One Housing Woe Gives Way to Another

[Kris]

December 21, 2003

One Housing Woe Gives Way to Another

By DAVID W. CHEN

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/20/nyregion/hous.xlarge2.jpg
The lobby of 262 Van Buren Street in Brooklyn in 1995. (Photograph by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development)

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/21/nyregion/hous.xlarge.jpg
The lobby of 262 Van Buren Street in Brooklyn in 2001. The city often takes over properties and sells them to owners who renovate them. (Photograph by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development)

It was the worst real-estate portfolio imaginable: ten thousand of New York City's most woebegone buildings, all of them in tax arrears, vacant, burned out or occupied by some of the city's poorest tenants in its most addled neighborhoods. A hundred thousand apartments held by a landlord with hardly any money for repairs and, it seemed, hardly any hope.

That reluctant landlord was the City of New York, which seized the buildings and empty lots in the 1970's and 80's from owners who were delinquent in paying taxes.

From the South Bronx to Central Brooklyn, this collection of scarred properties reconfigured the image of urban blight in America. On the windows of forsaken buildings lining the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the city pasted decals of potted plants and Venetian blinds in a half-baked beautification campaign. The blight was considered so dire, so irredeemable, that the city's top housing official once suggested that the South Bronx be abandoned.

But with little celebration or notice, the city has gradually whittled that sad inventory down by more than 95 percent, building by building, over four mayoral administrations, so that it now owns fewer than 800 buildings, containing 4,000 units. It has done so largely through huge capital investments in dozens of programs allocating money for repairs, encouraging new construction, promoting homeownership and working with development groups to take over and manage the housing.

For some, particularly the city officials, community groups and housing developers who made a leap of faith in addressing the problem, the transformation has been a stunning, unequivocal success. It stabilized neighborhoods. It oiled the economy. It improved the city's image and helped fuel the broader revitalization of New York.

For others, though, there is some regret about what might have been. While they do not question the effort's triumphs, they believe that the city could have been more creative and thoughtful — developing more units in the same space, for instance, or making sure that rents in redeveloped buildings remained low.

It is all the more regrettable, they say, now that homelessness is reaching record levels and once-forlorn neighborhoods are increasingly unaffordable for many New Yorkers.

Whether the city's campaign was a complete success or a missed opportunity, no one disputes the notion that New York finds itself at a crossroads as it confronts a new set of housing challenges without this inventory of city-owned property. As the portfolio dwindles, the city's challenge is shifting from rehabilitating housing and land to dealing with a shortage of both.

Those old buildings and vacant lots were such a staple of city life that officials regularly invoked their Latin nickname: "in rem," or "against the thing." The legal term technically referred to the city's possession of a building as collateral against a tax-delinquent owner, but soon became shorthand for the city's entire housing policy.

"You can't underestimate how important `in rem' was," said Irene Baldwin, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, which represents more than 100 community development groups. "This was the foundation that everything was built on. It was the lens you look through. And now, the conversation is all about how the `in rem' stock is gone, and what we do from here."

Since 1676, the city has had the right to seize control of dilapidated houses and offer them to owners who would renovate them, according to Richard Plunz's "A History of Housing in New York City" (Columbia University Press, 1990). But the city did not manage many buildings, officials say, until the last quarter of the 20th century, when its fiscal crisis, coupled with rising crime and declining population, contributed to a surge of abandonment.

As the number of tax delinquencies escalated, the city put more pressure on landlords to make their payments, slicing the grace period for foreclosure to one year from three. But the delinquencies continued, and the city began to stockpile undesirable buildings.

It was not until the mid-1980's, when the financial crisis had abated and the city's bond rating had improved, that Mayor Edward I. Koch was able to initiate the most pivotal step: a 10-year, $5 billion capital program.

In all, the city developed a dozen or so core programs to deal with its stock of troubled buildings. Many focused on providing financing for repairs and soliciting responsible owners from among developers, newly formed tenant cooperatives and community development groups with little experience in housing.

In 1990, Community Board 10 in central Harlem had by far the greatest number of "in rem" buildings — 1,123. Other places with an inordinate number of the buildings were Bedford-Stuyvesant, western Harlem, the South Bronx, East New York, Bushwick and South Jamaica.

In many cases, the city held on to these properties for two decades or more because of financial and bureaucratic hurdles — becoming a landlord that many residents said was even worse than the delinquent ones. While housing officials say that property managers did their heroic best to maintain basic services despite daunting conditions, others say the city did a shoddy job of maintenance, security and management.

That changed during the Giuliani administration, particularly after the passage of Local Law 37 in 1996. The law gave the city the authority to sell the liens on a property that was in decent shape to a tax collection agency. But for the most run-down properties, the city was given the power to transfer development rights to another party.

Neighborhoods Benefited

The number of vacant lots in the city dropped by 21 percent between 1985 and 1996, according to research by Alex Schwartz, an associate professor of urban policy and management at New School University.

Property values have climbed as well, according to research soon to be published by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University.

Before the city built or rehabilitated vacant properties, the sales price of a house or apartment building within 500 feet of one was 20 percent less than the price of others elsewhere in the same census tract. But one year after the city finished the rehabilitation project, that difference had been sliced in half, to 10 percent.

