One of the perennial problems in New York City is how to provide quality affordable housing for its lower-income residents. Some of the government's solutions in the past have been high-rise condominiums and low-density units in the city's existing neighborhoods.
Princeton University has just recently published a book entitled "Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City." It aims to give readers a more in-depth look on what it really is like to live in these so-called affordable houses.
David Schalliol, a sociology professor and photographer, is the lensman that captured the residents' daily lives. He visited 32 affordable housing sites listed in the book and interviewed residents to know their stories behind the photos.
"I carry that (information) with me, but what am I really seeing? What am I really experiencing?" he told Fast Co Design. "I think about the power of an image: How does it reinforce a narrative? Does it challenge the narrative if it needs to be challenged?"
The results are raw, unfiltered, and realistic photos of the people's day-to-day lives.
"The images I produced for the project don't gloss over problems but reflect a sense that this is 'home' even with all of the complications," Schalliol continued. "Some may be difficult to express in a single frame, like the tension between market value and limited equity value experienced by cooperators. Others are more easily documented, like uneven maintenance work or problems exacerbated by limited economic means."
Among the featured residential areas include Amalgamated Cooperative Apartments, Bell Park Gardens, Co-op City, Twin Parks and Stuyvesant Town.
For Schalliol, his take away from visiting and documenting these places is that more than a cheap place to live, affordable housing provides people the opportunity to build a more satisfactory life.
Schalliol's work will be exhibited at Hunter College from Feb. 10 to May 15.
