Contesting the Financialization of Urban Space: Community Organizations and the Struggle to Preserve Affordable Rental Housing in New York City

As cities have become both site and object of capital accumulation in a neoliberal political economy, the challenges to community practice aimed at creating, preserving, and improving affordable housing and neighborhoods have grown. Financial markets and actors are increasingly central to the workin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of urban affairs 2015-05, Vol.37 (2), p.144-165
Main Author:	Fields, Desiree
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Affordable housing Capital Capitalism Cities Community organization Community organizations Community structure Economics Equality Equity Fairness Finance Financing Housing Housing Market Inequality Investments Loans Local communities Markets Mortgages Neighborhoods Neoliberalism New York City, New York New York, New York Organizations Political economy Political finance Private equity Real estate Real estate business Rental housing Rentals Securities markets Subprime lending Tactics Urban Areas Urban planning
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Summary:	As cities have become both site and object of capital accumulation in a neoliberal political economy, the challenges to community practice aimed at creating, preserving, and improving affordable housing and neighborhoods have grown. Financial markets and actors are increasingly central to the workings of capitalism, transforming the meaning and significance of mortgage capital in local communities and redrawing the relationship between housing and urban inequality. This article addresses the integration of housing and financial markets through the case of "predatory equity," a wave of aggressive private equity investment in New York City's affordable rental sector during the mid-2000s real estate boom. I consider the potential for community organizations to develop innovative, effective, and progressive practices to contest the impact of predatory equity on affordable housing. Highlighting how organizations employed discursive and empirical tactics as well as tactics that reworked the sites, spaces, and structures of finance, this research speaks to the political possibility of contemporary community practice.
ISSN:	0735-2166 1467-9906