Take what happened in the Mount Eden section of the Bronx. In the late 1980's, it resembled a war zone, rife with crime and drug dealers. By the mid-90's, it had undergone a renaissance, because of the efforts of the Settlement Housing Fund, a nonprofit group that built a 16-building, 995-unit complex called New Settlement Houses for low- and moderate-income families.

One neighbor, Marilyn Stroud, said the impact of New Settlement was beyond comprehension. In the 70's, she said, "My children would go to school and come back home, and that was it. My kids knew nobody. I knew nobody. But all the parents get to know each other now. And I can go out at 2 or 3 in the morning, to go the store, and get some milk. I'm amazed."

As is the case in Mount Eden, "in rem" buildings are becoming harder to spot these days. By June, the city says, there will be fewer than 800 of them, containing fewer than 4,000 units, most in Brooklyn and upper Manhattan. And by 2011, the city is expected to sell off its entire inventory, according to a recent report by the city's Independent Budget Office.

"I'm incredibly proud of it," said Jerry J. Salama, a deputy commissioner of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development in the mid-90's.

Given the safeguards now in place, Mr. Salama said, it is highly improbable that the city will ever again see widespread housing abandonment. And yet, a new housing survey to be released this week by New York University reports that long-term delinquencies on property taxes jumped by roughly one-third during 2002, after years of steady decline.

It might be a blip, said Michael H. Schill, a law professor, director of the Furman Center and co-author of the study. Or it might be "an early warning that we have of weakness in the housing stock" that could be worsened by the city's recent property tax increase, rising insurance costs and other factors.

Priorities Questioned

Whatever happens, many housing advocates think the city squandered an opportunity to develop a response to the housing crunch.

Harold DeRienzo, the president of the Parodneck Foundation and the founding executive director of the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, a South Bronx nonprofit group that renovated more than 2,000 apartments, said the city was shortsighted in trying to "recreate the suburbs" in places like the South Bronx by emphasizing small, boutique projects like town houses or two-family homes, instead of denser low-rise apartments. It amounted to what he said was "underbuilding on our vacant land, especially considering that the infrastructure was already in place: the subway, the sewer, the utilities."

Now the biggest housing priority, city officials and housing advocates say, is dealing with the scarcity of remaining land.

Last year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a $3 billion program to repair, preserve and build 65,000 units of housing, and suggested that the city squeeze as much housing as possible out of properties held by other agencies, like the city Public Housing Authority. He has also expressed a keen interest in rezoning and brownfields development. Jerilyn Perine, the city's commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development, said the mayor's plan was an attempt to invent some "new machinery" to address the end of the "in rem" inventory. It promises to be difficult, she said, and there will no doubt be missteps.

But she is always humbled and inspired, she said, by how much has changed.

"I think you could get on the subway today and you could get out at East Tremont, you could walk on the street, have lunch, walk in the park, watch children come and go from school," she said. "In '78, trust me, you couldn't have done that."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/21/nyregion/hous.large.jpg
Marilyn Stroud in front of 1512 Townsend Avenue in the Bronx, holding a photo of the same building before housing revitalization efforts in the area got under way.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Before & After Photo Gallery (http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/about-us/photo-gallery.html)

www.newhousingny.com

[TLOZ Link5]

Note that there is still graffiti on the marble panelling in that Brooklyn building.

[Kris]

December 22, 2003

Assemblyman Says the City's Housing Authority Keeps Too Many Apartments Vacant

By DAVID W. CHEN

The New York City Housing Authority is the biggest and, by many accounts, the best-run public housing agency in the country. Its 2,700 buildings have held up reasonably well. Few of its 419,000 residents move out. And there are more than 146,000 people ready to move in, determined to wait the decade or so that it can often take for an apartment to open up.

But now, a state assemblyman from Manhattan is criticizing the housing authority for holding several thousand vacant apartments, some for as long as 12 years.

In a report to be released today, the assemblyman, Scott Stringer, found that the authority's own data showed that there were more than 5,300 vacant apartments, or 3 percent of the entire inventory, with more than a third being in Manhattan.

Nearly 3,500 of those apartments have been vacant for more than one year. More than 900 have been empty for more than five years. And 88 have been empty for more than nine.

"There was never a sense that there would be vacancies in public housing, because what people bemoaned was the doubling up, the tripling up, and waiting list of over 140,000 people," said Mr. Stringer, who, after receiving the data through a Freedom of Information Act request, discussed his preliminary findings with The New York Times. "So the fact that there are thousands of vacant apartments in public housing that have been vacant for many years is alarming."

But the housing authority says that the numbers are not nearly as bad as Mr. Stringer might presume.

In fact, the housing authority says a few thousand apartments are always empty, either because they are in the middle of renovations, or being saved for emergencies in which families need immediate shelter.

Housing officials also say that some apartments end up being vacant for more than a year because of the deliberate, meticulous and sometimes frustrating nature of government contracts.

"When Scott Stringer comes along and says there are vacancies, well, yes there are vacancies," said Howard Marder, a spokesman for the housing authority. "But the vacancies exist because of modernization work, and when it's all done, people will move back."

The jousting over vacancies comes at a time city officials and housing groups are desperate to create as much housing for low- and moderate-income families as possible in a city with record homelessness and a shortage of housing or land.

