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48 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/nyuls48 and id is 1 raw text is: COMMODIFYING PUBLIC HOUSING: NEW YORK CITY'S USE OF THE RENTAL ASSISTANCE DEMONSTRATION (RAD) PROGRAM AS NEOLIBERAL POLITICAL PROJECT, LEGAL RATIONALITY AND NORMATIVE THEORY ELIZABETH GYORI- ABSTRACT As public housing across the U.S. has seen diminished investment, increased repair needs, and management dysfunction, public housing authorities have turned to programs such as the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program to provide critically necessary repairs and in search offuture stability. Billed as a cost-neutral private-public partnership by its proponents, RAD and similar programs convert public housing to project-based Section 8, turning over management responsibilities and a property interest to private actors. This Article seeks to uncover the full costs of these programs using three currents of understanding neoliberalism: (1) neoliberalism as a class-based political project seeking to re-establish and expand capital accumulation; (2) neoliberalism as a rationality that infects all aspects of society, including the law; and (3) neoliberalism as a normative theory on the nature offreedom and democracy. Using these lenses, this Article contends that (1) RAD and a similar program, the Blueprint for Change, are forms of neoliberal privatization that ultimately serve to prioritize profits for the economic elite at the expense of tenants; (2) such prioritization is the necessary result of neoliberal logics that have overtaken all areas of life, including the juridical; and (3) these logics lead to the treatment of o Elizabeth Gyori was a Skadden Fellow working on the privatization of public housing at a large legal services organization in New York City from Sept. 2020 to Aug. 2022. Many thanks to Luis A. Henriquez, who guided me for two years as an invaluable supervisor, and Marika Dias, who helped me to develop this fellowship project proposal. I am also immensely grateful to the Skadden Foundation (especially Susan Butler Plum, Kathleen Rubenstein, and Kathy Quijije), which not only supported two years of critical legal work on behalf of NYCHA tenants but also the writing of this Article. Thank you, Judith Murciano, for believing in me during the post-graduate fellowships process and guiding me every step of the way. The Law and Political Economy Project and LPE@HLS helped me revise an earlier draft of this Article by accepting it to be workshopped at the 2023 LPE Conference at Harvard Law School. I am so grateful to the many mentors and friends who gave me critical feedback on drafts: Jocelyn Simonson, Seema N. Patel, Sameer Ashar, Luis A. Henriquez, Marika Dias, Jade Ngo, Elizabeth Soltan, and Jonathon Booth. I am also deeply thankful for my partner, Daniel Munier, and two cats, Joey Ramone and Minou, who have unfailingly supported me through this endeavor with love. Many, many thanks are also due to the wonderful team at the NYU Review of Law and Social Change whose insight and hard work have greatly improved this piece. Finally, thank you to the many professors and teachers over the years who nurtured my love of political theory and socialjustice and taught me not only how to speak and write about these issues, but also that my voice matters. 1 Imaged with Permission of N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change

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