NEW YORK CITY’S public housing projects—which many people claim they can identify at sight, but which they often confuse with partially subsidized “middle-income” cooperatives and rental complexes, and sometimes even with self-styled “luxury” developments--- contain about 155,000 families. No one knows how many people this amounts to, but a fair guess puts the number at 600,000. This makes the publicly-housed population of New York City greater than the total population of any other city in the state.