A Socialist Solution to New York’s Housing Crisis?

[Photo: Tess Mayer]

By Samantha Grasso

Michael Hollingsworth, a candidate for New York City Council, believes it’s time to break up the power of big real estate and return it to tenants.

Since 2016, Hollingsworth has organized people in his own building in Crown Heights and surrounding neighborhoods, mobilizing against what he calls oppressive landlords and racist land use decisions that prioritize luxury real estate over affordable housing. In June, at the height of the pandemic, the coalition he works with won rent freezes for 2 million tenants.

Hollingsworth is running as a socialist to represent District 35 and is hoping to replace outgoing council member Laurie Cumbo, who Hollingsworth says helped advance real estate interests during her time in office. I spoke with Hollingsworth earlier this month about his campaign.

A conflict, the police and a run for city council

In April 2019, Hollingsworth and some neighbors sued to stop construction on a plot of land in Crown Heights that had been rezoned for luxury housing. They won a temporary restraining order. When one of the developers broke the restraining order in January, Hollingsworth and his neighbors asked workers to stop construction.

When they didn’t listen, Hollingsworth made several calls to the police. The police showed up at the site, but refused to acknowledge the restraining order. Only when neighbors formed a human chain between the site and the construction equipment did police step in – but it was to remove the organizers. Five people were arrested that day, though Hollingsworth wasn’t among them.

When Hollingsworth thought about all of the things that led up to this event, he kept coming back to the origins of the rezoning and the fact that city council member Laurie Cumbo had supported it. She had “never really engaged with the community about what we wanted,” Hollingsworth told me. A month later, he decided to run for the seat.

A smart city plan will give power back to the people

In New York City, about 57,000 people are homeless, and 20,000 children and working families sleep in shelters each night, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. Hollingsworth said the government has abandoned public housing construction and maintenance. Instead, elected officials have supported rezoning areas to allow private developers to gentrify historically redlined and BIPOC communities.

The government has been “pushing marginalized folks aside in order to build for wealthy folks,” Hollingsworth said, which he called immoral. If elected, Hollingsworth will call for a comprehensive citywide development plan to shut out real estate and give power to the neighborhoods to decide what gets built. He also wants to abolish city agencies that he says are in the pocket of real estate, specifically the unelected Economic Development Corporation.

“Too many of our neighbors feel as if they never get a say in what's built in our neighborhoods. No one ever comes to us and wants to know what we need. It's always, ‘What does the developer need? What do they want?’ And that's what we do,” he told me.

A broader definition of gentrification

Hollingsworth is a lifelong Brooklyn resident and is all too familiar with the common definition of gentrification: “20-year-old white people with Seattle money” who move into Black and brown neighborhoods and displace longtime residents. This definition, he argues, allows local politicians to hide their culpability in the displacement of their constituents.

“They'll point the finger at those young white folks, and they act as though they had no role and no power over the past 20 years,” he said. “So for me, it's going to be about articulating to folks that gentrification is a set of decisions that were made. Folks decided to sit by and weaken the laws that were in place to protect communities of color … We’re putting blame in the wrong place, but it’s been a good diversion.”

It would be more productive, he says, to organize tenant associations while electing proven allies to local government.

Overcoming apathy is the biggest challenge

Hollingsworth said that running as a socialist hasn’t really affected the way that people in Crown Heights see his campaign. He has more trouble with people who he describes as “rightfully jaded” by politics, who wonder, “What is this person trying to sell me now?”

Hollingsworth says he encounters this a lot. “I'm always honest with people. I'm not afraid to tell them that I was where they are at one point in time … I understand what it's like to be let down by folks,” he said. “[I just try] to explain to them why I'm different … I think a lot of it comes down to you being honest with people, because people can detect the BS.”

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