Two short summaries

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Colonial Projects Public Housing and the Management of Puerto Ricans in

New York City, 1945– 1970

Vanessa Rosa

In a memo from the New York City Mayor’s Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs (MCPRA), dated September 30, 1951, the subject line reads: “Enclosed a plan detailed to try to solve the housing problem of this City in general and particularly the Puerto Ricans.” While the memo refers to housing shortages, affordability, and inadequate conditions during a period of urban renewal, its framing and the phrasing— “particularly the Puerto Ricans”— falls in line with the rhetoric that shaped much of the commentary about the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to New York City and the “problems” this migration posed for an already burdened urban infrastructure. The development of public housing in New York City from the 1940s to the 1960s coincided with the displacement and migration of Puerto Ricans to the continental United States. As a result of Operation Bootstrap, a rapid industrialization program led by the US and Puerto Rican governments, more than 800,000 Puerto Ricans (around 85 percent of all Puerto Rican migrants) settled in New York City during this twenty- year period.

Initially framed as “excellent” public housing tenants by city officials (Mayor’s Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs 1953), Puerto Ricans, along with African Americans, were quickly blamed for their enduring poverty and the perceived “decline” and failure of public housing projects. Oscar Lewis, the architect of the culture of poverty thesis (1966), gave scientific weight to beliefs that slum housing conditions were created by Puerto Rican families who lacked organization, struc- ture, and a work ethic.1 “With time,” historian Sonia Song- Ha Lee writes, “public housing projects became physical embodiments of black and Puerto Rican pov- erty” (2014, 47). With the dramatic increase in the New York City Puerto Rican population, alongside an extreme housing shortage, I argue that public housing became a key site for the spatial articulation of Puerto Rican’s racial position within US society. The colonial status of the island as an unincorporated territory and Puerto Ricans’ status as second- class citizens in need of refinement, manage- ment, and surveillance was articulated and reproduced through public housing as part of a circular logic that bolstered colonial projects. The colonial subjectiv- ity of Puerto Ricans justified truncated housing options and the monitoring and

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surveilling of Puerto Ricans in public housing simultaneously contributed to ideas around the racial inferiority of Puerto Ricans.

I build on scholarship that both explores the second- class citizenship of Puerto Ricans (Ramos- Zayas 2003; Rúa 2012; Staudenmaier 2017) as well as “inclusionary forms of exclusion” (Carbado 2005, 638; Espiritu 2003) rooted in Puerto Rico’s status as an unincorporated territory of the United States. While critiques of urban renewal often focus on displacement (Bender 2010; Thompson Fullilove and Wallace 2011; Wyly et al. 2010), this chapter explores the housing of Puerto Ricans in public housing projects.2 I examine demographic data, housing statistics from the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), and archival city documents to trace key moments in the history of Puerto Ricans in public housing in New York City from 1945 to 1970.

Since the United States established colonial rule in Puerto Rico in 1898, there has been much debate and confusion about the status of the island and the posi- tionality of Puerto Ricans vis- à- vis US citizenship and Americanness. According to legal scholars Brook Thomas, Christina Duffy Burnett, and Burke Marshall (2001), debates addressed “. . . the meaning of the phrase ‘United States’; the distinction between the status of territories and the status of their inhabitants; the differences between civil and political rights; the distinctions between ‘citi- zens,’ ‘nationals,’ and ‘aliens’; and more” (5). Deemed an unincorporated terri- tory under the Foraker Act (1900), Puerto Rico was incorporated into empire by establishing that Puerto Rico was a colonial possession with no path to auton- omy or statehood. Without statehood, no path to constitutional US citizenship exists (Duffy Burnett and Marshall 2001).3 As an unincorporated territory, the island and its residents would be indefinitely governed by US constitutional law. However, nonincorporation means that constitutional law is not evenly applied in Puerto Rico.4