Indeed, last year Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in declaring that the city faced a housing crisis, announced a plan to repair, preserve and build 65,000 units of housing — a plan that would be the most ambitious since the Koch administration.

The vacancy rate for New York City's entire inventory of 2 million rental apartments was 2.9 percent in 2002. In 1999, it was 3.2 percent.

The vacancy rate for public housing has been comparably low, as well, though it did increase to 3.4 percent in 2002 from 1.9 percent in 1999.

A decade ago, the housing authority would typically have perhaps 1,000 or so units that would stay vacant for more than a few months or even a year because of rehabilitation needs, said J. Phillip Thompson, a former acting general manager of the authority during the Dinkins administration. But in recent years, that number has climbed to 3,000 or 4,000. And according to Mr. Stringer, that means that the housing authority is losing anywhere from $10 million to $30 million each year in potential rent.

"I was really shocked by the data," said Mr. Thompson, who is now an associate professor of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Stringer speculated that the increase might have to do with poor management, rather than any plan to privatize housing. And Mr. Marder, from the housing authority, was emphatic in saying that there were no such privatization plans. "Period. End of story," he said.

Still, Mr. Stringer said that the borough-by-borough breakdown of vacancies was striking in many ways. Manhattan had the greatest number of vacancies of more than a year, with 1,749. The Bronx had the highest percentage of vacancies of more than five years, with 43 percent.

The development with the greatest number of vacancies was Vladeck I, on Madison Street in Manhattan, with 456, with some apartments empty as far back as 1996. Next was Prospect Plaza, in Brooklyn, with 266, with some vacant back to 1997, according to Mr. Stringer.

In response, Mr. Marder said that the Prospect Plaza project was one that was ambitious, and complicated, in scale because it involved funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And for other projects, there was another federal component: a 1996 agreement with HUD in which the housing authority agreed to make approximately 9,000 units accessible to people with physical disabilities. That conversion typically takes four or five years to complete.

It sometimes takes one or two years to find enough vacant apartments to reach a critical mass to make renovations economical, Mr. Marder said, excluding any complications due to funding or contracting.

"This isn't a TV show where you've got a problem and a solution in 30 minutes," Mr. Marder said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

January 14, 2004

10,000 Housing Units Coming, Mayor Says

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that 10,000 units of new or refurbished housing - the first of 65,000 units he has promised will be built or rehabilitated over the next five years - were now under development, and that his administration would offer a loan program in cooperation with four commercial banks to develop thousands more abandoned or decaying properties around the city over the next few years.

Within the next year, about 2,000 units will be ready for occupancy as part of Mr. Bloomberg's housing plan, the most aggressive of its kind since the Koch administration. Just over a year ago, Mr. Bloomberg vowed to build or rehabilitate 65,000 units of housing, much of it for poor or middle-income New Yorkers. Of the first 10,000 units, roughly half will be brand-new units, said a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the agency in charge of the program.

While Mr. Bloomberg has staked his mayoralty on the success of his education policies, his housing proposals are almost nearly as aggressive and difficult to achieve. The mayor's aides say his personal interest in housing issues rivals that for the city's schools.

"Clearly we are seeing housing as a top priority for the city," said Joseph Weisbord, staff director of Housing First!, a group that advocates for housing for poor and middle-class people. "The question is, as the city's economic situation begins to improve, how do we build on their commitment?"

Mr. Weisbord and others have called for a larger program, but Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that he preferred something smaller but attainable rather than a lofty goal the administration could not meet.

Because the city is not in a fiscal position to build many housing units, the Bloomberg administration is trying to encourage private development by changing zoning laws, streamlining the building code and devising plans to attract investors to e parts of the city that have been abandoned or forgotten.

Under the plan announced yesterday, the city will provide $200 million in low-interest loans for developers to acquire and assess land for housing development, generally on abandoned manufacturing sites and waterfront areas that are being rezoned for housing. Four city banks -- Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase - have committed the first $40 million toward those loans, and the city has put forward $8 million through the Housing Development Corporation to guarantee them.

"Housing is really one of the keys along with jobs and great quality of life that gives New York City a future," Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday.

Mr. Bloomberg was able to attract major banks to his housing plan by showing a willingness to get behind projects in which developers have a chance to make money, Seth H. Waugh, the chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank, said yesterday.

"I think the mayor is very commercially minded," said Mr. Waugh in an interview. "And he has cut through a lot of stuff that other people get backed up on because he comes from the corporate world. From our perspective, the willingness has always been there but not the program. To have it be sustainable you have to have it be somewhat commercial. We hope we don't lose money but we might."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/communitydevelopment/20040116/20/840

Is Washington Looking To Get Out Of Subsidizing Low-Income Housing In NYC?

by Brad Lander

January 01, 2004

This past summer, 75 Bronx families in the Pueblo de Mayaguez housing development were heartened when help seemed to be on the way. After many years of deteriorating building conditions, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was planning to take the three buildings away from its owner through foreclosure. Tenants asked for the right to buy the buildings as a cooperative.

Instead, the federal agency sold the buildings at public auction for $4.7 million to a landlord with over 1,000 violations on the 11 small buildings he already owns. The apartments will no longer be preserved as guaranteed affordable housing, and the new owner will face less scrutiny.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development turned down the tenants' request even though New York's local housing agencies supported their bid, supposedly because the city and the tenants expressed their interest too late. But advocates claim that the federal agency allowed an even later bid in Newark, and that Dallas and Boston have received warmer treatment.

