THE HOUSING ISSUE 

PROJECT a participatory action research project on the housing crisis and cooperative housing models in Sunset Park.

COLLABORATORS Urban Homesteading Assistance Board; United Families of Sunset Park

LOCATION Brooklyn, NY

ADVISOR Gabriela Rendon | Design and Urban Ecologies, Parsons School of Design

INTRODUCTION

In 2017, I was part of a participatory action research project on cooperative housing models in Sunset Park, led by Parsons School of Design and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB). Over a period four months, four teams of graduate students conducted intensive qualitative, quantitative, and participatory research with community members in Sunset Park to learn about affordable housing concerns and existing cooperative housing models. The outcome of this research was a multi-lingual educational gazette distributed throughout the community, featuring insights from the research process as well as four design strategies to combat displacement in Sunset Park. To increase accessibility, we also presented our research to community members at several workshops and gatherings in community spaces and gardens around Sunset Park. 

DESIGN INTERVENTION: PATHWAYS TO HOMEOWNERSHIP

For our design proposal, my team worked in collaboration with founding members of the Beyond Care childcare worker coop to strengthen Sunset Park’s cooperative ecosystem, nurturing new synergies between housing and worker cooperatives. Beyond Care is a longstanding immigrant-led cooperative made up of domestic workers, many of them residents of Sunset Park. Deeply grounded in the idea that those most impacted by displacement are the true experts on the topic, my team’s project was guided by the knowledge and experiences of the women of Beyond Care. We coupled their embodied knowledge of running a worker cooperative with a spatial and financial analysis to identify potential opportunities for the development of an affordable, community-led housing initiative.

Our design intervention gained enough traction and interest from both community and faculty members that it continues being developed beyond our semester-long project. The women we originally designed the proposal with went on to form United Families for Sunset Park, a grassroots group that is mobilizing to secure funding to start a new low-income housing cooperative in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. This project is still active and being supported by academics, housing experts, and public officials committed to equitable neighborhood development.