Drawing on the work of critical race and ethnic studies scholars, I explore the structural and historical specificity of inclusion through practices of exclu- sion (Carbado 2005; Espiritu 2003). Critical race and legal studies scholar Devon Carbado (2005) explains, “[R]acism is a naturalization process through which people become Americans” and “[N]aturalization is simultaneously a process of exclusion and inclusion” (637). Carbado highlights how racism is foundational to Americanness— for Black people to be included in Americanness is to experi- ence exclusion via racism. Carbado’s analysis provides a structural and historical framing of everyday racial encounters (that draw on racial knowledge and racial “intelligence”) and centers how the building of US empire has required racial naturalization. In reference to the Insular Cases, Carbado highlights the case of Puerto Rico “as neither foreign nor part of the United States” (2005, 643) and adds, “Blackness, in this sense, might be thought of as an insular identity; like Puerto Rico, blackness is foreign in a domestic sense” (2005, 639). Central to his argument are the legal mechanisms that most scholars of citizenship emphasize

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but also the social processes at play that complicate how we might think of citi- zenship and naturalization in the context of empire.

Critical ethnic studies scholar Yen Le Espiritu (2003) theorizes the relation- ship between inclusion and exclusion through her concept of differential inclu- sion. She defines differential inclusion as “the process whereby a group of people is deemed integral to the nation’s economy, culture, identity, and power— but integral only or precisely because of their designated subordinate standing” (46). She intentionally does not use the term “exclusion” to signal how ideas around “voluntary” immigration/migration obscure the violence in US nation- building through “conquest, slavery, annexation, and the importation of foreign labor” (2003, 47).

Carbado’s and Espiritu’s respective frameworks inform my research by centering historical context and nuancing the binary logics of inclusion and exclusion. They shed light on the links between “inclusionary” exclusion by exploring, into what, exactly, subjects are being included and how. Such insights implore us to trouble ongoing colonial relations and nation- building projects. In the case of Puerto Ricans in public housing in New York City, Puerto Ricans were incorporated as a mechanism of the racial and spatial regulation required to maintain colonial projects and reinforced the island’s status as an unincorpo- rated territory.

Building on Carbado and Espiritu, I explore efforts to incorporate Puerto Ricans in public housing in New York City as an inclusionary form of exclusion as a starting point to examine broader dynamics of colonialism, unequal power relations, and the articulation of racial logics through urban governance struc- tures. The housing of Puerto Ricans offers a glimpse into how Puerto Ricans were differentially incorporated in public housing in New York City as an inclusionary form of exclusion, maintaining a precarious colonial and second- class status and folding Puerto Ricans into the US racial hierarchy. Public housing projects were a site to further entrench the US colonial project and relied on deficit frameworks and ideas around a Puerto Rican culture of poverty to justify the management of Puerto Ricans in public housing.

Puerto Ricans and Public Housing in New York City

Images of poverty and discourses of “the ghetto” often dominate contemporary depictions of public housing projects in the United States. Such images and discourses become easily detached from the history of post– World War II pub- lic housing that was constructed not only to address a housing shortage and dilapidated housing but also to provide temporary and transitional housing for veterans returning from the war.5 During this period, slum clearance initiatives facilitated the demolition of areas deemed blighted or in a state of decay by plan- ners and city officials. Through urban renewal policy, public infrastructure, such

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as highways and housing projects, replaced urban “slums.” The highly influential urban planner Robert Moses did not believe in the rehabilitation of deteriorated urban areas. Instead, he favored bulldozing these areas as the only way to address extreme poverty and the ailments of slum districts (Berman 1982). Moses chaired the New York City Slum Clearance Committee, along with many other city ini- tiatives. African American and Latina/o neighborhoods were the targets of his many projects (Sánchez 2007, 102). Moses did not hold back his racist sentiments about these communities and was well known for believing that Puerto Ricans were inferior to whites (Caro 1975). Journalist and Moses biographer Robert Caro referenced an incident where Moses complained about “the scum float- ing up from Puerto Rico” (Caro 1975, 1168).6 Moses wrote to Mayor O’Dwyer in December 1949, asking why Puerto Ricans were not subject to more “rigid searches and health examinations” before being permitted to travel to New York (Moses 1949). His beliefs about Puerto Ricans as unsanitary, disease ridden, and racially inferior “scum” shaped his policies and approaches to urban planning in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. It was no secret that he favored plan- ning that would prevent low- income people and people of color from accessing beaches and parks in and around New York City (Schindler 2015). Moses’s rac- ist preoccupations and approach to planning, however, did not fully align with other city bureaucrats. With a vacancy rate of 1.1 percent, others were trying to address a housing shortage, an affordable housing crisis, and a new labor force of Puerto Ricans in need of places to live.