New York City may get the cold shoulder again in three additional developments in Brooklyn and Harlem that are facing foreclosure. Residents of these building are now scrambling to put together a proposal that the city can take to the federal agency. But they fear that there will be a repeat of what happened at Pueblo de Mayaguez -- the agency will again take the properties to auction and sell them to the highest bidder, without taking the purchaser's track record into account. "We were in shock when we received the notice of foreclosure," says long-time tenant N. Abdullah of Gates-Patchen Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant. "We want to have a say in who comes in to purchase. But it seems as if HUD is trying to push us out of the building, to get the building off their hands. If we were facing eviction for non-payment, we would at least have our day in court. But HUD doesn't want to listen to us, or even tell us what is going on."

If this is a pattern, it could put at risk 20,000 apartments of federally-subsidized affordable housing for low-income families, primarily in high-poverty neighborhoods in central Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Staten Island.

Little attention has been paid to this growing problem of "fail-outs," when landlord neglect and deteriorating building conditions lead the federal housing agency to cancel its subsidy. The risk of "fail-outs" has grown in part because the Department of Housing and Urban Development has gotten more aggressive in its approach to distressed projects in the past year, supposedly, according to an agency memo, in order to "ensure the properties are decent, safe, sanitary, and in good repair."

But advocates see a more nefarious purpose. Noting that one of the Bush Administration's top strategies for reining in costs in the federal budget is reportedly to shed the cost of housing subsidy contracts , they suspect that Washington is looking to balance the budget at the expense of vulnerable tenants, in low-income neighborhoods, in a state that President George Bush has little hope of winning when he runs for re-election. "HUD has allowed these owners to keep the subsidy funds - misused, misappropriated - for years, letting them walk away with the money" says Bronx Legal Aid attorney Ellen Davidson. "Why not make owners reinvest in the property?"

Tenants fear that foreclosure could result in a new slumlord owning their building, and the cancellation of their building's subsidy contract with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. When that happens, many income-eligible tenants receive housing subsidy vouchers, which they can continue to use in the building or take elsewhere. However, for a variety of reasons, many are screened out and do not receive vouchers. In addition, the entire voucher program is now threatened with reduction or elimination almost every year during federal budget negotiations.

Many tenants in these buildings are eager for change after years of neglect. "Our building has been allowed to literally fall apart," says Kim Smith, a tenant leader at Ennis Francis Houses in Harlem, "with no heat, no hot water, mold and mildew, and part of the plumbing system totally collapsed. We want the current management out." But they also want a say in what happens. "We are afraid that any slumlord could come along and buy our building. In the midst of this second Harlem Renaissance, can we please both get renovations and keep our subsidies?"

There are some bright spots, which show how "fail-outs" can become a win/win that preserves affordable housing and strengthens communities. Working with the 465 families at the Dr. Betty Shabazz Complex and Medgar Evers Houses in Brooklyn, a number of non-profit agencies acquired the two developments to preserve them as affordable housing - owned by a newly created not-for-profit that includes the tenants. Residents at the Diego-Beekman properties in the South Bronx are working on a similar workout.

But a real solution would take comprehensive and coordinated action. In the past, the city has not generally been eager to take the lead in this effort, since they do not want to foot the bill if the federal government withdraws funding. But now the city is seeking to arrange successful workouts on several properties, and tenants say they are waiting for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to meet them halfway.

New York City's housing developers, advocates, and community organizations have thrived despite a massive reduction in federal resources for building affordable housing over the past 30 years. Few suspected that they would need to fight for the preservation of federally-subsidized affordable housing in the city's lowest income neighborhoods.

[Kris]

January 30, 2004

New Housing Spurt Sweeping Boroughs Outside Manhattan

By JOSH BARBANEL

Though the construction of luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan has commanded far more attention, new census data show that New York City is in the midst of a more surprising housing boom that extends across much of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, including neighborhoods where developers once feared to tread without large government subsidies.

The number of permits for new housing units in the city rose last year to the highest level in 30 years, while the total was stable or fell across the rest of the metropolitan area. City planners say those figures, released this week by the Census Bureau, document a new wave of interest and investment in middle-class neighborhoods outside Manhattan.

It has been decades since developers showed much appetite for building private, unsubsidized middle-income housing in the city, largely because it was so hard to turn a profit. Now, though, the construction boom stretches from the South Bronx, where a surge in privately financed development has led to a tripling of land prices, to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, where houses are being torn down and replaced by six- and seven-story rental buildings and condominiums for an influx of recent immigrants, prompting calls for new zoning restrictions.

"This is market-driven, and the market is clearly making a vote of confidence in the city as a place to invest," said Eric Kober, director of housing, economic and infrastructure planning at the City Planning Department. "We call it reverse urban sprawl."

The number of new-home permits issued by the city has been rising strongly since the late 1990's, and still lags way behind the rising demand for housing as the city's population grows. The census figures are striking: Last year, builders obtained permits for 21,218 new privately owned apartments and houses, more than in any year since 1973, though far fewer than during the construction boom of the early 1960's.

