11/1: In Defense of Housing: A book Launch and Political Discussion

November 1, 2016

6:30-8 pm

Room 6112

*this space seats 60 people. Guests will be allowed entry on a first come, first served basis.

Introduced by Gregory Baggett, presentations by authors Peter Marcuse and David Madden, comments by David Harvey and Hilary Botein. Moderated by Sam Stein.

Housing is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In their new book In Defense of Housing, Peter Marcuse and David Madden investigate the nature of the contemporary housing crisis and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing problem has deep political, social, and economic roots. It will not be solved by minor policy shifts; a more radical approach is needed. This event will use the book as a starting point for a discussion about the causes of the housing crisis and critical responses to it.

Speakers:

Gregory Baggett founded the New York Council for Housing Development Fund Companies (NYC HDFC) and is a housing consultant, specializing in limited equity cooperatives and low-income housing. He received his doctoral training in history at Columbia University and teaches at colleges in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Presently, he is completing a book entitled Heuristic Experiments in Low-Income Housing: The Housing Development Fund Company, 1966-2013. While conducting research for his book, he created the most extensive database relating HDFC cooperative and rental properties in New York City. His organization’s webpage is www.nychdfc.org[nychdfc.org].

Hilary Botein is Associate Professor at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Her research explores the factors that influence urban development, with special attention to the social politics of policies and programs underlying affordable housing and community development. She also is interested in how housing programs can meet the needs of vulnerable populations – and in how they fail. Prior to her academic career, she worked for eighteen years as an attorney and policy analyst on affordable housing and economic justice issues, primarily in New York City.

David Harvey teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is the author of many books, including Social Justice and the City, The Condition of Postmodernity, The Limits to Capital, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Spaces of Global Capitalism, and A Companion to Marx’s Capital. His website is davidharvey.org[davidharvey.org]

Samuel Stein is a PhD student in geography at the CUNY graduate center. His work has been published in Metropolitics, Jacobin Magazine, New Politics and many other journals and magazines, and his research on Chinatown was included in the book Zoned Out! Race, Displacement and City Planning in New York City (Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse, eds.).

David Madden is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. He has published academic articles in some of the leading urban studies journals, and is Editor at the journal CITY. He has also published reviews and commentary in outlets including the LSE Review of Books, Washington Post and the Guardian.

Peter Marcuse is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has written extensively in English as well as German, in the US, the UK and various other European countries. His work has also appeared in newspaper and magazines such as the Nation, New York Newsday, Monthly Review, Shelterforce and many others.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY, the New York Council for Housing Development Fund Companies (NYC HDFC), and Verso . It is free and open to the public.