More Than Skin Deep

A 13-story apartment building in the Linden Houses complex with overcladding of light gray, dark gray, and terracotta pattern.
Linden Houses, Brooklyn. All photographs by Kris Graves

Walkups and towers of public housing developments across New York City are receiving a new look: their familiar brown brick facades covered by insulated panels in shades of gray with colored accents. Recladding is a material solution to the leaks and loose bricks plaguing buildings where maintenance and repairs have long been deferred. It has also become a symbol of the larger policy changes that have brought the renovations underway. Under a program called PACT (Permanent Affordability Compact Together), the New York City Housing Authority has leased 146 developments so far to private development and management teams who can access public funds the public housing authority cannot. To many observers, it’s the only way to address the monumental physical needs of New York’s working class city-within-a-city, population 361,000 plus. But some of the conversions’ long-term consequences are uncertain. While they represent long-sought improvements and repairs, for some residents, the facelifts are signs of ill portent. Does a new look erase the culture and memory of generations of residents who have made a home in public housing? After decades of disinvestment, will PACT bring the public promise of healthy and safe homes for people of modest means closer to its end? Lizzie MacWillie helps make sense of the transformation unfolding before our eyes.

The Lower Manhattan skyline is an icon of glass and steel, global wealth and power. But just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, the profile turns to mountains of brick. The towers of the Smith, LaGuardia, and Vladeck Houses — home to a combined total of over 11,000 residents — follow the East River up to the Williamsburg Bridge. Similar brick-faced public housing complexes continue up the waterfront to 14th Street, then resume along the Harlem River uptown. Brick has been used to construct housing across the spectrums of time and wealth; it features on New York City’s modest working-class row houses and Beaux-Arts mansions alike. But brick has long been closely associated with public housing, constructed and funded by the US federal government to house residents of modest means. Most of the developments the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) built — from the aptly named First Houses, which opened in 1935, through the Morrisania Air Rights housing complex, completed in 1981 — are brick. But after almost 100 years, NYCHA buildings across the city are getting a new look with overcladding: a process that applies a continuous insulation and cladding system atop an existing facade, obscuring the familiar brown masonry.

Going into the distance, five 14-story brick apartment buildings of the Edenwald Houses, which are in the process of receiving facade repairs.
Edenwald Houses, Bronx

The facelifts come with the rollout of a new program to address decades of funding shortages and overdue maintenance at NYCHA. While the overcladding process is one of esthetic and functional change, it’s also bound with a complex history of cultural identity, racialized stigmatization, and the failures of federal, state, and local housing policy to maintain a stock of public housing in good repair. The needs are monumental and growing: In 2023, NYCHA estimated a 20-year capital investment need of $78.3 billion, up from $45.2 billion in 2017. Residents frequently experience broken elevators, exposure to mold and lead paint, and other dangerous conditions. NYCHA’s Executive Vice President for Real Estate Development, Jonathan Gouveia, remarked in December 2024: “Given our building stock’s severe capital needs, it is likely that all of our developments will need investment in the building envelope to better insulate the building from moisture and for energy-efficiency requirements.” How much investment depends on the age of the building, its original materials and design, and the quality of construction. The cost to fix the aging brick facades, which pose dangers for residents and passersby, has been estimated to be over $3 billion.

NYCHA and other public housing authorities (PHAs) across the country rely on congressional appropriations — along with state and local funds, and the rent tenants pay (which is capped at 30 percent of their income) — to operate and maintain their properties. Section 9 of the United States Housing Act of 1937 authorized the federal Public Housing Capital Fund to provide local public housing authorities with money for the repair and construction of public housing. But those funds have long been insufficient, while the need for repair grows.

Exterior view of a brick apartment building, part of Edenwald Houses with the remains of some construction work on the ground in the mud.
Edenwald Houses, Bronx