In a 1949 letter the commissioner of the New York City Department of Wel- fare, Raymond Hilliard, urged the mayor of New York City, William O’Dwyer, to develop an advisory committee with members from key city departments, including the New York City Housing Authority, to address “the Puerto Rican problem” (September 6, 1949). This framing of the Puerto Rican problem would become common phrasing for city officials. In a subsequent letter establishing the advisory committee and inviting the Chairman of NYCHA to be one of the original members, Mayor O’Dwyer wrote (1949): “One of the outstanding, and at the same time least understood, problems of New York City undoubtedly con- cerns our ‘Puerto Rican’ community.” The Mayor’s invitation to the chairman of the housing authority to join the advisory committee signals how housing was regarded as a primary way to address “the Puerto Rican problem” in New York City. Established in 1949, the Mayor’s Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs included a subcommittee on housing.

In 1949, 3.5 percent of public housing residents were Puerto Rican. By 1955, “Puerto Rican families occupied 8,571 of New York City’s 80,761 public housing units” (Glazer and McEntire 1960, 148)— almost 10 percent of residents. By 1960, 18 percent of public housing tenants were Puerto Rican, while the overall Puerto Rican population in New York City was 8 percent. MCPRA viewed access to pub- lic housing as a primary way to address “the Puerto Rican problem” as indicated

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in a January 12, 1950 letter from an MCPRA housing subcommittee member to the Chairman of NYCHA: “The general feeling was that because most Puerto Ricans are of low income, the main source of aid was in our public housing proj- ects.” The Committee proceeded to encourage the City and NYCHA to review its method of selecting tenants in order to increase access to public housing for Puerto Ricans. With the advocacy of the MCPRA, many Puerto Rican families would become public housing residents.7 In contrast to 24 percent of white fami- lies and 18 percent of Black families, 46 percent of Puerto Rican families displaced by slum clearance were able to move into public housing buildings (Sánchez 2007, 103).8 The rehousing of Puerto Ricans at higher rates is tied to efforts to address the “Puerto Rican problem” and incorporate Puerto Ricans into society via public housing. In 1953, the housing authority described Puerto Ricans as “excellent” tenants and expressed its commitment to providing “modern” housing for Puerto Ricans in New York (Mayor's Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs 1953). However, these framings of Puerto Ricans as excellent tenants and city support for provid- ing modern housing must be understood in relation to Puerto Rican migration and colonialism on the island. Puerto Ricans were incorporated into public hous- ing through urban governance structures that were based on Puerto Rican migra- tion framed as a problem to be managed, the second- class citizenship of Puerto Ricans, and the unincorporated status of the island.