The number of new homes approved rose by 15 percent from the year before, even though the number in Manhattan fell slightly for the second year in a row. In the last five years, the greatest increases both in numbers and percentages have occurred in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.

Developers and planners say the trend is driven by several forces, like increased demand, lower crime rates and better kept neighborhoods. Low interest rates have cut building costs and have expanded the pool of people who can afford homes enough to include recent immigrants.

Much of the new development outside Manhattan has involved smaller projects: one- and two-family houses and small apartment buildings that can be built more cheaply than steel-trussed Manhattan high-rises, in part because they often use less expensive nonunion labor. Some builders are immigrants who have recently made the transition from contractors to developers, according to builders and planners.

The increased development in the city is taking place as new home construction in the rest of the metropolitan area — which includes portions of New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania — is stable or falling slightly, despite rising home prices and the lowest interest rates in a generation. Throughout the region, the number of jobs has grown faster than new homes have been built, leading planners to worry that a housing shortage could hurt economic growth.

According to the Census Bureau figures, the total of new home construction in 2000 through 2003 rose 77 percent in New York City over the previous four years, while it increased by 2.4 percent in the rest of the metropolitan area. The city's share of new-home permits rose to 32 percent from 21 percent. Outside the city, the number of new homes approved last year — 37,180 — was slightly lower than in the year before, and remained 15 percent below the peak year of 2000.

Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Planning Association, an independent planning group, said the permits data reflected two trends. Many outer suburbs are "pulling up the drawbridge" out of concern for overburdened schools and services, he said, and rezoning to require larger lots or converting residential lots for commercial and industrial development.

At the same time, he said, Manhattan "has run out of neighborhoods below 110th Street to revitalize." So development has spread beyond there and the brownstone neighborhoods of Brooklyn, to other Brooklyn neighborhoods, Queens and even the Bronx, which has long lagged behind the rest of the city economically. With housing prices in the suburbs climbing ever higher, many families looking to buy their first home are staying in the city.

"The Bronx is becoming once again what it was for most of the 20th century, a center for middle-class families and working families with kids," Mr. Yaro said. "It's got good bones — good parks and good transit."

Development could slow, however, if interest rates rise sharply, land prices jump or denser housing leads to widespread zoning restrictions.

Joshua D. Weissman, the treasurer of the Jackson Development Group, has watched the boom but sees some risks ahead. Last year, his company completed 70 homes on 15 sites, typically in two- and three-family houses on vacant lots in the South Bronx, that are being marketed at about $450,000 per house, and is planning to build and sell 100 more units this year. The houses were built without special government subsidies or land provided by the city, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago, he said.

"We had one lot on 180th Street and Hughes Avenue," he said, "a corner lot full of cars and tires and garbage. It was terrible. We went in there and built four houses, and two houses over another company was building as well."

He said the vacant lots the company has relied on, which are often illegal parking lots on the sites of buildings burned out and torn down during the decline of the South Bronx, were getting harder to find because prices have tripled since 1999. The nationwide housing boom has raised the prices of construction supplies like plywood and metal studs; the cost of wood flooring has risen 20 percent, he said.

Development in Manhattan declined only slightly last year, according to the census figures, as the number of new homes approved fell by 175 from a year earlier, to about 17 percent below the peak of 6,109 in 2001, although real estate industry officials note that those numbers excluded projects in which downtown office buildings are being converted to housing.

From 1985 to 2001, there were more than two Manhattan homes approved for every home approved in Brooklyn, the city's most populous borough. Last year, though, there were more new homes approved in Brooklyn than in Manhattan, 6,054 to 5,232.

R. Randy Lee, a developer and chairman of the Building Industry Association of New York, said low interest rates were driving the resurgence of construction for the middle class. In the early 1990's, he said, he built subsidized houses in the Bronx that were affordable to families earning $30,000 to $40,000 a year, but as costs rose, minimum incomes rose to as much as $75,000 or $80,000. But as interest rates have fallen in the last few years, reducing monthly mortgage payments, minimum incomes have fallen again to where they were in the early 1990's.

"As the immigrant population continues to expand, there are a lot of first-generation immigrant buyers," he said. "People who have green cards and jobs are strong buyers for homes."

Many developers attribute the resurgence to city housing programs, which have provided subsidies and city-owned land and buildings for renovation and new construction of housing. But as the city develops plans for its last remaining properties, the number of new apartments and projects begun has started to decline, and the momentum has shifted to private developers.

"Their ability to lead the market has diminished," Mr. Lee said of city housing programs. "But by giving those neighborhoods a kick-start, they created an atmosphere where private sites could be developed."

Contributing to the boom is a rising city population, which grew by 900,000 between 1980 and 2000, and an additional 84,000 through July 2002, according to census data. Mr. Kober said city demographers believe that the population has continued to rise since then, in part because of continued immigration.

At the same time, unlike many suburban communities, New York City has a large reserve of unused building rights, since, under a 1961 zoning resolution, many neighborhoods outside Manhattan are zoned for far denser development than the single-family homes already there.

But as developers take advantage of these zoning rights, tearing down homes to build bigger or taller buildings, they face growing opposition. The city is studying proposals to limit the development of six- and seven-story buildings on low-rise streets in Bensonhurst, and has recently restricted building rights in most residential neighborhoods on Staten Island.

