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Show Me A Hero

by Lisa Belkin

4.30 · Rating Details · 284 Ratings · 43 Reviews

Not in my backyard -- that's the refrain commonly invoked by property owners who oppose unwanted development. Such words assume a special ferocity when the development in question is public housing. Lisa Belkin penetrates the prejudices, myths, and heated emotions stirred by the most recent trend in public housing as she re-creates a landmark case in riveting detail, showi ...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published April 1st 2000 by Back Bay Books (first published 1999)

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Jan 27, 2015 Kayla rated it really liked it

This is not a book I normally would have picked up, had it not been for a book club. However, it was engrossing, well written, and painted an excellent group portrait of the city of Yonkers from 1988-1993. During this time, Yonkers was federally court ordered to desegregate their public housing by adding units in middle class neighborhoods. The people of Yonkers responded like a petulant child. Like any well written story, this book showcased the best and worst of humanity. It highlighted a part ...more

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Sep 16, 2015 Jean Marie Angelo rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-politics

"During an era that no one still living actually remembers, but everyone seems to yearn for, Yonkers was a great city.” So writes Lisa Belkin in Show Me a Hero.

I came to this book by way of the HBO mini series of the same name. The Show Me a Hero mini series was co-written by David Simon — the man who created The Wire and Tremé. Both were gripping and compelling. I found this latest mini series to be the same. I now live in Mount Vernon, which, borders Yonkers. Before watching the mini series, a "During an era that no one still living actually remembers, but everyone seems to yearn for, Yonkers was a great city.” So writes Lisa Belkin in Show Me a Hero.

I came to this book by way of the HBO mini series of the same name. The Show Me a Hero mini series was co-written by David Simon — the man who created The Wire and Tremé. Both were gripping and compelling. I found this latest mini series to be the same. I now live in Mount Vernon, which, borders Yonkers. Before watching the mini series, and then reading the book upon which it was based, I knew very little detail about this housing fight.

Yonkers was one of many large, northern cities that remained segregated well into the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, the Justice Department and the NAACP brought a lawsuit against the city, charging Yonkers with having a segregated school system that was based on a segregated housing plan that had been laid out more than 40 years before. For four decades, all public housing was kept within one square mile in the southwest corner of the city. Other big cities in the north and south were accused of doing the same thing, including Rochester, N.Y., but Yonkers fought the Justice Department, while other cities made concessions. Yonkers was eventually court ordered to built low income housing in the eastern parts of the city — east of the Saw Mill River. The court reminded the city that it had already accepted federal funds to build low-income housing on the east side, but had delayed construction for years. When the mandate finally came, east-side homeowners rebelled. It is rare that city council meetings make national news — but the screaming protestors, and subsequent death threats, were covered by major newspapers and the major networks. Most certainly some of the Yonkers residents in the east side were racists, but some were not. Some who lived in the west side's low income housing were drug dealers and gang members, most were not.

As the author notes about the east side home owners, “Many of them had also lived a ball’s throw from Yankee Stadium [in the Bronx], more recently than [Judge] Sand, and then fled to Yonkers as their neighborhoods became emblems of urban decay.” They didn’t want the poor planning of the Bronx to be repeated in Yonkers.

At the center of the controversy was Nick Wasicsko, who, at 28, was the youngest mayor of a major American city. He was naive, to say the least. He came into office in 1987 promising to fight the housing mandate. He promised to appeal the decision already handed down. He pandered to the voters’ fear of integration and basically did what he needed to do to unseat his opponent — Angelo Martinelli. Martinelli had been mayor for six terms at that point, had told the voters that the housing was inevitable. He was right. After only five days in office, Wasicsko was told that Yonkers had no chance of appeal. The court order would stand. The federal judge later added crippling fines to the city for each day it did not offer a plan to build the housing. Adding to the complexity was the judge’s own naiveté — a belief that somehow just building housing with no real work on social fabric would somehow cure the wrongs of racism. Wasicsko had to face his constituents to tell them that America was a “nation of laws,” and that the city would have to abide by the law. He changed his stand and became a supporter of the housing. For that he received death threats, was spit on, and was eventually voted out of office.

The author lays out the story through the eyes of the politicians, but also several women and children who lived in the various low-income projects, and who aspired to a better life. For some, moving into the new housing —which was eventually built on five sites throughout east Yonkers — was life changing. For Mayor Wasicsko, it ended a promising career.