In the same year that NYCHA described Puerto Rican’s as excellent tenants, new strict tenant eligibility requirements were implemented. A list of twenty- one factors was used to determine the “non- desirability” of tenants, including clauses about the exclusion of welfare recipients, single parenthood, out- of- wedlock children, and a lack of furniture (Dagen Bloom 2008, 176).9 Puerto Rican incor- poration in public housing both relied on and furthered racist tropes about domesticity, inherent poverty, and heteronormative nuclear family structure that were mobilized on the island and justified US occupation (Briggs 2002; Suarez- Findlay 2000). While eligibility requirements were applicable to all tenants, they emerged in a period of increased migration of Puerto Ricans to New York and white flight. These institutional changes advanced a “social work” and social sci- entific approach to policies. Social scientific frameworks like the culture of pov- erty logic specifically attempted to address and explain the inferiority of Puerto Ricans.10 Culture of poverty discourses were used to justify the exclusion of Puerto Ricans based on presumptions about inherent cultural inferiority, where culture came to stand in for race (Briggs 2000, 165). I expand upon critiques of the culture of poverty thesis that emphasize behavioral and cultural traits (as opposed to the systemic causes of poverty and colonialism), ideas about sexuality, and vic- tim blaming (Briggs 2000; Gustafson 2015; Valentine 1969) to consider the ways in which this exclusion and racialization are produced through spatial regulation via incorporation in public housing. Anthropologist Arlene Dávila identified con- crete practices by NYCHA, like interviews to determine “suitability” and hygiene

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inspection of units, were used to surveil tenants (2004, 31). These practices were one way to rationalize the monitoring and management of Puerto Ricans. Social scientific approaches to establishing housing requirements and policies, tenant eligibility requirements, and the framing of Puerto Ricans as a “problem” were key ways in which Puerto Ricans racial position was spatially articulated.

Despite these changes to tenancy requirements that emphasized surveil- lance and monitoring, a committee made up of local settlement and community organizations published “The Puerto Rican Migration: A Report” (1955) urging NYCHA to put in place more surveillance and management mechanisms to address the perceived problems of migration. The report echoed deficit ideolo- gies that framed Puerto Ricans as a problem and the need for management and regulation. Written by the members of the Settlement Committee, the report outlined recommendations for local authorities in New York to manage the “seri- ousness of the migration problem” (1955, 1). Because the Settlement Committee considered housing central to assimilation and “integration,” the report recom- mended the following directly to New York City Housing Authority: “a) More adequate screening of families to determine their readiness for apartment living. b) Adequate orientation and education as preparation for incoming tenants. c) Strict supervision of families by management to prevent overcrowding, unclean- liness, unsanitary disposal of garbage and poor relationships with other tenants” (1955, 7). The Settlement Committee’s report was a call for NYCHA to better manage the perceived problem of Puerto Rican migration through increased “supervision” and “education.” These recommendations came just two years after NYCHA’s strict tenancy requirements and tenant surveillance— NYCHA already had similar regulations in place. The report encouraged the incorpora- tion of Puerto Rican tenants in public housing, but only with strict surveillance mechanisms that reinforced Puerto Ricans positionality as colonial subjects who required education and monitoring.

The Settlement Committee used language comparable to Department of Wel- fare Commissioner Hilliard’s report on “The Puerto Rican problem” and referred to the “seriousness of the migration problem.” Like Commissioner Hilliard and the MCPRA, the Settlement Committee’s recommendations highlighted the sig- nificance of public housing in the integration of Puerto Ricans while further emphasizing the need to manage Puerto Ricans. Whereas slum clearance advo- cate Robert Moses wanted more health screenings for Puerto Ricans before they migrated to New York, the Settlement Committee recommended better screen- ing for apartment living. They recommended “adequate orientation and educa- tion for incoming tenants” (emphasis added, 1955, 7). They also recommended the “strict supervision of families by management to prevent overcrowding, uncleanliness, unsanitary disposal of garbage.” The references to “uncleanliness, unsanitary disposal of garbage,” as Kay Anderson (1991) and Jill Nelson (2002) note in the case of Vancouver’s Chinatown and Halifax’s Africville, respectively,

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target and mark communities of color as not only dirty, but also in need of regu- lations, and represent how space makes race and vice versa. This deficit fram- ing once again positioned Puerto Ricans as a problem and ignored the previous policies already put in place by NYCHA. Overcrowding in apartments, much the same as overpopulation on the island, was seen as a defining characteristic of the Puerto Rican problem that legitimized colonial regulation and management of Puerto Rico and its people. Framing Puerto Ricans as a problem alongside changes to tenancy policies that increased surveillance exemplifies how incor- poration in public housing, as second- class citizens from an unincorporated ter- ritory, was a way to spatially articulate and manage Puerto Ricans positionality as colonial subjects.