In 2011, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) calculated that public housing across the country required $26 billion in capital repairs. In the same report, it estimated that after that backlog was addressed, the annual need for new repairs would be $3.4 billion. That year, Congress appropriated $2.5 billion for the Public Housing Capital Fund. (In the last two decades appropriations have fluctuated unpredictably from $3 billion in 2001 to $3.4 billion in 2024, not adjusted for inflation.) To address the colossal need for repairs and an inability to plan for long-term upkeep, the Obama administration created a new program — Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD — to allow for new forms of investment in the existing stock of public housing. RAD allows the conversion of “traditional,” publicly owned and managed public housing to private management, making a development eligible for federal assistance in the form of Project-Based Vouchers or Project-Based Rental Assistance. Since 1974, federally funded Section 8 Tenant-Based Vouchers have assisted individual tenants in paying rent to private landlords. Under RAD, vouchers are attached to specific housing units, with the subsidies going directly to the landlords. (While the funding for voucher programs is also dependent on congressional appropriations, funding for Section 8 has increased in recent years: HUD’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget saw an increase of $1.4 billion in discretionary spending for Section 8 programs from FY24.) Under RAD, a local PHA can enter into a partnership with a private entity, which takes responsibility for the development and financing of a housing project. That for-profit or nonprofit developer can access funding mechanisms that a PHA cannot, like low-income housing tax credits, state and local grants, and debt financing to fund rehabilitation and repairs.

An eight-story apartment building of Penn-Wortman after the brick façade was rehabilitated.
Penn-Wortman, Brooklyn

Implemented as Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT), RAD came to New York City in 2015. As of January 2025, 146 NYCHA developments are in pre-development, under construction, or have completed construction through the program. NYCHA prioritizes properties it deems most need of repair and most challenging in terms of operations for PACT conversion. Under the PACT program, NYCHA maintains ownership of a development’s land and buildings, but grants a 99-year lease to a team that takes over the repair, maintenance, and management of the campus. Members of the project team — which may include multiple developers, an architect, a landscape architect, and other consultants — are contracted for design, financing, and construction. A management partner (sometimes one of the development entities on the team) is contracted to manage the facilities and property after construction is finished. The project team works with NYCHA to select a social service partner to provide on-site career services, recreational activities, or educational programming. These changes have many implications for residents’ day-to-day lives and hazy consequences for the availability of public housing at low rents in the long term. But some of the most visible and immediate changes are the physical ones: the renovations that are required to take place once a development is converted to the PACT program.

HUD’s requirements for PHAs participating in RAD do not cover design. According to a senior official at HUD, the agency is trying to encourage housing authorities to find the resources to upgrade their properties. But since HUD does not give them any money to do it, the agency is careful in what requirements it imposes. In New York City, the type and extent of PACT renovations are specific to each project and site, but “must, at minimum, address the 20-year capital needs of the properties,” as stipulated by NYCHA. “There are certain things that you have to do. NYCHA has made it a requirement that a lot of the hazardous materials that we find on site be completely abated. So lead, asbestos — these are must-dos and there’s no arguing about that,” said Karen Hu, Executive Vice President and Head of Development at Camber Development, which has led the redevelopment of several PACT projects. Outside of those “must-dos,” determining the scope of repairs for each site takes place through an iterative pre-design community engagement process that can take up to a year.

The exterior of an eight-story apartment building in the Linden Houses complex with overcladding. A ladder leans up against the entryway overhang, on top of which sits a construction worker.
Linden Houses, Brooklyn

One step in that process is determining whether overcladding will be included in the project scope. In 2022, NYCHA established a set of design guidelines based on best practices for multifamily construction and lessons learned over the first six years of the PACT program. These guidelines assume that all building envelopes will receive repairs as needed. According to Ben Leer, a New York City-based building science consultant who specializes in passive house design, part of the reason that so many NYCHA buildings need brick facade repair is their detailing. “A lot of older buildings have these articulated facades where they’ve got a lot of decorative pieces that were all meant to kick water away from the facade. The big cornices, the decorative lintels on the windows, even any statues you’d see. Gargoyles used to do that for old churches. When we moved to a more modern esthetic, a lot of that ornamentation disappeared. It’s flat brick. The first problem with the buildings is that the design didn’t shed the water.” Water gets absorbed into the bricks and into the mortar, expanding and contracting with changes in temperature, causing the bricks to come apart. A lack of maintenance exacerbates this wear and tear. Necessary repairs include replacing failing or fallen bricks, tuck-pointing (repairing the mortar between bricks to help keep water out), and air-sealing facade penetrations (making the facade more air-tight for resident comfort and energy efficiency). The PACT design guidelines also encourage each development team to consider ways to increase the insulation on all exterior opaque walls to create a building envelope that more efficiently keeps heat in during the winter, and out during the summer.