One result of that zoning change, which took effect in December, can be seen in the building permit data. In both October and November, according to Building Department data, twice as many permits were issued as in September, as some developers rushed to begin construction before the change took effect.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Gulcrapek]

This is great and all, but most of the new housing is absolutely disgusting and some blatantly cheap. I remember last year a 7 story building under construction in Bensonhurst collapsed in on itself before it was finished. Most of the new buildings are bland, boxy structures that have no architectural merit whatsoever and have the potential to ruin a streetscape.

[Kris]

New Housing New York Competition Winners (http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature129.htm)

[billyblancoNYC]

Does anyone know where these sites acutally are in Manhattan, BK, and Queens?

[Kris]

February 15, 2004

In a Brooklyn Boom, a Patchwork of Housing

By ANDY NEWMAN

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/02/15/nyregion/brooklyn.xlarge.jpg
New housing coming on the market in Brooklyn echoes the borough's old patchwork of styles, sizes and prices: the Fountains at Spring Creek, a low-income apartment complex.

The signs of Brooklyn's building boom are scattered across the borough, and they are not hard to read.

"Brand New Two-Family Homes - Locations Include East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant," blares one sign on Pitkin Avenue. "Now Offering for Sale Luxury Two-Family Waterview Homes, Granite Kitchen," says another, along the quiet East Mill Basin channel. "Another Job Done by S & S Developers," says a third, in south Williamsburg.

These announcements, and the bricks and mortar they represent, are going up faster in Brooklyn than anywhere else in the city. According to census figures released last month, residential developers in New York City are building at the quickest pace in decades, and Brooklyn, perennial second fiddle to Manhattan, has become the new-housing capital of New York, with permits for more than 6,000 new housing units approved last year.

More than 17,000 units of housing have been approved in Brooklyn since 2000, and those now coming onto the market echo the borough's old patchwork of styles, sizes and prices. In the farthest corner of East New York, bordered on three sides by marshes and landfill, rises a long, low-income apartment complex in alternating facades of brick and white. A few miles south, along East Mill Basin, stand a matched set of three two-family houses with relatively gracious wrought-iron terraces, columns and dormer windows. And along Flushing Avenue in a formerly defunct Williamsburg industrial zone, weed-choked lots are giving way to masses of cookie-cutter brick condominium complexes.

Most of the growth is taking place between the cracks of Brooklyn's cityscape, in neighborhoods that often lack proper names, let alone downtowns: the former swamps and wastelands at the borough's edges, the buffer zones between communities.

This only makes sense. It is easiest to build where there is room to spread out, and a great deal of Brooklyn, long the city's most populous borough, is simply full, or close to it. But the expansion, which has been gathering steam for six years, is gradually remaking the face of the borough. With two-family starter homes here and a factory-building-gone-condo there, neighborhoods once pocked full of holes are becoming whole again, while others are bursting their boundaries, gobbling up vacant land as they go.

The growth parallels Brooklyn's rise as a destination for immigrants; city officials say it is beginning to rival Queens. The Caribbeans who have revitalized Canarsie over the last 20 years are moving into Bergen Beach, once an all-white enclave. The Satmar Hasidic Jews of south Williamsburg have pushed down into the northern fringes of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The little India of Ozone Park, Queens, has spilled across the border into East New York.

But as rents in the gentrified neighborhoods of northwest Brooklyn approach Manhattan levels, developers have found that there is also money to be made building lofts for the young and hip in neighborhoods like Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, which have suffered through decades of poverty and decline.

The process is not always pretty. There are regular growing pains and zoning (and rezoning) disputes. What heavy industry remains in Brooklyn is being squeezed out by more profitable housing, just as farmland is in distant suburbs.

Few of the new buildings are likely to win architectural prizes, though the 850-unit Oceana condo complex on the Brighton Beach waterfront was a finalist in last year's National Association of Home Builders awards. At the same time, not nearly enough of the new housing is affordable to lower-middle-class families who need it most, advocates say.

In a city with a chronic housing shortage, though, it all helps. "It's a huge vote of confidence in the borough," said Regina Myer, the Brooklyn director for the City Planning Department. "I know it sounds corny. But it really crosses so many neighborhoods, so many different types of people, so many different types of housing. It shows how stable the borough is right now and poised for future growth."

It is unlikely that the boom can continue at this rate. Interest rates will eventually rise, and sooner or later the land will be used up. "The challenge now is to find the right places to develop," Ms. Myer said.

Bergen Beach

Bergen Beach is certainly looking like the right place. Lying largely on a former island off the coast of Canarsie, the neighborhood was joined (via landfill) to the mainland in the early 20th century but was barely developed for decades. In the 1960's, custom homes went up on big lots. Now there is a proliferation of town houses and condominiums.

"Go drive around Bergen Beach and Mill Island," said Dorothy Turano, the district manager for Community Board 18, which includes both neighborhoods. "You see a Dumpster on every street."

There are many Dumpsters along Avenue M, where a multiblock chain of market-rate town houses is sprouting from the soil. A few blocks farther north, along the commercial strip of Ralph Avenue, a "now renting" banner flies from the side of a 72-apartment middle-income complex that opened less than a month ago.

