On Dec 3 1935, NYC built its first public housing project in the nation, called First Houses located on Ave A between 2nd and 3rd Street in the Lower East Side, following the recent establishment of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in 1934 by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. First Houses was considered an innovative rehabilitation project for the city as it demolished the over crowded tenements commonly referred to as “the slums” of the LES by the media and elected officials. As mentioned in the Designation Report of the First Houses, “these houses were erected as the New York City Housing Authority as an initial step in the program for slum clearance and low-cost housing”. Seen as a national model for future public housing projects, this project was meant to house about 120-122 low to moderate income families who would pay an average monthly rent of $6.05 per room. The architectural design of the housing project was to provide air and sunlight into the apartments and throughout the block, provide recreation areas, courtyards, and a feeling of neighborliness to the community. All rooms within the apartments had windows for proper ventilation and residents would have access to basic amenities, such as heat and hot water. Other amenities included a community laundry room, nursery, community meeting rooms, and a unit of the City’s Public Health Service. Before the establishment of the First Houses, tenements were a common low rent place to live, which typically housed large populations of new working class immigrants (Irish and Jewish) to the LES. Space was often limited due to the narrowness of the apartments as they were made up of three rooms and lacked ventilation due to the absence of windows.

Prospective residents for the First Houses were carefully selected by social workers working for NYCHA with preference given to those who lived in “horrible slum conditions” and were also working families. However, from 1953 to 1968 many families were excluded from getting an apartment based on their history of irregular work or those on welfare, or those with a history of alcoholism, single mothers and even those who had no furniture. It was clear that NYCHA had an agenda to maintain a certain social class based white community. Due to pressure from activists and the federal government NYCHA between 1969 t0 1999 loosen its selectivity procedures as minorities outnumbered Whites in the city. Ironically, today public housing such as the First Houses are home to African American, Black, and Latinx communities in LES. The defunding of NYCHA lead to rapidly deteriorating conditions and decay of the public housing buildings, where now primarily residents of color lived with broken boilers resulting in lack of heat and hot water, lead painted walls cracking and chipping in large sections exposing residents to the toxicity, broken windows in apartments, and major plumbing problems to name just a few.