It’s easy to overlook the brick residential towers of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village on Manhattan’s East Side. ... Blackstone Group LP and Ivanhoe Cambridge, Inc announced they would acquire the site in a deal worth US$5.3 billion.

Because the deal ensured that 5,000 of the 11,000 units would remain affordable for the next 20 years, many touted it as a victory for tenants.

However, the sale likely seals the end of Stuyvesant Town as a bastion for middle-class housing in New York City. In a city where over 40% of tenants are burdened by exorbitant rent (which consumes over 30% of household income) – and where the share of rent-stabilized units has decreased from 62.7% to 47.2% between 1981 and 2011 – this matters.

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New York built Stuyvesant Town in collaboration with the insurance firm Metropolitan Life. The city cleared the land and provided a 25-year tax abatement; in return, MetLife built and operated the new housing development, which opened in 1947.

Stuyvesant Town spans the area between 14th and 23rd Streets, and between First Avenue and the East River. The 110 buildings included a total of 11,250 apartments, designed to hold approximately 24,000 people. While urban critics argued the complex would be too large to succeed, the buildings quickly filled to capacity.

MetLife was required to keep all apartments rent-stabilized for as long as their tax abatement lasted. However, the city gave them the green light to exclude African-American families from the apartments.

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Rent stabilization policies are controversial, but were historically effective in helping ease the pressure for renters in high-cost housing markets. High demand for living in the Big Apple collides with the limited housing supply, resulting in an increased cost of living. In particular, Manhattan housing costs more than four times the national average, meaning that middle-income families are feeling the pinch.

What the Stuyvesant Town sale shows us is that in this era, policy interventions like rent stabilization are becoming harder to sustain. Until new housing can be built to cater for seemingly endless demand, the definition of moderate-income in New York City will continue to rise.

Stuyvesant Town’s tenants are no longer GIs or their families – let alone the working classes of the old Gashouse District. And within a generation, the development’s middle class – if it can even be called that – will look very different indeed.