New York

At first glance, it appears that New Yorkers are closer to having a recognized right to adequate housing than many of their urban American counterparts.  The New York State Constitution obligates the state to provide “aid, care and support [to] the needy.” Using this constitutional provision, housing rights advocacy, including progressive lawyering, has established case law and legal precedent that ultimately resulted in a right to emergency shelter for single men, women, and families.
With respect to affordable housing protections, New York City has the longest running rent control program in the country.  It has been in place since 1943.  Approximately 60% of all rental housing in the city is rent regulated with over 1 million of these units falling under the rent stabilization program.  In addition to an array of other affordable housing options provided by both the city and state, New York City boasts the largest and what many experts consider to be the most successful public housing program in the United States.

Indeed, New Yorkers—when compared to other urban dwellers—have a rather developed legal and institutional housing apparatus at their disposal.  Yet, the current housing crisis in New York City serves as a vivid reminder that it takes far more than laws and institutions to realize the right to adequate housing.

Homelessness

The right to shelter remains crucial in a city where many New Yorkers cannot afford even below market rents.  Yet, the dire need for affordable housing has not stopped city officials from attempts at dismantling the very laws aimed at protecting homeless residents.

In the 1990s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani waged several attacks against the right to shelter and ultimately succeeded in attaching stringent eligibility requirements for those applying for emergency shelter, including narrowing the definition of emergency. The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) perpetually denies residents shelter according to these standards, creating the necessity for an even more temporary-style of shelter called “immediate needs shelter.” Upon being denied emergency shelter, individuals can re-apply and obtain “immediate needs shelter” for the 7 to 10 days during which they are waiting to receive the determination of their second attempt at getting emergency shelter.  Mayor Bloomberg, for his part, has contributed to the dismantling of shelter for homeless residents by placing restrictions on “immediate needs shelter”.  With the amount of homeless residents rejected for both emergency shelter and “immediate needs shelter” increasing, DHS has resorted to giving homeless New Yorkers illegal “overnight” stays in off-site locations as well as using non-profit organizations to “divert” people from emergency shelter to failing homeless housing programs.

All of these homeless programs – from Housing Stability Plus (HSP) to the so-called Advantage programs – are based on the flawed idea that homeless people can lift themselves out of poverty with just a few years of hard work and a city rental subsidy.

To make matters worse, the city’s flawed approach to homelessness is coupled with reluctance, if not outright refusal, to efficiently use available resources to house the poor. A recent study by Picture the Homeless (PTH) reveals that there may be enough vacant lots and buildings in Manhattan alone to house both the entire homeless population in the shelter system and on the street.  PTH points out that many city policies: “encourage landlords to keep their buildings empty” and highlights that the 1997 Reform Act of the Rent Stabilization code, “broadened the scope of renovations that landlords could do to move a building out of rent stabilization which would mean that in the process of opening up a sealed building, all units would almost automatically come out of stabilization.” In other words, speculating landlords are keeping their properties vacant until the conditions – created by private sector development and gentrification—make it profitable to significantly rehabilitate their buildings so that they can legally deregulate all housing units and rent them at much higher market rate rents.

Hence, as city officials make it increasingly difficult to enter the shelter system they are pushing out current shelter residents via ineffective rental subsidy programs.  At the same time, housing policy allows and at times actively encourages speculative landlords to keep properties empty rather than provide adequate housing for those most in need.

Public Housing

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) reports that as of June 30, 2008 it provides housing to over 173,808 families and 403,535 “authorized residents.” Of the 343 public housing developments NYCHA manages, 16 were constructed by New York State and another five were built by New York City.   Over the years the city and state have slowly de-funded their contributions to the NYCHA budget – $25 million and $62 million respectively – leaving the already meager federal funds to foot the bill. The federal funds are funneled to NYCHA via the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which has been grossly under-funded for three decades.  In 1978, the HUD budget was over $80 billion, however, by 1983, President Reagan had reduced HUD funding to just $18.2 billion.  The 2008 HUD budget currently stands at $35.2 billion.
Faced with the impossibility of satisfying the enormous demand for housing with inadequate budgets, many Housing Authorities (HAs) throughout the country, like NYCHA, address this crisis by closing community centers that provide job training and daycare, developing stringent residency and applications requirements (such as evicting residents for minor offenses and denying others housing based on credit checks), and delaying the application process for months or even years via waiting lists. In fact, there are over 130,000 families currently on the waiting list for NYCHA housing.

While NYCHA is not demolishing its developments at the same pace and scale as HAs in other cities, public housing units in New York City have been lost. In 2006, Markham Gardens a 360-unit public housing development on Staten Island was demolished.  Being built in its place and scheduled for completion by the end of 2008 is a new “green” building complex containing 240 apartments with rents ranging from $664 to $2066. Fewer than 80 of the 200 families displaced by this demolition will be returning to the new Markham Gardens site.

NYCHA currently faces a $200 million deficit and has already laid off some of its maintenance workers and is proposing to layoff another 190 union workers.  When these layoffs occur they do not only mean job losses, but also further cuts in maintenance services and continuing deterioration, threatening the physical plant, reputation, and livability of NYCHA communities. Such deterioration has led to injuries and even death due to broken elevators and other areas of disrepair.

Section 8

New York City landlords are finding it increasingly less appealing to participate in a variety of other subsidized housing programs – including Project Based Section 8 – as they stand to profit much more from the hot rental real estate market. In their policy brief, “Closing the Door: Accelerating Losses of New York City Subsidized Housing,” policy analysts Tom Waters and Victor Bach, state:

None of these subsidy programs is producing new affordable apartments any longer. Almost all of the units are now eligible to be removed from their subsidy programs because the original subsidy commitments have expired. As a result, the size of this vital affordable housing stock has nowhere to go but down.  Much of it is being lost as landlords exercise their option to remove buildings from subsidy programs.

In March 2008,  New York City housing activists and advocates projected the loss of 10,000 Project-Based Section 8 units.

Content provided by Vincent Villano.

New York Groups in the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights:

Coalition to Save Harlem
Concerned Citizens of Greater Harlem
FriendsOfMacombs.com
Friends of the Court, Friends of Public Housing Residents
Good Old Lower East Side
Northeast Regional Survivors Assembly
New York Solidarity Coalition for Katrina and Rita Survivors
Picture the Homeless
Public Housing Residents of the Lower East Side

Resources:

  • Human Rights and Housing Rights Groups Urge New York City Council to Vote Against the Rezoning of Harlem’s 125th Street >>>