming less safe and more like the city neighborhoods they previously lived in. While reported crime did increase during this period, as it did in most NYC neighborhoods, Co-op City' s crime rates compared favorably to most neighborhoods in The Bronx. It was definitely the case, that the social and cultural events there reflected the changing racial composition
February 11, 2025
The construction and the historical evolution of Co-op City is not a typical city building, place making story. In a time when the housing crisis was in its climax, organized labor, housing associations get together with city officials and state politicians to provide affordable housing for middle-income families. The cooperative model applied on this massive scale, is not just an economic undertaking but also a social one, given the prevailing race and class dynamics in the city. The book is easy to read, has all the factual data and a comparative analysis on the differences between a liberal, neoliberal and social democratic perspectives on housing, but more importantly, as the author was also a resident of Co-op City, it reflects upon the prejudices against the project and the social and cultural underpinnings of life in Co-op City. I read this for academic purposes but it gave me more than that.
December 29, 2022
Like most people interested in housing co-operatives, I’ve heard of Co-op City, the biggest housing co-operative in the world. I’ve seen it in documentaries and even visited it on a trip to New York.
Sammartino’s book on financing issues and local politics probably should be dry, but instead it is an engrossing drama of setbacks, struggles and change, a fascinating insight into collective human endeavours in a landscape we don’t often get to view. Co-op City has unusual political weight. It is almost an entire electorate which means in the struggle between capital and people, the balance is shifted.
For people interested in understanding more about the potential, and pitfalls, of collective struggle to meet human need in a contemporary capitalist economy, this book is fascinating. I found it hard to put down.
Sammartino’s book on financing issues and local politics probably should be dry, but instead it is an engrossing drama of setbacks, struggles and change, a fascinating insight into collective human endeavours in a landscape we don’t often get to view. Co-op City has unusual political weight. It is almost an entire electorate which means in the struggle between capital and people, the balance is shifted.
For people interested in understanding more about the potential, and pitfalls, of collective struggle to meet human need in a contemporary capitalist economy, this book is fascinating. I found it hard to put down.
April 20, 2022
I found "Freedomland" by Annemarie H Sammartino a fascinating read. I expect there will be a lot of disagreement with that statement. Why? Because I think you have to be a New Yorker, or a former New Yorker to really appreciate this. At least I think so.
Freedomland was a short-lived amusement park in The Bronx (NYC). The book is about what happened to the land on which the park stood. It's a book about NYC (specifically the Bronx) and New York State politics and finances. It's a book about people of the community wanting better housing and services. It's also a story of hope and disappointment and promises made & broken.
The vacant property of the old amusement park became after several years of struggle became the largest affordable housing project in the United States with 35 highrises and over 200 townhouses called Co-Op City. Then came the in-fighting of who controlled the development, and resulted in the largest rent strike in American history.
The ins and outs of the building and control of the development and how it fit into the times of the 1970s through the present day I found fascinating. There are a number of dry sections when discussing the fighting of finances, but it's also about people who simply wanted a nice, comfortable, and affordable place to live in NYC.
I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read a prepub edition of this book.
Freedomland was a short-lived amusement park in The Bronx (NYC). The book is about what happened to the land on which the park stood. It's a book about NYC (specifically the Bronx) and New York State politics and finances. It's a book about people of the community wanting better housing and services. It's also a story of hope and disappointment and promises made & broken.
The vacant property of the old amusement park became after several years of struggle became the largest affordable housing project in the United States with 35 highrises and over 200 townhouses called Co-Op City. Then came the in-fighting of who controlled the development, and resulted in the largest rent strike in American history.
The ins and outs of the building and control of the development and how it fit into the times of the 1970s through the present day I found fascinating. There are a number of dry sections when discussing the fighting of finances, but it's also about people who simply wanted a nice, comfortable, and affordable place to live in NYC.
I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read a prepub edition of this book.
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April 18, 2023Lovely thoughtful book. I found it a bit dry, but definitely a fun ride for people who are interested in urban planning and income-related tensions in NYC.
September 9, 2025
A bit slow at points but very good
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews