Abraham E. Kazan is considered the "father of U.S. cooperative housing

Housing cooperative

A housing cooperative is a legal entity—usually a corporation—that owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings. Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit, sometimes subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease. ...

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History

Abraham Kazan was among the Engineers of the idea of cooperative housing. Growing up as an eyewitness to appalling tenement conditions, Kazan believed that housing was a vital obstacle for the average person. The problem, as he saw it, was more pronounced in urban settings. Large numbers of people lived within cities, either to be closer work or to be able to share space with multitudes of people who would help contribute to the monthly rent.

As the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACW) Credit Union, Kazan understood that most people, rich and poor, usually considered a home as “purely a product of his own efforts.” Yet, unlike all other routine necessities, owning a home required a sizable initial investment that was usually beyond that of those with moderate means or salaries. He felt that this made newly constructed buildings often out of reach for the poorer earners, causing harsher social and moral conditions with the tenement communities where the poorer people lived in tightly congested clusters.

Kazan believed that good housing conditions would not guarantee normal, healthy people and families. Yet, he was convinced that substandard housing does directly and adversely affect health, morale, and the social conditions of those who live there within it.

Open spaces were important for healthy children, and lack of quality conditions would result in child delinquency, crime, disease and a host of other social and health crises that would fester.
He developed the idea of cooperative housing. Not merely to create a residential building or complex, but complete cooperative villages. The resulting communities had co-op shopping centers, with supermarkets, pharmacies, credit unions, optical centers and playgrounds.

He earned distinction for his work of integrating sections of New York City through affordable cooperative housing. Today, more than 100,000 people live in homes built by his efforts.

He took his cooperative idea even further and succeeded in federating the "Co-op Supermarkets" into a larger collective in order to give the markets competitive abilities to contend with the established chains. Kazan also inspired the building of co-op electric generating plants to bring down the price of power. Over the past two decades, most, if not all of the Co-op Supermarkets in New York City have been sold to the larger chains.

His life’s work was recognized in many ways, as he became the first person in New York City’s history to have a street named for him in his lifetime (Abraham Kazan Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan).

Kazan's Cooperatives

One of the first housing co-operative developments in the United States, started in 1927, was Amalgamated Housing

Amalgamated Housing Cooperative

Amalgamated Housing Cooperative, originally the Amalgamated Cooperative Apartment House, is a pioneering American limited-equity cooperative apartment complex originally built from 1927 to 1930 in The Bronx, New York City, New York....

  in the Northwest Bronx. Kazan founded this development and was its President for 40 years, its Manager for thirty, and a resident. The Amalgamated, as it is known, is still a thriving co-operative community.

Among other developments Kazan was responsible for are his early projects, Amalgamated Dwellings, Hillman Housing, Seward Park Housing and East River Housing on the Lower East Side

Lower East Side

The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....

 of Manhattan, known as Cooperative Village

Cooperative Village

Cooperative Village is a community of housing cooperatives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The cooperatives are centered around Grand Street in an area south of the entrance ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge and west of FDR Drive...

 prior to its fragmentation. Later developments, under Kazan's United Housing Foundation

United Housing Foundation

The United Housing Foundation is a real estate investment trust in New York that is best known for constructing Rochdale Village.- Purpose :...

 (UHF), include the Penn South

Penn South

__notoc__Penn South is the common name for the Mutual Redevelopment Houses, a limited-equity housing cooperative development located between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and East 23rd and 29th Streets, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...

 community in the Chelsea

Chelsea, Manhattan

Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The district's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, 30th Street to the north, the western boundary of the Ladies' Mile Historic District – which lies between the Avenue of the Americas and...

 area of Manhattan, Warbasse Houses (Brooklyn), Rochdale Village (Queens), and Co-op City in the Bronx, the largest co-operative development of its kind.

• See List of New York City housing cooperatives

External links

• Many of Kazan's projects were built by Architect Herman Jessor