Priced Out

"On an average morning in Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town housing development, birds chirp as early risers dash off to work, elderly residents enjoy a peaceful morning stroll, and flocks of parents usher their children to school. It seems an unlikely location for conflict and strife, yet this eighteen-block area, initailly planned as middle-class affordable housing, is the site of an ongoing struggle between long-term, rent-regulated residents and newer, market-rate tenants. Priced Out takes readers into this heated battle as a transitioning neighborhood wrestles with contemporary capitalist strategies and the struggle to preserve renters' rights. Attempting to replace longtime residents with younger, more affluent tenants, Stuyvesant Town's owners have disrupted native residents' sense of place, community, and perceived quality of life. Through interviews with residents, the authors offer an intimate view into the lives of different groups of tenants involved in this struggle for prime real estate in New York, from students experiencing the city for the first time, to baby boomers hanging on to the vestiges of middle-class urban life, to older residents who have lived in Stuyvestant Town since it opened in 1947. A complelling account of changing urban landscapes and the struggle for security, Priced Out offers a comprehensive perspective of a community that, to some, is becoming unrecognizable as it is upgraded and altered"--Page [4] of cover.