A diptych featuring two detail images of the facades of a brick apartment building in Elliott-Chelsea Houses.
Elliott-Chelsea Houses, Manhattan

There are two ways to add insulation to a brick building. You can add it to the interior: first removing the existing plaster or drywall, installing new insulation, and then reinstalling a base wall material. But many NYCHA apartments were built to the minimum room size allowed by law, so additional insulation would take away precious inches of living space. The other route is through overcladding: prefabricated panels — assemblies of an exterior finish, continuous insulation, and a drainage medium — are glued or fastened to the exterior of the existing wall. The design of the exterior, including the material selection, color palette, and the pattern in which the panels are applied, is part of the design process undertaken by the architect and consultants.

The exterior of a six-story apartment building in the Baychester Houses complex with gray overcladding, and a second with the same design in the background.
Baychester Houses, Bronx

The architecture firm Curtis + Ginsberg is currently working on its seventh PACT project. Its first, Baychester Houses in the Bronx, was completed in 2021 and praised by architecture critics for the spotless campus and dignified architecture. The designers covered the brick facades of eleven buildings with exterior insulation and finish systems (EIFS) panels in white, gray, and terracotta. For the development team, the benefits of overcladding are both functional and esthetic. “It changes the look and the feel. That has a very positive impact on the residents and the people who actually live in the buildings and their willingness to participate in the community, and desire to call it home. There’s a very strong community in all of the complexes that we have worked on already, which is great,” said Rick Gropper, a principal of Camber Development, one of the developers on the Baychester project team. “What we saw at Baychester was the residents were very receptive to a shift in the visual appeal of their home, and are really proud of the way that it looks. That has a positive effect on everybody who lives there, but also on the landlord because people, we found, tend to take better care of their home and of the property.”

A person walking by the Linden Houses complex, we see three eight-story overclad buildings on the left in light gray, dark gray, and terracotta.
Linden Houses, Brooklyn

Undoubtedly, after generations of neglect, an infusion of investment may change the way residents feel about a place. But residents have been asking for basic repairs for decades. Ramona Ferreyra is a resident of Mitchel Houses and a founder of Save Section 9, a tenant-led advocacy group dedicated to organizing and educating public housing residents. She argues that plenty of NYCHA residents already take great pride in their homes: “For 90 percent of the people in public housing, we love our homes. They are the center of our families’ history. Our apartments are passed down through generations and hold all these memories.” While the renovations may contribute to a sense of pride for some, they also put at risk other aspects of public housing in which people already find pride and meaning.

Public housing in the US began with broad public support. But many early developments were segregated and designated as “whites only.” In the 1950s and ’60s, spurred by federal mortgage subsidies and investments in highways, white families left American cities for the suburbs, and public housing became increasingly Black and Latinx. James Rodriguez, who grew up in Rutgers Houses and is a professor of Urban Studies at CUNY, locates the negative associations people have with the appearance of public housing in this history. “In some circles, the inherent assumption that this design is bad comes from a longer, more stigmatized history that really started when public housing became primarily a home for Black and brown folks. And then we start to see this turn towards austerity, that brought not only repair and maintenance questions, but also issues of danger and dysfunction.” In the 1970s, the federal government began to steadily disinvest from public housing, which led to a decline in services, maintenance, and repairs. Ferreyra sees the physical changes happening now through PACT as part of this legacy of racism and stigmatization. “It’s racist because we know that public housing has been associated with primarily Black Americans. And when you make the architectural choice to change it, you’re basically sitting there and saying that the homes that have provided affordability and stability to now three generations of Black New Yorkers are visually undesirable, and they’re only visually undesirable because it’s associated with Black and poor New Yorkers.” According to its most recent demographic report, 43.47 percent of families living in NYCHA properties reported their race as Black, and 45.14 percent as Hispanic.

“I do think that the changes on the exterior play a big role on the cultural identity that people have made up within public housing,” says Jayah Arnett. She grew up in the George Washington Carver Houses and created the digital archive Our Projects Runway to humanize the experience of people who grew up in public housing. “So the cultural identity is wiped away. What I have been calling it is ‘gentrification gray’ because that’s what the exteriors are now. Every building in New York City is being painted this gray color.” Arnett says people may be excited to finally have “nice” things, but residents don’t always understand what the final outcomes will be. “It doesn’t come from actually wanting this thing to change. I think it comes from them desperately wanting to have what other people have. They want nice apartments, they want silver fridges and stoves. They want nicer homes.” Arnett pointed out that residents might be less clear on the impacts of the relocation process during renovation or demolition, or the risks of an increase in evictions after a PACT conversion. “I think once you put someone in a position where they know they’re gonna get this nice thing, but they don’t know the repercussions of what it comes with. That’s where the lack of education comes in.”

