Progress for whom, toward what? Progressive politics and New York City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing

Abstract

In both its historical Progressive Era roots and its contemporary manifestations, U.S. urban progressivism has evinced a contradictory tendency toward promoting the interests of capital and property while ostensibly protecting labor and tenants, thus producing policies that undermine its central claims. This article interrogates past and present appeals to urban progressive politics, particularly around housing and planning, and offers an in-depth case study of one of the most highly touted examples of the new urban progressivism: New York City's recently adopted Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program. This case serves to identify the ways in which progressive rhetoric can disguise neoliberal policies. The article concludes with a discussion of legally viable housing policy alternatives that would challenge inequalities without producing gentrification. Given neoprogressivism's ideological slipperiness, it is crucial for analysts, policymakers, and social movement actors to look beyond rhetorical claims to "progressive" politics and ask the questions: progress for whom, toward what? Amidst rising levels of inequality and inequity, it is now common to characterize the United States as having entered a "new gilded age" (Bartels, 2009; Grusky & Kricheli-Katz, 2012; Milkman, 2013). Reflecting historical parallels to the late 19th century, however, many analysts also see an emerging "new progressive era," led primarily at the local level by liberal mayors and their governing coalitions (Dreier, 2008; Green, 2016; Greenberg, 2015). In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected in a landslide victory as a self-identified progressive who highlighted the city's radical inequalities and pledged to end the "tale of two cities" that had characterized urban life and policy under his processor, the three-term billionaire technocrat Michael Bloomberg (Susser, 2014). De Blasio recently told The Nation, "I do believe this is the beginning of a new progressive era" (Murphy, 2017). One of Mayor de Blasio's signature achievements is a sweeping new housing policy, Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), which mandates the construction of affordable housing in areas where the city allows new and larger luxury development. De Blasio and his allies frequently refer to it as the country's most progressive housing program (de Blasio, 2016; Durkin, 2016b; Fermino, 2014), but activists have pilloried it as a gentrification plan in disguise (Real Affordability for All, 2016). As one of the most celebrated and contested progressive housing laws in the nation, MIH offers the opportunity to reinvestigate the contradictions of progressive urban politics, which have-in both their historical Progressive Era roots as well as their more recent manifestations-evinced contradictory tendencies that often promote the interests of capital and property while ostensibly protecting labor and tenants. This raises serious questions about the new urban progressive agenda. During both the Progressive Era and today, what kinds of programs have New York City p...

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“…Progressivism emphasizes regulation, taxation, redistribution, and administrative and electoral reforms. But different and often conflicting interests under this banner contribute to big swings in “progress for whom, towards what?” (Stein 2018).…”

“…It was based in cities and led by wealthy elites, religious moralists, and growing middle-class professionals who were primarily White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. These groups sought to “reorder urban space toward both the changing needs of capital and the social reproduction of labor” (Stein 2018, p. 771) in ways that aligned with their religious morals and fear of immigrant laborers rising against authority, on one hand, and fear of corporate control by robber barons, on the other (Hofstadter 1968). Reformers instituted wide-ranging reforms to improve living and working conditions nationally, while cities regulated trolleys and utilities, expanded water and sewerage services, and set stricter standards for tenement housing (Douglass 2016; Stradling 1999).…”

“…Progressives argue that government regulation can stave off the worst excesses of unbridled capitalism by regulating the private sector and redistributing wealth from corporations and elites to the middle or lower-income classes (Nugent 2010). Among liberal progressives, this includes adopting antitrust regulations and income taxes in the early 1900s, and more recently, linkage fees, community-benefits agreements, development bonuses, and inclusionary zoning (Marantz 2015; Stein 2018). Radical progressives adopted rent control, requirements for affirmative action for public-sector employees and city-funded private contractors, and protections for low-income families and neighborhoods.…”

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“…With gridlock, federal austerity on domestic spending, and a pattern of limited responsiveness to calls for social problem-solving (given many underaddressed social problems), what within-city opportunity is there for urban progressivism to establish itself as part of a governing order (cf. Stein 2017)? Demographic change has made White homeownership into a less dominant factor in the internal politics of cities.…”

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