LEFRAK CITY

LeFrak City is a large housing development in Queens, built in the mid-1960s for working and middle-class families. The LeFrak strategy of “total facilities for total living” meant bringing recreational, shopping, transportation, and other services to the residents. At the beginning, this strategy was a success. In the 1980s LeFrak City became known for drugs and gang violence, but times changed again in the 1990s. The complex of twenty eighteen-story buildings currently houses over 14,000 people from different backgrounds.