A children’s play area in the six-story Edenwald Houses complex with overcladding in light and dark gray. The 14-story brick Baychester Houses can be seen in the distance across the street.
Edenwald and Baychester Houses, Bronx

Residents of Edenwald Houses only had to look across the street and speak with their neighbors at Baychester Houses to learn about the PACT process, although Baychester could not provide an exact blueprint of what was to come. Edenwald is the largest public housing development in the Bronx and a neighborhood unto itself. The 40-building, 48-acre campus, built in 1953, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2024.

A detail of the exterior of a brick apartment building in Edenwald Houses where two sections meet each other at a 90-degree angle.
Edenwald Houses, Bronx

Because it must follow historic preservation guidelines, Edenwald is not a good candidate for overcladding. Currently underway, renovations to Edenwald will return the exterior of the development to an earlier era. According to Walter McNeil, President of the Edenwald Houses Tenant Association, some Edenwald residents wanted the contemporary exterior appearance they saw at Baychester. “In the beginning, it was because we had the impression the brickwork would look different and would change the atmosphere and the landscape of the development. But it was explained to us that the money [that would have been used for overcladding] would go into the development and the property,” said McNeil. “We got over the fact that it’s not gonna look like the development next door. But, the bricks are getting cleaned and we’ll have brand new, black storm windows. So we settled for that.”

An eight-story Penn-Wortman brick apartment building, which has recently had its facade rehabilitated, and a children’s playground. In the background, the 14-story Linden Houses, which has overcladding in light gray, dark gray, and terracotta.
Penn-Wortman and Linden Houses, Brooklyn

Built in the 1950s and comprising 21 buildings, Linden Houses, in East New York, Brooklyn entered PACT in 2021. (It is not listed in the National Historic Register.) The developers decided to apply overcladding, in part to prevent further deterioration of the existing brick facades. “Linden Houses [is] your typical brick NYCHA building. The client did not originally think that there would be a budget for overcladding,” explained Tamar Kisilevitz, a project manager at Curtis + Ginsberg who has worked on several PACT projects. “What [the client] discovered was that the brick was so deteriorated that it had to be replaced. And because part of the PACT deal is they have a land lease for 99 years, their own maintenance company would be responsible for the replacement and facade repairs, which are a big thing in New York City.” Local Law 11, also known as the Facade Safety and Inspection Program, requires landlords of buildings six stories and over to file an inspection of their building’s facades every five years, and to fix any unsafe conditions within 90 days of that filing. The potential fines for not addressing facade safety issues are an incentive for a landlord to find a long-term solution to facade repair. Various manufacturers of EIFS claim it has a lifespan of 50-plus years, while brick may last up to 100 or more (an age that many NYCHA developments are approaching). The ability of both materials to survive their full lifespan depends on their maintenance, something NYCHA has long struggled with, but is now up to each property’s PACT team.

A view across the street looking at a seven-story Stanley Commons apartment building with overcladding in a beige, red, and orange pattern.
Stanley Commons, Brooklyn

Curtis + Ginsberg looked for elements to pick up from the local context for the design of Linden Houses’ facades. A new construction mixed-use development across the street, Stanley Commons, was designed by Dattner Architects with a facade of tan bricks and red, yellow, and orange panels. “We took that as a cue because that’s the most visible thing around,” says Kisilevitz. “It is contextual. We wanted to depart from that NYCHA red or brown brick in this case. We wanted to do something that was a little uplifting.” At Linden Houses, they applied EIFS overcladding in vertical strips of off-white and gray, with red accents.