In 1955, six years after its inception, and two years after the peak of Puerto Rican migration, Mayor Robert Wagner dismantled the MCPRA. In a letter to the Chairman of NYCHA dated January 6, 1956, Wagner wrote,

Now that the statutory Commission on Intergroup Relations has come into being and has been organized, it has been necessary for me to review whether there should continue to exist a separate committee dealing with only one aspect of minority problems in New York. I have reached the conclusion that continuation of the Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs after the constitution of the new Com- mission might lead to confusion and duplication of functions. Furthermore, it seems to me that the Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs has to a large extent car- ried out most effectively its basic purpose of indoctrinating the City Department on Puerto Rican affairs and of providing for coordination between official and private efforts in this field.

Suggesting that the coexistence of the MCPRA and Commission on Intergroup Relations (COIR) might cause confusion or duplication of function, Mayor Wagner cast Puerto Ricans as part of a broader “minority problem.” The mayor’s decision in favor of one committee— even though plans for COIR had yet to be determined— signaled the racial positioning of Puerto Ricans alongside African Americans. This positioning was codified via the structures of urban governance. The managing of intergroup relations and “minority problems” was a discur- sive and material way to place Puerto Ricans within the US racial logic. Even as administrative structures shifted, public housing remained a central way to manage the ongoing “Puerto Rican problem.”

Conclusion

According to a section of a MCPRA interim report titled “Where the Puerto Ricans Must Live,” the Housing Authority reported that it “arranged many pro- grams to help integrate them into the communities in which they live” (MCPRA

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1953). Integration “into the communities in which they live” masks the inclusion- ary exclusion and differential incorporation of Puerto Ricans in public housing as the language of integration legitimized surveillance and exclusion (MCPRA 1953). The language of integration does not necessitate addressing structural inequality or racism. Feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes, “Being included can thus be to experience an increasingly proximity to those norms that historically have been exclusive . . . We are not then simply included by an act of inclusion. In being ‘folded in,’ another story unfolds” (Ahmed 2012, 164). The incorporation of Puerto Ricans in public housing projects— the folding in that Ahmed refers to— is tied to the story and lived reality of colonial subjectivity. The Foraker Act incorporated Puerto Rico into empire by declaring the island unincorporated territory, ensuring Puerto Ricans would remain second- class colonial subjects. The colonial project in Puerto Rico was reinforced through policies and efforts in public housing projects in New York City that promoted the need to manage the Puerto Rican problem through “integration,” surveillance, and regulation.

In a November 17, 1959 letter to the Mayor’s office, the Chairman of NYCHA, William Reid, identified multiple ways that the Housing Authority maintained a relationship with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He wrote about a recent meeting in Puerto Rico between the NYCHA’s director of Intergroup Relations and the mayor of San Juan, to emphasize the ways that NYCHA made efforts to share information about public housing with officials in Puerto Rico, further sig- naling the centrality of public housing in addressing the “Puerto Rican problem.” In the letter, he described NYCHA’s efforts to coordinate with the Commonwealth to ensure that those migrating to New York City were familiar with NYCHA “pol- icy, rules, and regulations.” That the mayor’s office would be concerned with the local housing authority’s relationship with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the Housing Authority would go to the lengths of having an independent meeting with the mayor of San Juan in Puerto Rico, marks that it was a point of pride that Puerto Ricans were educated about NYCHA rules and regulations before even migrating. This suggests the many ways in which public housing was central to addressing the perceived “Puerto Rican problem.” NYCHA efforts on the island to educate families migrating to the mainland about policy, rules, and regulations exemplifies how Puerto Ricans were included through exclusion in public housing— in this case, they were presumed to be deviant and in need of regulation before they even left the island or were tenants in NYCHA buildings.

