| This dissertation examines how labor unions influenced housing policies and programs in postwar New York City. It focuses on the period between 1945 and 1975, when labor wielded legislative, electoral, and financial power both nationally and locally, and helped to shape, finance, and construct the landscape of New York City. It explores how and why unions engaged directly in housing development and shaped legislation and programs, and describes the contributions that they made, as well as those that they chose not to make. Housing was a vehicle through which labor unions could express their broader political, social, and economic philosophies, which varied among unions and included self-determination, cooperation, maintaining membership, community-building, exclusion, integration, and power. Unions took advantage of a unique set of resources that were available to finance housing, as well as the exceptional willingness of New York City and State to create a climate that facilitated such development.; This study looks at labor's approach to housing on the national level, through the national AFL-CIO, at the level of New York State housing programs, and within New York City. It presents studies of the United Housing Foundation, a union-backed developer, and of the housing projects developed by Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Local 1199 of the Hospital Workers Union. It thus explores the growth of labor's participation in New York City's real estate market, as well as its subsequent decline. It examines the reasons for this decline, which include the withdrawal of federal and state funding for affordable housing, and unions' powerlessness to maneuver within a dramatically changed financial, social, and political climate. It considers unions' relationships to contemporary housing programs and policies, which include potential investment of union pension funds and unions' engagement in organizing around housing issues through labor-community partnerships. It concludes with an evaluation of whether the labor and housing movements can work collaboratively to infuse both with the momentum and substance that are necessary for them to become effective social movements. |