A frontal image of the entirety of the 16-story Penn-Wortman apartment building with a pattern of beige and brown horizontal stripes, whose brick facade is being rehabilitated.
Penn-Wortman, Brooklyn

Across Vermont Street from Linden Houses is a smaller, more recently constructed NYCHA development referred to as Penn-Wortman. Linden and Penn-Wortman are considered different properties, but are being rehabilitated as part of the same PACT project. Built in the 1970s, Penn-Wortman consists of four buildings clustered around a courtyard: two eight-story towers, a sixteen-story tower with an attached one-story community center containing a gym, and a freestanding public school. The development is National Register-eligible, in part because of its architectural significance: the complex was designed by architect Morris Lapidus and landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg. The existing facade, made of brown and tan brick and stone, is being repaired and restored. Attention is also being paid to the interior restoration of the development’s public spaces, including the lobby’s original terrazzo floors.

In 2017, the New York State Historic Preservation Office, New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and NYCHA conducted a survey that found 37 of NYCHA’s 328 properties were National Register-listed or eligible for listing. The National Historic Register, which is administered by the National Park Service, is based on the values of professional experts like architects and historians who are looking for specific qualities that make a building “historic” and worthy of preservation. In addition to considering the age of a building (generally more than 50 years old), the site evaluation asks: “Is the property associated with events, activities, or developments that were important in the past? With the lives of people who were important in the past? With significant architectural history, landscape history, or engineering achievements?” What the everyday residents value isn’t part of that evaluation.

Some NYCHA residents, like Ramona Ferreyra, argue that more attention should be paid to what can and should be preserved, not just because of its architectural significance, but because of what has happened there. “The moments that are held in our homes are sacred. So it’s not just this external facade that’s being erased or mutilated. It’s the way that these apartments encapsulate such a lengthy history, because it is so uncommon to have people live in the same place for so long,” Ferreyra said. “When you make these buildings bland and [all the] same, you’re basically just destroying a testament to our right to have a home.” Preservation based on the memories and histories of everyday residents — as opposed to prominent historical figures — would require shifts in how preservation is approached.

A view of the interior courtyard of the Elliott-Chelsea Houses, which is undergoing redevelopment. The courtyard contains a colorful children’s playground surrounded by eleven-story brick apartment buildings.
Elliott-Chelsea Houses, Manhattan

Nowhere in the current PACT landscape has the question of what gets preserved and how that decision is made been more urgent than at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. There, it’s not just the facade or finishes that will be altered through a PACT conversion. Instead, the entire development is slated for demolition. In 2019, a resident-led working group formed to make recommendations regarding capital needs at the four associated Manhattan developments that make up the PACT project. After a series of public workshops, subcommittee meetings, and working group meetings, a final report issued in 2021 stated that residents did not want the existing development demolished and wanted to ensure that rent remained at 30 percent of their annual income over the long term.

In 2024, NYCHA and part of the site’s PACT development team, Essence Development, conducted additional engagement about residents’ preferred options for development moving forward. Out of approximately 4,500 residents who live across the developments, 969 residents responded to a survey, and 550 of those voted to move forward with the demolition. Under the current plan, the 2,055-unit development will be demolished in stages. Its 18 brick buildings would be replaced by a new campus designed by Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, COOKFOX, and Ismael Leyva Architects. A recent site plan depicts new development hugging the perimeter of 27th Street, 10th Avenue, and 25th Street, with courtyards that open up onto 26th Street. Buildings will contain a one-to-one replacement of the existing 2,055 Section 9 units with Project-Based Section 8 units, plus an additional 3,500 mixed-income units, around 875 of which will be designated “affordable.” Changes to the existing zoning would allow the new buildings to be taller than what currently exists. Some residents and advocacy organizations say these new plans go against the initial working group’s priorities and that the second round of engagement lacked transparency about the addition of market-rate housing to the plan.

A view of the exterior of an eleven-story Elliott-Chelsea brick apartment building. A woman is walking towards the camera walking three dogs on leashes.
Elliott-Chelsea Houses, Manhattan

A document filed with HUD as part of the approval process for demolition and replacement of the existing buildings states that existing conditions at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea require “substantial repair and rehabilitation.” Leaks, mold, lead paint, and outdated mechanical and electrical equipment are among the persistent issues on these campuses. And there is an irrefutable need for more housing in New York City — though whom that housing should be built for is not a settled debate. CUNY historian James Rodriguez thinks that there’s a relationship between the proposed changes at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea, other PACT conversions, and the development that’s been happening around them. Just a half a block away is the High Line, which has contributed to gentrification and displacement in the Chelsea neighborhood and is surrounded by luxury residences designed by well-known architects. “It’s not a coincidence that many of the communities that NYCHA has targeted [for] different forms of redevelopment plans have been in neighborhoods that have been gentrifying,” said Rodriguez.  “They’re already under broader pressures of [a] commercial landscape changing to meet the needs and preferences of a newer, more affluent class of renters or residents in the neighborhood.”

