Community gardens in New York City  Community gardens in New York City are urban green spaces created and cared for by city residents who are stewards of underutilized land. There are over 550 community gardens on city property, over 745 school gardens, over 100 gardens in land trusts, and over 700 gardens at public housing developments throughout New York City. In the 1960s and 1970s, New York City was experiencing a fiscal crisis and disinvestment resulting from white flight, bankruptcy, and corruption. Buildings were abandoned or allowed to fall into disrepair throughout the city. The city then claimed these properties when they defaulted on their loans and were often destroyed through demolition, decay and arson which led to vacant spaces gardens would later claim. During this time, roughly 11,000 vacant lots transferred from private to public ownership. Neighborhood residents began to create gardens on this vacant land which weren't city sanctioned and without government assistance. In 1962, one of the first gardens, El Jardín del Paraíso, was formed by Puerto Rican residents in the Lower East Side. In 1962, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) started the Citywide Resident Garden Competition, providing resources to NYCHA residents to see who could grow the best gardens. The program has since been renamed as the Garden and Greening Awards Competition. In 1973, the Green Guerillas were formed and begun to throw “seed green-aids” to beautify vacant lots. They eventually turned their attention to a vacant lot at Bowery and Houston Streets which became the Liz Christy Garden, the first city-sanctioned community garden in 1974. After investing time as squatters, gardeners advocated for formal recognition and the Department of Parks and Recreation created GreenThumb in 1978 to provide resources and license community gardens. By 1985, there was an estimated 1,000 gardens in New York City. In 1994, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was inducted after running on a platform of fighting crime, reducing homelessness, and privatizing public land and services. After declaring a housing crisis, Giuliani supported developing vacant lots, including ones with gardens citing the licenses with the gardens established them as interim-use spaces and would eventually be developed into housing. A majority of the proposed units were market rate, with only 20 percent available for moderate-income households. This creating a controversy between the administration and city-greening advocates. In January 1999, 114 gardens were put up for public auction without input from the community usually provided by the Urban Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).