City planning is an art. The author focuses on the work and theories of Oscar Newman, a planner who believed that low-income housing should be devoid of common areas that allow for onsite crime. He believed that there was more dignity and safety in giving each family their own space — front steps, a back yard. His Defensible Space theory has since been embraced by planners, but it was a new and more costly experiment in Yonkers several decades ago. I certainly recommend this book and the series. This is an important part of the urban American story. ...more

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Oct 22, 2015 Barbara M rated it really liked it

This is a true story of what happened in Yonkers when a judge ordered desegregation of housing in the 70s. At the time, predominately white residents lived in the east part of town in nicer apartments and homes and minorities lived in the west side of town in poorly run large scale "projects" noted for high crime. Specifically, the court ordered that scattered affordable housing be constructed in middle class neighborhoods and that residents of the projects on the west side of town be given the This is a true story of what happened in Yonkers when a judge ordered desegregation of housing in the 70s. At the time, predominately white residents lived in the east part of town in nicer apartments and homes and minorities lived in the west side of town in poorly run large scale "projects" noted for high crime. Specifically, the court ordered that scattered affordable housing be constructed in middle class neighborhoods and that residents of the projects on the west side of town be given the opportunity to move to their own new homes on the east side of town. The new homes would not be large scale projects - but smaller townhouses with backyards and fences. They were designed to blend into the communities and give the residents living in them a sense of ownership and responsibility for their property.

Lisa Belkin is a reporter and did a great deal of research in preparing this story. Her reporting skills shine through as she tells the story. She took a very complicated story and made it real by telling it through the lives of different human beings living through the experience. We meet and get to know different families living on the west side of town and learn about their struggles and journey to the east side. We meet the residents of the east side who are resistant to accepting the new residents and watch some of them make the journey to accepting them. A large part of the story also focuses on Nick who became the youngest mayor of Yonkers (in his 20s) while this crisis was happening. We see how the challenges the town faced effected him and his wife and other residents of the city. We learn about corruption in the Yonkers city government.

It's an interesting and compelling story that is well worth reading.

The story isn't over....other towns across the country are currently being ordered by the courts to provide affordable housing. Some are doing it willing and others are resistant. There are lessons to be learned from reading the Yonkers story. The story continues today in other towns. ...more

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Oct 28, 2015 Sally rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Fascinating story of a housing battle in Yonkers NY in the 1980s. An activist judge decided that housing needed to be desegregated and ordered low-income housing spread across the town rather than stuck on one side. This book is about the people on both sides of the issue and follows them a number of years to look at how things ended up playing out.

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Sep 29, 2015 Mark Barbash rated it it was amazing

While Show Me a Hero is nominally the story of the mid-80's legal battle to force Yonkers, New York to accept public housing, it's really a lesson in local government, politics, protest, community organizing, and how good intentions battle good intentions. A very fast read by Lisa Belkin, a reporter, who writes crisply and with great attention to detail. Once you pick it up, you will have to finish it!

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Aug 27, 2015 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, politics, nonfiction

Excellent narrative nonfiction that is the basis of the current HBO miniseries of the same name. The author takes things like city council meetings and makes them highly dramatic. I enjoyed her toggling in-between the politicians in Yonkers and the residents, some of whom were for, and others against, the court-ordered public housing that is the crux of the book's dramatic story.

I was reminded of two other great books, The Promised Land and American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation' Excellent narrative nonfiction that is the basis of the current HBO miniseries of the same name. The author takes things like city council meetings and makes them highly dramatic. I enjoyed her toggling in-between the politicians in Yonkers and the residents, some of whom were for, and others against, the court-ordered public housing that is the crux of the book's dramatic story.

I was reminded of two other great books, The Promised Land and American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare which covered similar territory: public housing in America, which is a contentious issue to this day. I was also influenced during my reading (and while watching the show) by a recent episode of This American Life called "The Problem We All Live With," which talks about public school desegregation. It's all related, and it's all still very relevant. Finally, this book echoed what is probably my favorite nonfiction book of all time Common Ground by Anthony Lucas, which tells the story of Boston's failed busing program in the 70s.

All of this is a long way of saying that I am interested in this topic and familiar with the parameters of the debate about public housing. It is a complex, fraught topic. My family lived in public housing (or 'veteran's housing' as it was called) from the late 1940s until the late 1970s. I spent a lot of time in public housing as a kid, and the school where I work is, literally, in the shadow of a large public housing project. Public housing and I go way back.

