Cooper Square Committee Records

The Cooper Square Community Development Committee and Businessmen's Association (CSC) is a nonprofit tenant rights and arts advocacy group for residents of New York City's Lower East Side that provides social services, including tenant counseling and eviction prevention, and works on community development issues. The organization's aims are to preserve economic and ethnic diversity in the neighborhood and to contribute to the preservation and development of affordable, environmentally-friendly housing and community/cultural spaces.

The Committee, which has described itself as "the nation's oldest anti-displacement organization," was founded in 1959 (then named the Cooper Square Community Development Committee), for the purpose of opposing the City of New York's urban renewal plan for the Lower East Side led the City's Slum Clearance Committee. CSC's founders or those involved in the early stages of the organization included Thelma Burdick, Frances Goldin, Esther Rand, Staughton Lynd, and Walter Thabit.

Throughout the 1960s, the Committee built coalitions, held demonstrations and CSC representatives and members spoke at public meetings. CSC also created an alternative plan to New York City's original proposals for redevelopment of the Lower East Side. Its basic principles were that during development displacement must be minimized, must be carried out in stages, and site tenants must have first priority for the housing that is built. On February 13, 1970 CSC's Alternate Plan was adopted as the official plan of the City of New York.

In the 1970s the Cooper Square Committee worked to develop community leadership on the Lower East Side, organizing the Bowery Residents Committee, the Good Food Co-op, Third Avenue Artists, and also helped start several tenant rights associations to preserve affordable housing. In the 1980s the CSC sponsored development of the Thelma Burdick Building, an apartment building for low-income households at 10 Stanton Street; supported a private development of senior citizen housing on 5th Street and the Bowery and attempted to ensure that it would be a racially-integrated building; created a Revised Plan for the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area that emphasized renovation of city-owned tenements and loft buildings; preservation of affordable housing and new construction of mixed income housing; and helped to persuade the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development to approve the development of the 22-unit building for formerly homeless families, to serve as a model for similar projects. In the 1990s the organization found itself in the position of becoming a developer itself, in part, when it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of New York. Under this agreement the CSC sponsored the renovation of the 22 buildings costing more than $20 million (completed in 2006), and founded the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association that now manages 356 apartments in 22 formerly city-owned buildings.

In the 2000s the Cooper Square Committee began organizing cultural groups on East 4th Street to develop a plan for disposition of 4 city-owned cultural buildings, vacant buildings, vacant lots in the neighborhood. Planning efforts culminated in the sale of the city-owned properties to the cultural groups in 2005. Development of the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area was largely completed by 2008.

In the 2010s the Cooper Square Committee provides housing, counseling, and social services to area residents; it reaches out to assist low income buildings needing energy efficiency upgrades and works to identify opportunities to develop low/moderate or middle income housing as well as community/cultural spaces on the Lower East Side. It has also launched projects addressing the lack of accessible housing and public accommodations for disabled citizens, is partnering with another organization to renovate a building for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youths, and has initiated a Tenant Rights Walking Tour of the Lower East Side.