Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saving Stuyvesant Town: How One Community Defeated the Worst Real Estate Deal in History | 2021 | Daniel R Garodnick | Buy |
Saving Stuyvesant Town (2021) tells the story of the largest residential real estate sale in American history and the community that refused to accept its consequences. MetLife sold Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to private equity buyers in 2006 for $5.5 billion, with plans to convert rent-stabilised apartments to market-rate units — a move that would have displaced thousands of longtime residents.
Daniel Garodnick, a lifelong Stuy Town resident and the area’s City Council representative, spent five years working with the tenants association to block or reverse those plans. The book traces the legal fights, political manoeuvres, and community meetings that ultimately led to a 2015 sale that locked in affordable housing protections for the complex.
Published by Cornell University Press, the book is well-sourced and detailed without being dry. Garodnick writes as someone who lived the story from childhood through the fight itself, and that personal perspective keeps the policy details grounded in real human stakes.