So what do you do when you have two groups of people who are in opposition about something that, on balance, is both positive and negative in equal measure? Does public housing affect housing prices? Yes. Is high quality, scattered site housing a good deal for low-income families? Yes. Can public housing have a negative impact on the social fabric of existing middle class neighborhoods? Yes. Do children who grow up in middle class neighborhoods in public housing have better life outcomes than children in segregated public housing? Yes. Is 'white flight' a real thing? Yes. Do children do better in diverse schools? Yes. Is it fair to have people working and paying a mortgage living next to people who are not doing that, yet sharing the same quality of housing?

There's the rub. What does 'fair' look like? Can things ever really be fair? Is it fair that racism and the outcomes of racism have created the situation things like public housing are trying to address? Is it fair that some family busting their asses to own a home see their investment negatively impacted by social engineering? Why is it that the people most fiercely in favor of public housing are the ones most seldom impacted by the actual creation of public housing? And if not public housing... what, then? What is the remedy? Where is the sense of urgency?

Hard, hard questions. I have no answers. Poverty and race and 'de jure' segregation. Income inequality and the racial achievement gap in schools. Life expectancies and patterns of marriage and child rearing. It's all one thing, and it's all hard as hell.

...more

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Aug 23, 2015 Monica rated it it was amazing

Having grown up in Yonkers on the west side, and having an aunt married to Nick Wasicsko's uncle, this book really hit home. I could relate to visiting friends in Schlobohm, feeling discriminated against merely because of income or immigrant nationalities, and having my old neighborhood mentioned in the book reminded me of hard times growing up and a dream for how the other half lives. It's sad to read about so much racism in the city and not in my backyard philosophy, of how the politicians sta ...more

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Jan 02, 2016 Peggy Kelley is currently reading it

Extremely well written chronicle of the "war years" in Yonkers. This was 1988 to 1990 when the city w as under a federal court order to desegregate housing by finding building locations on the east side of the Saw Mill Parkway. Federal Judge Sand determined after months of testimony, depositions, expert witnesses, that the city had participated in a pattern of building housing in a way that furthered the segregation of low income people from middle class people. Of course this pattern was largel ...more

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Aug 15, 2015 Trip rated it really liked it

I picked up LIsa Belkin's book when I read David Simon planned to turn it into a six-part miniseries for HBO. It does not disappoint. (Warning: If you're looking for a book that celebrates America's can-do spirit in resolving difficult racial issues, it is not for you.) Belkin's reporting, set largely in the arena of local politics, and her keen eye for human fallibility, grounds her writing, never letting it stray far from the real world of muddled mixed motives and flawed human characters at t ...more

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Feb 19, 2015 Christopher Conner rated it it was amazing

Picked this up for a bookgroup in anticipation of the David Simon series. It is hard to source a copy but I understand a reprint is in the works. The scene of the book is a little dated--public housing is now a relic of housing policy. However, many themes survive the scene such as NIMBYism and perception of poverty and crime. Those interested in contemporary problems of gentrification might be interested in this read since it presents a story of a kind of "de-gentrification" or a movement of di ...more

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Feb 26, 2016 Gerry rated it really liked it

1988 to 1990 were tumultuous years in Yonkers, Westchester County, NY, after Judge Sand ordered construction of public housing to be scattered through the previously privileged and all-white East Side. The hero named in the title is Nicholas Wasicskso, at 28 the youngest mayor in the US, and at 30, dead by his own hand, driven to suicide by his paranoia and hopelessness about political events spun out of control, and his own failed political ambitions. The subtitle “a tale of murder, suicide, ra ...more

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Nov 28, 2015 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Very Insightful

Great read of a tough topic. Very much in the vein of David Simon's books. I won I pd have liked some photos,, as all I really had to go on was the mini series.

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Nov 11, 2015 Brian Morris rated it really liked it

The title comes from a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy." That's a good summary of this story of the public housing desegregation battle in Yonkers during the 1980's and 1990's. A quote by Winston Churchill also comes to mind:

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

This book explores what happens in the "everything else." It's not a pretty picture, but I thought it was an important story that revea ...more

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Sep 21, 2015 Scott Schneider rated it it was amazing

Written in the early 1990's this book is still, or even more, relevant today. The story of the fight in Yonkers, NY over housing desegregation is an ugly political spat. Thankfully this book humanizes the players on both sides and shows how ultimately everything works out in the end, more or less. With housing, and schools, getting more economically and racially segregated in the 2000s and 2010s, this may serve as a lesson that it is possible to create a better life for those stuck on the bottom ...more

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Oct 08, 2015 Emily rated it liked it

Shelves: adultnonfiction, 2015-reading-challenge

I really enjoyed this book, perhaps because my interest was piqued by the HBO miniseries, but I think I may have liked the book even more than the show. Going in, I knew nothing about the controversy/scandal in Yonkers surrounding the housing desegregation case. It was fascinating getting to learn about the whole era of political turmoil through the eyes of the various players, from Nick, the doomed young mayor, to Doreen and Billie, young single black mothers just trying to create better opport ...more

