Cooper Square Committee

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MISSION

Cooper Square Committee (CSC) works with area residents to contribute to the preservation and development of affordable, environmentally healthy housing and community/cultural spaces so that the Cooper Square area remains racially, economically, and culturally diverse.

Begun in 1959 as a small group of residents organized to oppose the City's Urban Renewal Plan for the Cooper Square area in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, we have grown into an organization of more than 500 members. Our primary service area is from 14th Street to Delancey Street and from 3rd Avenue/the Bowery to the East River.

Programs and Services

We provide a variety of housing and social services to residents free of charge, in the following three program areas:

The Cooper Square Committee has spearheaded significant neighborhood victories in our history, comprising over 45 years of tenant organizing, community-based planning and advocacy. We rely on the active involvement of our members in the organization's work to advance our affordable housing agenda. Since the early 1980's, CSC has sponsored new construction of a 146 unit low income apartment building, and renovation of over 320 low income apartments. We are currently in the process of co-developing a 54 unit apartment building on East 2nd Street with Community Access.

In 1991, CSC formed the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, a low income housing management company which now manages 23 buildings, with 371 units of low income housing, primarily in the Cooper Square area. The CSMHA is a separate entity, but we have a close working relationship, providing tenant organizing assistance and other technical resources to ensure that the buildings remain permanently affordable to low income tenants. We are also working with other buildings that could become part of the CSMHA program.