Brick features as a primary facade material in current renderings of the proposed Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea redevelopment, while a disclaimer states that “the final designs will be determined in consultation with residents and subject to all applicable legal and regulatory approvals.” In articles about the development, residents have expressed dismay over the need to completely demolish the development and feel what’s being lost is not just the physical buildings, but the community they contain.

A vertical image that contains three different buildings: a brick apartment building from the Elliott-Chelsea complex can be seen on the left, with two new looking glass facades abutting it, next door and in the distance.
Elliott-Chelsea Houses, Manhattan

Ferreyra challenged architects to consider their involvement in projects like Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea. “You get into architecture because you appreciate what buildings do for society. So how do you justify taking on contracts that then destroy these communities and undermine the stability of my neighbors and then bring in a sameness that is so unappealing to the eye?” Architects can advocate for official recognition using their professional expertise and standing. When official recognition isn’t possible because a bureaucratic process doesn’t see the development as historically or architecturally significant, an architect selected for a project can still incorporate resident feedback and wishes for preservation into a project.

“In the US, public housing buildings are deeply associated with brick in the sort of dismissive works of critics and architects who use the repeated building unit as proof of some kind of monotony and esthetic utilitarianism that’s somehow oppressive or makes this less worthy,” says architectural historian Michael Allen. Allen’s current research into the preservation of mass housing looks at models of value mapping from different disciplines — including sociology and archeology — and how they can “allow for a bold gathering of those viewpoints, but also understanding an inherent value of dissonance that you’re going to always have competing claims across the range of residents.” That could impact decisions about what is given enough value to preserve.

A diptych of an exterior detail of a Linden Houses apartment building with overcladding of light gray, dark gray ,and terracotta. In the left image, a Puerto Rican flag hangs out of the window, on the right image, three construction workers on ladders are working in renovations.
Linden Houses, Brooklyn

Community engagement is a huge challenge in NYCHA’s PACT conversions. With such a large constituency and so many perspectives in each development, it’s impossible to please everyone. Initial renovation scopes are based on property assessments that describe the conditions of the roofs, heating, grounds, and security from the perspective of NYCHA staff and their team. However, a technical assessment cannot fully account for the lived experience of residents. NYCHA’s Jonathan Gouveia remarked: “Our PACT partners work closely with our residents and our NYCHA team to finalize project scope. This scope must address all known capital repair needs and support resident priorities. Resident engagement has been a priority of PACT since inception of the program. We have continually worked to improve our processes and have progressively made our engagements more robust and meaningful for residents.”

Residents are now asked to participate in design workshops and other activities to discuss their experiences and preferences. “Over the past maybe two years, NYCHA has shifted from residents just being involved in the selection process as members of the selection committee to being front and center; and deciding who was awarded the RFP, which is interesting,” said Rick Gropper of Camber Development. “It’s definitely a shift from some of the prior rounds of the PACT program. It’s great, the residents know the property best and are really empowered to pick the team that they’re most comfortable with.” Walter McNeil, of the Edenwald Tenant Association thought management did a good job with the engagement he saw on this campus. “A lot of people were scared of the unknown. We were at tenant association meetings every month. We were trying to educate them on what was going to happen. Management was good at letting people know every month that we would have meetings, they would put door drops and we would have meetings in the community center, Zoom meetings in the evening for people at work, meetings at eleven o’clock in the morning for residents, and gave them the opportunity to come out and be educated on what was going on.”

Not all residents agree that they have been sufficiently engaged in the process. “A lot of residents are so confused; they do not have any idea what’s going on. They don’t even know what Section 9 is. I’m not mad at it because I guess I didn’t either, but there’s a lot of information sharing that needs to happen,” said Christina Chaise, a NYCHA resident. Chaise leads TakeRoot Justice’s  NYCHA Real Talk Training Series, where she trains NYCHA resident leaders on policy that impacts public housing. “A lot of tenant associations aren’t doing that. I think NYCHA kind of leans on the inefficiencies, in that they’ll be like, ‘Okay, we’re going to look at the resident association, we’re going to show up to some of their meetings, we’re going to hold our own meeting in the community center, and then we’re going to rely on the associations to tell people that and to come out.’ Maybe you have a good turnout, but that turnout would be probably 50 folks.”

