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Charles V. Bagli of The New York Times, talks here to KGNU's Claudia Cragg about the collapse of America's biggest ever real estate deal.

In 2006, the Middle Income Lower Manhattan housing projects, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper were sold at competitive auction for $5.4 billion, a deal that has since fallen apart leaving the first-, second- and even third-generation families that lived there in residential jeopardy.

Caught, as they have been, between a real estate rock and hard place, the tenants and the estates themselves have come to exemplify the excesses of the housing boom at its very worse. However, as Bagli explains here, the reverberations not only continue to be felt today, but also represent the squeezing out of affordable properties in key metros, not only in New York, but potentially also in other cities around the US.

Bagli is a New York Times reporter who covers the intersection of politics and real estate. He has written about the sale of high-profile buildings, political contributions of the real estate industry, the battle to build a $2 billion dollar stadium for the Jets, bid rigging in the construction industry, payoffs at the tax assessor's office, and a Sutton Place co-op that turned public land into a private park. He has worked for the New York Observer, the Daily Record of Morristown, New Jersey, the Tampa Tribune and the Brooklyn Phoenix.  

At the end of the interview, a 2010 documentary now on YouTube by filmmaker and Huffington Post contributor, Sandi Bachom, is featured with many Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper residents.

Sandi Bachom Contact Details:

Twitter: @SandiBachom

Website: SandiBachom.com