While public housing was a stepping- stone for whites, it was a space of man- agement and surveillance for Puerto Ricans. Positive framings that promoted their tenancy quickly faded as they became scapegoats for the design failure of public housing that has haunted urban planning into the twenty- first century. Incorporation in public housing for Puerto Ricans was tied to rhetoric that was a material reminder of the second- class citizenship of Puerto Ricans and justified efforts to manage hygiene and cleanliness, increase surveillance, and regulate the

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norms of living in public housing in New York City. Public housing became a tool in the articulation of Puerto Rican racial inferiority by incorporating Puerto Ricans into public housing alongside exclusionary policies that prevented people of color from having access to equitable housing opportunities.

Notes 1 Oscar Lewis’s culture of poverty thesis (1959 and 1966) asserted that Puerto Ricans and

Mexicans, had, over time, adapted to poverty, which led to the creation of a culture of poverty. 2 This includes those who lived in neighborhoods impacted by slum clearance along with

those who were newly arrived and in need of housing. 3 The status of former Spanish colonies acquired by the United States was debated in a series

of early twentieth- century US Supreme Court cases known as the Insular Cases. It is from these cases that the Supreme Court deemed Puerto Rico as “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense” (Duffy Burnett and Marshall 2001, 1).

4 Puerto Ricans became legislative US citizens in 1917 with the passing of the Jones– Shafroth Act. Drawing on political scientist Charles R. Venator- Santiago’s work, historian Michael Staudenmair (2017) highlights how “the way Puerto Ricans gained citizenship status over this period only further highlighted— rather than remedied— the precarious colonial status of Puerto Ricans: with no constitutional provision granting citizenship, the right for those born on the island could be revoked simply by an act of congress” (685). Unlike territories in the Southwest that would become states and therefore offered a pathway to citizenship, the limited citizenship of Puerto Rican’s intertwines with the island’s status. The second- class citizenship of Puerto Ricans is an example of an inclusionary form of exclusion because it is citizenship without full rights, representational government, and just a legislative process away from repeal.

Sam Erman’s research on Gonzales v. Williams (1904), examines the question of citizenship in the Insular Cases. The Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans could not be considered aliens, but they did not conclude that they were citizens. Thus, similar to Downes v. Bidwell (1901), the most prominent of the Insular Cases, Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans were neither fully included nor excluded, leaving their status in limbo and the United States always in a position to make decisions about their colonial possession.

5 Broader critiques of housing policy during this period have explored discriminatory housing policies such as redlining, a practice that prevented certain areas in cities from accessing bank loans and home insurance (Bender 2010, Hayden 2003; Massey and Denton 1991; Schwartz 2015), which left few housing options for African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other marginalized groups. These same discriminatory policies, which subsidized private homeownership, benefitted whites and were essential to the growth of the suburbs (Lipsitz 1995). The majority of African American and Puerto Rican (veterans, poor, and working class) were left behind in under- resourced urban neighborhoods with public housing as their subsidized housing option. But not all projects were the same, as policies and quotas maintained segregation in some NYCHA projects, particularly between African Americans and whites (Rothstein 2012). As resident demographics shifted from white to African American and Puerto Rican, public housing projects were stigmatized and racialized as vertical ghettos.

6 In a later interview, Caro reported that he was referring to Moses saying, “They expect me to build playgrounds for that scum floating up from Puerto Rico” (Caro, in Robbins 2017).

7 The Federal Housing Act of 1949, which provided funding for urban renewal and caused displacement in New York City, did have a clause that required temporary relocation and

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“permanent provision” of affordable dwellings for those displaced (Housing Act of 1949). However, such policies were not often enforced, hence mass displacement (particularly of African Americans) (Hyra 2012).

8 Sánchez suggests that the MCPRA had significant political power and was able to leverage that power to provide access to public housing for Puerto Ricans (2007, 104).

9 The rules around welfare recipients were changed in 1968 after immense pressure from welfare activists.

10 The culture of poverty thesis informed the infamous “Moynihan Report” (Moynihan 1965). Similar logic can be traced to the pathologizing of Latina/o/x populations in Samuel Huntington’s (2009) widely cited work.

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