In addition to the potential risk of erasure of history and identity, residents and organizers like Ramona Ferreyra of Save Section 9 are concerned about the greater risks PACT could pose to residents’ tenure at NYCHA, and threats to the long-term survival of truly public housing, even to the idea of housing as a public good. In 1998, Congress passed the Faircloth Amendment, limiting the amount of housing units that can be built and operated using capital or operating funds to the number of units a PHA had in 1999, known as the Faircloth Limit. With every conversion of a development under RAD, a PHA’s Faircloth Limit is reduced. This allows for a continual shrinking of public housing stock at a time when the need for rental units affordable to very low-income residents is the highest it’s ever been.

A view into the inner cemented courtyard of the seven-story Fulton Houses complex, brick apartment buildings with a single tree in the center.
Fulton Houses, Manhattan

There is also concern that the introduction of private interests at NYCHA, a public entity, in the form of the PACT project partners, could decrease the security of tenure for residents. Jayah Arnett of Our Projects Runway pointed to the perception of increased tenant evictions after PACT conversions increase. While tenant rights are technically protected — meaning the same rules regarding eviction apply pre- and post-conversion — residents like Christina Chaise believe that private management may enforce those rules differently. For example, the increased camera presence in renovated campuses could be used to address issues of security that residents are concerned about, but it can also be used to identify infractions to be used to evict tenants.

In December 2024, the Office of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a report confirming some of these concerns. Auditing evictions at 13 PACT projects that were converted before 2022, the report found that the eviction rate at PACT properties “significantly exceeded NYCHA’s rate and is nearly as high as the Citywide rate for all rental properties.” In addition, the audit found that eviction rates “varied dramatically at different PACT projects, in part due to deficient guidelines developed by NYCHA.” The report found NYCHA needs to improve its oversight of the implementation of these guidelines. Additionally, a recent report from Community Service Society found that although residents of PACT conversions have reported a better tenant-landlord relationship than with NYCHA, and their repair needs are now better met, PACT residents are still having issues with mold, water quality, leaks, and heat.

A detail of the exterior of a brick apartment building in the Elliott-Chelsea Houses complex with a bespoke mosaic mural.
Elliott-Chelsea Houses, Manhattan

Like PACT itself, overcladding has its supporters (those who feel like the renovations transform the identity of NYCHA buildings away from negative associations with the “projects”) and its critics (those who feel it threatens the permanence and cultural identity of places where generations of families have proudly raised their children). The physical changes are inseparable from policy changes and a history of ambivalence, or worse, around the guarantee of housing as a public good. “I think a lot of other residents think that public housing has actually been a model that’s been sabotaged,” said James Rodriguez. “It’s not a model that has failed. It’s one that we’ve actually starved and eroded from the inside out.” The overcladding and transformation of NYCHA buildings brought through PACT will continue to be seen and felt across the city. “If you think about just going up the FDR Drive when you’re in the Lower East Side, so many of those buildings comprise the skyline and the familiarity of what is New York City and home,” said Christina Chaise. “I know change is inevitable and part of life and the world, but there’s a difference between change and erasure, and it feels a lot like erasure.” One thing that both groups can agree on is that the mechanisms for repairing and maintaining the NYCHA developments that have promised decent housing for almost a century have been woefully insufficient and change is needed. What that change looks like is the critical question.

All photographs copyright Kris Graves

Lizzie MacWillie is an architect, registered in Texas and New York, an interdisciplinary artist, and an urban designer. She is currently the assistant director of the J Max Bond Center for Urban Futures at the City College of New York. Lizzie was previously a director at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP ([bc]), a nonprofit architecture and planning firm, where she also oversaw the Dallas office and managed a diverse array of projects from residential design-build to the recording of a conjunto album. She has taught at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the Boston Architectural College. She received a Master of Architecture in Urban Design and a Master of Design Studies in Art, Design, and the Public Domain from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kris Graves is an artist and publisher based in New York and California. He received his BFA in Visual Arts from SUNY Purchase College and has been published and exhibited globally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and National Portrait Gallery in London, among others. His work is featured in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Schomburg Center, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Getty Institute, Brooklyn Museum, and The Wedge Collection in Toronto, amongst others.