The new apartments, Bergen Gardens, are next door to a big lot full of dirt and cranes that is announced by a sign as the Paerdegat Basin Water Quality Facility Construction of Combined Sewer Overflow Storage Tanks. The nearest subway stop is almost two miles away.

But the developers of Bergen Gardens, built with financing help from the city's Housing Development Corporation, say it is filling up. Rents are around $1,100 a month for one bedroom and $1,400 for two bedrooms. "We get a lot of nurses," said Victor Gartenstein, one of the owners. "Couples where, say, the husband is a bus driver and the wife is a nurse."

Louise Ray, a retired school administrator who sold her house in Crown Heights, said she felt at home in Bergen Gardens immediately. "The shopping is across the street, there's a post office in the supermarket and the drugstore is two blocks away," she said. "It's nice, it's quiet and it's comfortable."

South Williamsburg

By the late 1990's, after several generations of rigorous adherence to the biblical directive to be fruitful and multiply, the Satmar Hasidim of south Williamsburg were running out of room. Their attempts to build housing south of Flushing Avenue, in a decaying industrial zone and the spotty but improving north side of Bedford-Stuyvesant that lies beyond it, ran into zoning restrictions and, in some cases, resistance from longtime black homeowners uninterested in selling their property.

For the Hasidim, persistence paid off. A rezoning in 2001 made way for 700 units of housing along Flushing Avenue, and building is proceeding at a dizzying pace, all the way down to DeKalb Avenue four long blocks south. Some blocks seem like one long stretch of temporary plywood fencing plastered with building permits. Others, long vacant or abandoned, are becoming solid walls of five-story brick buildings.

Many of the buildings are in the Hasidim's stepped-back style, with small terraces that give residents space to build temporary huts for Sukkot, the autumn harvest festival. The apartments, mostly condominiums that sell for around $250,000 and are often rented out, are plain but functional inside. They have what is needed: two sinks for observing kosher rules and three or more bedrooms.

"Before anybody understood that Williamsburg is the promised land, we knew it," said Rabbi David Niederman, the president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. "We have stayed here and held onto it."

East New York

Part 1 of the rebirth of long-suffering East New York, made possible by an array of government subsidies like free land, low-interest loans and tax breaks, is drawing to a close, albeit with a flourish.

In the southeasternmost corner of Brooklyn, on a lot past the South Shore Incinerator and a new shopping center with a Target store, stand a pair of three-story low-income apartment complexes, just finished, called the Fountains at Spring Creek. A white archway frames a high-ceilinged lobby. In the courtyard, a large bowl-shaped piece of granite sits on a pedestal, waiting for water to be turned on.

But closer to the heart of old East New York, the housing market jump-started by the city has acquired its own momentum. In December, Park Lane Enterprises, a developer in Richmond Hills, Queens, finished three two-family brick houses on Hendrix Street. They were put up without a dime of government help, and Park Lane is asking $450,000 apiece for them, an unthinkable figure just a few years ago. One is sold already and the other two are in contract, said Paula Celemin, Park Lane's president.

Farther out, at Pitkin and Shepherd Avenues, not far from the Queens border, a cluster of three-family homes is going up. Most of them are being sold to Indian families, said Shariar Uddin, the sales director for the developer, Millennium Homes. "People are moving from Jackson Heights, from Astoria," he said.

Across the street last week, Marquese Page stood in front of the skeletons of what will soon be a row of two-family houses. Mr. Page, who grew up in a housing project nearby, is head of security for the contractor putting the buildings up. The row is interrupted by an old brick building with a long-shuttered grocery store on the ground floor. Mr. Page, 28, said he would like to open a barbershop there if he could find a way.

Mr. Page, who is black, said he was watching the neighborhood become a blend of colors. "More Koreans, Pakistanis, Jews, Africans," he said, adding that it made no difference to him. "It's really just getting into buildings. It's good out here."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/02/15/nyregion/broo_graph.gif

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Gulcrapek]

...see what I mean about the architecture?

[billyblancoNYC]

Yep, some good, many not. At least it's better than crack houses and vacant lots.

South Williamsburg is sick with building. In Queens, Downtown Flushing is very similar. Even though I haven't seen for myself, the same is being said for the...gasp...South Bronx.

It's all over NYC and it's pretty f'in great.

[Kris]

INNOVATIVE AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING

http://www.gothamgazette.com/calendar/innovative.jpg

Housing is one of the most critical issues facing New York City, and a competition currently on display at the Center for Architecture aims to expand notions of what affordable housing can and should be.

The competition and exhibit entitled, "New Housing New York," is sponsored by the American Institute of Architecture, the city's Department of Housing and the New York City Council. This year, it generated 160 entrees that find practical, yet innovate, solutions to the scarcity of affordable housing.

Competitors created designs to fit real locations, like a brownstone in East Harlem, a block on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, and an area transitioning from a manufacturing center to a residential neighborhood in Queens. The buildings were also conceived with different populations in mind - senior citizens, single parents, people with disabilities, and telecommuters.

Choi Law's compact Manhattan tower that utilizes space to its greatest potential (see above) was one of the winning designs. City officials hope to use the designs to generate new housing policies for New York.

"The goal behind this competition is to solicit from the architectural community innovative ideas that will help us develop solutions," said City Council Speaker Gifford Miller.

