{"id":192101,"date":"2026-04-10T12:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/192101\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T12:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:06:08","slug":"strangle-the-gangs-that-plague-nycha-public-housing-send-in-the-dads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/192101\/","title":{"rendered":"Strangle the gangs that plague NYCHA public housing \u2014 send in the dads"},"content":{"rendered":"

When 7-month-old Kaori Patterson was shot to death in her stroller<\/a> in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last week, even those inured to violent crime in our cities were shocked.<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was quick to blame the weapon fired in the drive-by shooting, calling the tragedy \u201ca devastating reminder of just how much more work there is to be done . . . to combat gun violence across the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York Police Department provided a more accurate explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking to see the possible connection (with) a beef between the Marcy Houses and Bushwick Houses, meaning the gang MOE,\u201d said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.<\/p>\n

Kaori Patterson was shot to death as the 7-month-old sat in her stroller in an East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, bodega on April 1. Brigitte Stelzer\/copyphoto<\/p>\n

Kaori\u2019s death wasn\u2019t just \u201cgun violence,\u201d<\/a> but part of the daily dysfunction of the New York City Housing Authority.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost taken for granted that each project has its own dominant gang claiming it as its turf \u2014 which undoubtedly contributes to the fact that the areas in and around public housing<\/a>, with 4% of the city\u2019s population, account for 20% of its violent crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To understand the East Williamsburg shooting, we have to focus on the roots of public-housing gang culture<\/a>: The fact that two-parent families and fathers are a rarity in the projects, and too many fatherless teenage boys turn to gangs as a result.<\/p>\n

Other than those over age 55, single-parent families comprise the largest population group in NYC\u2019s public housing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Only 2% of all households are made up of two adults with their children.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t yet know about the family background of the shooter who killed baby Kaori<\/a>, but statistically speaking, young males in public housing are highly likely not to have a father in the home \u2014 and in fact won\u2019t see many adult males at all.<\/p>\n

They also won\u2019t see many adults going off to work in the morning:\u00a0Only a third of New York public housing households report wages as a source of income.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a feature of the system, not a bug \u2014 top priority goes to the lowest-income households.<\/p>\n

The heartbreaking moment Kaori\u2019s mother realizes the infant was struck in the driveby shooting. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

That means single parents.<\/p>\n

The current rules that qualify New Yorkers for public housing have created isolated islands of fatherlessness, ideal for gang control.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve long known that fatherless boys disproportionately seek companionship in gangs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sociologist Stanley Taylor in 2013 cited \u201cfrustration and anxiety stemming from family problems such as fatherlessness\u201d as a top driver of gang recruitment.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll hear that at the Andrew Jackson Houses in The Bronx, where teenage boys fear to venture a few blocks away because of gang activity in a nearby public housing complex. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are quite a few single households, predominantly women,\u201d tenant leader Danny Barber has told me. \u201cThe young men develop an anger toward their own (absent) father and they take it out on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet there was a time, as Hunter College professor Nicolas Dagen-Bloom has explained, when NYCHA gave priority to two-parent working families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We should return to that very approach for new tenants \u2014 even if it gives a leg up to those who may earn more \u2014 and change the rules of who\u2019s admitted to the projects in the first place by putting households with both mothers and fathers at the top of the NYCHA waiting list.<\/p>\n

This would be no quick fix; it\u2019s too much to expect responsible young fathers to confront gangs directly \u2014 though some might.<\/p>\n

But a stronger network of two-parent families would help more sons resist gangs in the first place, reducing the new recruits that fuel them.<\/p>\n

A 2022 Journal of Development Psychology study of black fathers and sons in Chicago found that strong father-son communication, as well as the regular presence of father figures, helped \u201ckeep sons safe from violence involvement and victimization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little Kaori\u2019s father, Jamari Patterson, who lives in the nearby Bushwick Houses, was apparently the target of the moped-riding gunmen. Obtained by NY Post<\/p>\n

Priority for two-parent families should come with work requirements and a limit \u2014 five years, say \u2014 on subsidized-housing stays for new tenants, as the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed.<\/p>\n

Those changes would transform NYCHA\u2019s culture from one of long-term, entrenched poverty (averaging 20 years) to one of upward mobility \u2014 and could even discourage the formation of new single-parent households in the first place.<\/p>\n

In the short term, New York needs the NYPD gang unit to identify gang members, confiscate their guns and arrest them for their criminal acts.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, who urged an end to the NYPD\u2019s gang database<\/a> during his campaign, has since evinced a change of heart.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope he means it; a gang crackdown remains essential.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But long-term, New York needs to create a new public housing culture \u2014 one that no longer provides the toxic soil from which gangs grow. <\/p>\n

Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of \u201cThe Projects:\u00a0A New History of Public Housing<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When 7-month-old Kaori Patterson was shot to death in her stroller in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last week, even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7986,40242,47112,6809,9,24,55,54,56,305,299,3980],"class_list":{"0":"post-192101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-babies","9":"tag-fatherhood","10":"tag-gang","11":"tag-gangs","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-city-news","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nycha","18":"tag-opinion","19":"tag-shootings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}