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Feb 14, 2016 Jenn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, 2016

After watching the HBO miniseries based on this book, I was fascinated enough to want to hear it and get more of the true story (though the miniseries is very dutiful to the way Lisa Belkin tells it). There was an extra level of fascination for me because I spent many childhood years living not far from Yonkers (though I was too young to have been aware of any of what went on there with the housing), and 1988 still feels like recent history. I have a new appreciation for (or horror of) the worki ...more

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Feb 14, 2016 Chris rated it it was amazing

Loved this book. LIke a lot of non-fiction the story doesn't have the neat and tidy ending that fiction sometimes does. But every person in the story is fully developed, their history, their motivations and how the Yonkers housing crisis affected and sometimes changed them. There are sterotypes or caricatures. I read it in two days and recommend it to my friends interested in fair housing issues.

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Jun 18, 2015 Justin rated it really liked it

An extremely detailed, well-reported piece of journalism detailing a number of characters surrounding a housing crisis in Yonkers in the late 1980s. That probably sounds dry, but by focusing on the people involved in the story, Belkin prevents it from becoming too policy-wonky. But I'm not gonna lie—as far as entertainment value goes, it's not exactly Farewell My Lovely.

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Sep 15, 2015 Sloan rated it it was amazing

This extraordinary book has a timelessness to its story - the inability of much of this country to deal with the problems of race and poverty and the fear engendered in both the haves and the have-nots. Nonetheless, the book also carries a message of hopefulness about people's ability to face their fears and change attitudes and, in some cases, behaviors. The book earns an unqualified recommendation from me.

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Sep 04, 2015 B rated it really liked it

Shelves: own

This has really strong echoes of Common Ground.

This is a really interesting story that seems like it could have been told better. There's a lot of research and detail here, but much of it seems a little flat. I would contrast this with, say, Common Ground and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. There, it felt like I was getting a whole novel (and then some.) Here, I feel like I'm getting a couple of interspersed short stories. I don't know how to explain it better.

I don't think it's on purpose by the ...more

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Oct 05, 2015 Lindsey rated it really liked it

Follows the effort to desegregate public housing in Yonkers that would eventually take over twenty years. The pacing, description, and development of the people involved makes it read like a novel. Interesting and unsettling.

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Oct 28, 2015 Brendan Rohan rated it really liked it

Read this after watching HBO miniseries. Included many of the same characters from the film adaptation which was very true to the book. Great piece of journalism.

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Feb 11, 2010 Mike rated it it was ok

This was an assignment for my current studio class, as we are working on a project in Yonkers, NY. The book details the Federal desegregation case against Yonkers in the 1980s, the political maelstrom that resulted from the case, and the ramifications of the case on some of the citizens of Yonkers as they either moved into the new townhouses designed to integrate the city or prepared to make way for new neighbors. The book was well-written and serves as a solid history of a specific time and pla ...more

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Feb 07, 2016 Kevin McGuire rated it it was amazing

An amazing and inspiring story with relatable characters and heroes who are not perfect.

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Sep 19, 2015 Cwelshhans rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nook

Excellent non-fiction. Humanizing, thought-provoking, and intelligent.

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Feb 23, 2011 Erin rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club

Read in 3 sittings over a weekend. Completely engrossing and stays with you after you've finished. Interesting juxtaposition between Judge Sands in Yonkers and Judge Garrity in Boston - similar issues with different approaches. In the epilogue, Lisa Belkin provides some insight on her opinion of Judge Sands' ruling, noting his residence in an affluent, leafy, white Westchester suburb. Sands rightfully demanded desegregation in Yonkers, yet made a similar (and stronger) choice as those east side ...more

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Feb 01, 2016 Lewis Brown rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great, only thing I didn't like about this was David Simon's foreword.

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Jan 02, 2016 April Smith rated it it was amazing

Yonkers is not a nice place.

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Sep 22, 2015 Iris Vargas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Still relevant today

This was a great read, informative, insightful. I's recommend this book to anyone interested in racism, discrimination or how difficult it can be to do the right thing.

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Sep 15, 2014 Simon rated it really liked it

4.5 stars

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“Courage' isn't the kind of word you use to describe yourself, Nick, even if we both know it's true. That only works if other people are saying it.” — 0 likes

“There is nothing more nerve-wracking than being inches from a lifelong goal.” — 0 likes

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