A quick note on Co-Op City...

Once again, Glenn Beck is all over the headlines because he called the Bronx's Co-Op City a remake of the failed Soviet system... and the hundred thousand people that live in Co-Op City are freaking out.

Beck made the comment on his TV show, and I don't watch that... but it seems that he compared the tax-break incentive that New York gave to developers in the 1960's to the centralized planning that brought about the high-rise developments that so typify Soviet-style architecture in what is now Russia and the former Soviet states.

Again, Beck can say what he wants... but his facts are a little fuzzy. Co-Op City was a purely (meaning 100%) New York State effort to build quality, long-term housing at lower-than-market prices. Most of these apartment and town homes are owned (not rented), and nearly all were sold at less than 60% of typical NYC real estate prices all through the 60s and 70s. This was accomplished by the STATE of NY giving tax breaks and low-cost permits to developers who agreed to keep prices below the market average, and through a state-sponsored assistance program that lowered the required down payment on the mortgages needed to buy the apartments.

New York may be going broke... but this "Great Society" effort was NOT the brain-child of the Federal system. This was a STATE program, and it kind of appears to have worked. Co-Op City has a lower-than-average crime rate, high rises are FULL of owners, not subsidized tenants, and the value of these apartments and town homes has stayed high (since the 60s anyway), giving some value to the owners in the later years.

Isn't that what he typically calls for... more State control of such developmental efforts, rather than Federal? This wasn't LBJ throwing millions of dollars of Federal funds into subsidized housing, like he did in the deep south or Chicago's Cabrini Green... this was the State of New York doing that, and while it might not have worked 100% (or hell, it might not have worked at ALL) as they thought it would... it IS the State's right to spend its money as it sees fit, isn't it?

Just a thought... wanted to comment on it, that's all.