"We cry for change:" collective action and Puerto Rican New York’s postwar housing crisis, 1945-1974

As early as 1945, Puerto Rican migrants in New York City were being failed by the city’s government and landlords. Housing in the largely Puerto Rican enclaves of El Barrio (East Harlem) and the Upper West Side was significantly inadequate. The streets were dirty, and the housing infrastructure crumbling. From this housing crisis arose organized community advocacy and activism in the city’s Puerto Rican community.This thesis traces the history of the housing crisis Puerto Ricans in New York faced from the end of World War II through 1974. Special focus is given to the lived experiences of tenants. Through the usage of a variety of primary and secondary sources, this thesis argues that the sociopolitical marginalization and substandard housing of the immediate postwar years combined with public and private urban renewal efforts in the 1960s contributed to a critical pushback from Puerto Rican New Yorkers in the form of community advocacy organizations and, eventually, the formation of radical action-based groups such as the New York Young Lords and Operation Move-In. While the movements for better housing were ultimately unsuccessful in enacting large-scale systemic change, Puerto Ricans were able to gain some level of political power in New York City through their community organizing and advocacy for better housing. Their collective power, however, was not sufficient to ensure that the post-World War II housing crisis would end as this would have required more than the ethnic Puerto Rican population could have done on its own. As argued by various scholars since the 1980s, the newest recognized ethnic groups in New York had the least amount of political power and were quickly cast aside in city politics. Despite their legal citizenship, New York’s Puerto Ricans were not exempt from this. The history of Puerto Rican New York’s postwar housing crisis is not a history of change and success—it is a history of a community recognizing its potential to organize and gain some level of power despite being subjected to political, social, and economic marginalization.M.A.Includes bibliographical reference