![\"10268678_10100132884380914_7833992947549205286_n\"](\"http:\/\/sds.parsons.edu\/designurbanecologies\/files\/2014\/04\/10268678_10100132884380914_7833992947549205286_n.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFRANCES GOLDIN
\nCooper Square Committee Founder
\nVALERIO ORSELLI
\nDirector of the CS Mutual Housing Association
\nHARRIET PUTTERMAN
\nChairwoman of the CS CLT BOD
\nLYNN LEWIS
\nDirector of Picture the Homeless<\/p>\n
As a part of the School of Design Strategies Urban Colloquium II, we welcome four historic members of the Cooper Square Committee to share key lessons from the organization\u2019s five decade history and explain why community ownership of land is necessary to sustaining affordable housing in NYC. A conversation hosted by professor William Morrish.<\/p>\n
———<\/p>\n
The story of the creation of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust (CLT) is one of the great ongoing American epics of community resistance to displacement. As poet and long-term tenant of Cooper Square Chris Brandt describes, \u201cit\u2019s a story of resistance to real estate in New York City\u2019s Lower East Side. Real estate works by moving people around.\u201d As such, in 1959, when local activists and tenants formed the Cooper Square Committee (CSC) to stop Robert Moses\u2019s destructive Urban Renewal plans, their slogan declared: \u2018Cooper Square, Here to Stay!\u2019 In so doing, they have asserted a right to the city, community, and home. Over the next five decades, residents of this historic immigrant neighborhood, stood firm against the fragmentary tides of urban renewal, planned shrinkage, and gentrification. Since 1961 when CSC released the Alternative Plan for Cooper Square, NYC\u2019s first community based plan, the organization has consistently matched radical organizing with constructive community planning. In recent decades the Cooper Square Committee won their decade long battle bringing 21 formerly city-owned buildings and almost 400 units under community control within NYC\u2019s only active Community Land Trust. Land is decomodified through its removal from the speculative property market and is stewarded by the community as permanently affordable housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE HISTORY OF THE COOPER SQUARE COMMITTEE + WHY COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS ARE NECESSARY TO SUSTAIN AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN NYC Kellen Auditorium – New School – 66 5th Ave, nyc FRANCES GOLDIN Cooper Square Committee Founder VALERIO ORSELLI Director of the CS Mutual Housing Association HARRIET PUTTERMAN Chairwoman of the CS CLT BOD LYNN LEWIS…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-past-events"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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