Yonkers's Ongoing Housing Fight

For the last two weeks, HBO’s six-episode social drama Show Me a Hero spotlighted a topic that doesn’t tend to get a lot of attention from Hollywood: affordable-housing policy. Co-written by David Simon, the showrunner of The Wire, Show Me a Hero documents the polarizing conflict over the court-ordered construction of 200 units of public housing on the predominantly white east side of Yonkers. While—hey, spoiler alert—the series ended in tragedy for Nick Wasicsko, the young mayor portrayed by Oscar Isaac, it closes in triumph for the residents lucky enough to win one of the new units. But what is the fate of Yonkers, and its public housing, more than 20 years after the court case and subsequent political battle that Show Me a Hero dramatized?