Housing First! by Brad Lander

George Locker is correct in his description of the housing crisis.  The lack of decent, affordable housing undermines quality education, public health, and economic growth.  A recent study shows that children living in overcrowded housing are 10% less likely to graduate from high school1 .  Our teachers, firefighters, and nurses can’t afford to live here.  We are building a city that is neither sustainable nor equitable.
 Unfortunately, Locker’s proposal to build new public housing is a non-starter in the current political climate.  While it is true that the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the best-run large public housing authority in the country, public housing has been so thoroughly discredited that no elected official would take this seriously.  And while NYCHA residents do not experience the wretched conditions of many public housing developments around the country, many would move at the first chance if there were something else they could afford.
 Still, it is possible to make a real difference.  Housing First!, a broad coalition of New Yorkers from community, advocacy, labor, and even business institutions have come together to call for a ten-year investment of $10 billion to create 100,000 new units and preserve many more.  Meeting this need will require a substantial commitment of city capital, including earmarking permanent funding (e.g. surpluses from Battery Park City, World Trade Center taxes, tax lien sales, and progressive tax increment financing).  And it will — as Locker notes — require significant planning, zoning changes, and environmental remediation.

Housing First! calls for balanced programs — rental, cooperative, and home ownership — to address the needs of the homeless and of low-, moderate-, and middle-income households.  NYC has an array of affordable housing developers — including many not-for-profit, community-based development organizations — who have a track record of producing decent, contextual affordable housing that has helped bring life to many communities which were abandoned twenty years ago.
 Locker ignores one other problem with NYCHA.  None of its construction is done with union labor, and there are massive violations of prevailing wage laws and obligations to hire local residents. There is a role for labor unions in building affordable housing.  Unions could use their pension funds to help provide some of the financing needed to meet the overwhelming need.  This is already being done on projects around the country (www.aflcio-hit.com).  In exchange, unions could require that housing built with their pension funds be built with union labor and could insure that low-income residents get hired as apprentices.

Such a program, only one piece of the broader effort, would help to build an alliance between labor unions and community organizations in communities of color,  an alliance which we will need to solve this crisis, and many others.

Notes:
1 “Housing & Schooling,” The Urban Prospect, Citizens Housing & Planning Council, New York City, 2001.

Housing, Fast! by George Locker

NYC’s housing crisis requires a solution on a scale equal to the problem.

After decades of inattention, the City today needs some 560,000 more housing units than it has.  Moreover, each year 15,000 units of housing are lost from the inventory, while population growth creates a demand for 3,500 more.

It is evident that unless new construction is undertaken at a substantial rate— not 10,000 units/year — the housing supply will continue to shrink and rents will continue to rise.  On the other hand, to eliminate the housing shortage, we must build about 52,000 units a year (the rate in the mid-60’s), for fifteen years.

Why do we need NYCHA?  For its considerable and time-tested legal authority, and for its long experience building and managing affordable housing on a large scale.  NYC’s massive housing shortage cannot be addressed without such an entity.  The land issues alone — cost and assembly — would doom any piecemeal approach from the outset.

Given adequate resources, proper leadership and some inspiration from the universities, NYCHA is uniquely equipped to build and maintain (at prevailing wages) affordable and desirable multi-class communities.

Let us aim high.  Progressives, community activists and labor unions should settle for nothing less than a housing construction program that would transform New York into a high-wage, low-rent town.

Let’s Build Housing, But Preserve The Affordable Housing We Have by Michael McKee (web exclusive)

The hope for new housing is encouraging, but it’s not enough. We must also preserve the affordable housing we have, which is disappearing at an alarming rate. Rent-stabilized apartments are being lost every time there is a vacancy because of a vacancy decontrol amendment pushed through the City Council in 1994 by Speaker Peter Vallone.

In most of Manhattan and in parts of Queens and Brooklyn, there’s no longer any such thing as a rent-regulated apartment coming back on the market after a period of vacancy. According to the 1999 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, the city lost 24,000 rent-regulated apartments between 1996 and 1999—two percent of the regulated stock. The apartments didn’t disappear—they simply became unaffordable to anyone who can’t pay a market rent. The current loss rate is likely to double.

Vallone’s decontrol amendment must be repealed, along with additional weakening amendments from 1997 for which we can thank George Pataki and Joe Bruno. Otherwise we will continue to watch helplessly as our rent regulation system is destroyed before our eyes.

Other necessary changes in the rent laws include making rent hikes for Major Capital Improvements, now permanent, into temporary surcharges; extending rent and eviction protections to buildings with fewer than six units; reforming the chaotic rent guidelines board process; enhanced protections for elderly and disabled tenants; protections from “owner use” evictions, and repeal of the Urstadt Law.

It’s not just rent-regulated units we’re losing. The continued loss of Mitchell-Lama housing to landlord buy-outs and Section 8 housing to landlord opt-outs contributes to the hemorrhage. State and federal laws need to be changed to preserve these irreplaceable affordable homes.

By January of 2003, rent regulations will once again consume state government—the rent laws are due to “sunset” that June.  The real estate lobby will demand more crippling changes in return for another extension of the laws.

The threat next time will be greater than in 1997, because the sunset comes six months after the gubernatorial election. Therefore, it is imperative that we pressure the candidates for Governor to commit to a tenant position before the election.

Tenants & Neighbors is in a bulking-up process to prepare for this fight. We’re building our membership and reaching out to labor unions for help. 

Let’s hope the momentum for new housing production will build, and that in a few years we will see an increase in housing supply. But it won’t happen overnight. Housing requires lots of money to build, yes, but also lots of time. And no new housing program will ever produce as much housing as we are now losing.

George Locker Responds (web exclusive)

Rent regulations have their origin in scarcity and price controls.  Given the huge shortages, the declining supply, and the worldwide demand for apartments in NYC, we need all the rent regulations we can get.

Send us your responses. We may print them in an upcoming forum.