The winning submissions are on display until March at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia. For more information, visit http://www.aiany.org/nhnywinrec.htm .

http://www.gothamgazette.com/calendar.shtml

[Kris]

February 20, 2004

Bush Housing Plan Stirs Anxiety Over New York's Share of Aid

By DAVID W. CHEN

In pure numbers, President Bush's 2005 budget proposes to increase spending on the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 3 percent. But in terms of philosophy, many housing experts say, the administration is actually moving strongly to reduce the federal government's role in the kind of subsidized housing that many New Yorkers depend on, applying market principles and the tenets of the welfare overhaul of the 1990's with a renewed eagerness.

The administration, for example, is proposing to shift from the federal to the local level the Section 8 voucher program, the government's primary effort to help the poorest Americans find and pay for their own housing. It wants to loosen the eligibility rules for Section 8, allowing a larger group of families to apply without guaranteeing a portion for the poorest families. And it has proposed giving incentives to housing agencies that shrink the rolls of subsidized tenants.

If enacted, New York City officials estimate, the Bush plan could reduce the number of households receiving vouchers in 2005 by 7,000, or almost 7 percent of the current total. That number could triple by 2009, they say.

The Bush administration says the budget represents the latest incarnation of a flexible but tough-love approach to subsidized housing that began to germinate during the Clinton administration. It also reinforces the original premise that subsidized housing should be a springboard to self-sufficiency, not a permanent entitlement, department officials say.

"It's an evolution which has been accelerated because we have pushed the envelope," said Michael Liu, assistant secretary for public and Indian housing at HUD. "Similar to the concepts which were approved back in the mid-90's regarding welfare reform, we are moving on the same tack."

To some critics, though, the proposals are an exercise in reckless budget-cutting, a sop to suburban homeowners at the expense of urban renters. And the place that could be hurt the most is New York City, which, according to a coming study from New York University, receives as much as $3.5 billion in federal housing aid each year, far more than any other city.

"It has a very strong political underpinning: demonizing folks on welfare and folks in public housing," said City Councilman Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat, who was HUD's regional director in New York from 1997-99. "And it puts New York in a very, very difficult spot because we're past the point of any reasonable expectation that a better hand of cards will be dealt."

Many housing groups say they were preparing for major overhauls after the Bush administration tried last year to turn Section 8 into a block grant program for state governments, using a complicated formula to determine aid instead of basing it solely on the number of needy people. The program was called Housing Assistance for Needy Families; the nation's welfare program is called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Congress said no. But in this year's $31.3 billion budget, HUD proposes, under a Flexible Voucher Program, to transfer Section 8 to local agencies instead of to the states, and to relax eligibility criteria.

Currently, 75 percent of all vouchers are reserved for people who earn up to 30 percent of the local median income, or about $15,000 a year in New York. But under the Bush plan, local housing agencies could hand out vouchers to anyone making up to 80 percent of the median income, or about $41,500 in New York.

Public housing would undergo changes, as well, paralleling the ideas that transformed welfare, like time limits and privatization, as well as other concepts, like bonuses for housing authorities based on financial aptitude. Among other experiments, HUD is pushing for a $15 million "voluntary graduation" program to encourage, though not require, residents to leave public housing.

"We come from a basic notion of accountability, and again, from a common sense understanding of what the program should be promoting, which is self-sufficiency," said Mr. Liu of HUD.

The budget has been heralded by conservatives like Howard Husock, a Harvard scholar whose 2003 book, "America's Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake," has been popular with administration officials. Local governments and housing agencies, meanwhile, have applauded the notion of greater autonomy, but are worried about the amount of money.

Local control could make it easier for the New York City Housing Authority to move people from homeless shelters to housing more quickly, and to inspect buildings and to recertify residents for aid every two or three years, rather than each year.

"N.Y.C.H.A. is interested in many of the concepts contained in the president's budget, and we would encourage that there is a dialogue about those reforms, as long as we get full funding," said Tino Hernandez, the housing authority's commissioner.

But liberal critics, like the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimate that the budget falls at least $1 billion short of the amount necessary to finance the program at the current level. That could mean that up to 250,000 households nationwide would lose their vouchers in 2005, and 800,000, or 40 percent of the entire pool, by 2009.

Just as troubling, they warn, the eligibility changes could give landlords justification for choosing higher-income Section 8 tenants, thereby leaving the poorest more vulnerable.

"There are virtually no protections for tenants in this year's proposals," said Barbara Sard, director of housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Even some Congressional Republicans say they are skittish that Section 8, which takes more than half of HUD's budget, may suffer a fate common to many other block-grant programs: being capped or cut. "It's a radical policy change,'' said one senior Republican Congressional aide. "Why do we need to rush into this?"

But HUD officials scoff at such suggestions. They say local autonomy, and efforts to streamline bureaucracy, will enable them to serve the same number of people, and eventually to reduce costs. Mr. Liu said anyone who does not appreciate that HUD is "finding and unlocking new financial tools" may be "stuck in the time warp of 10 years ago."

Either way, any changes in HUD's budget, however small the percentages, will be magnified in New York, which has more public housing and vouchers than anywhere else, and the highest percentage of renters among major cities. The coming study by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at the N.Y.U. School of Law says that 400,000 housing units, or almost one-fifth of all rental apartments, receive some federal subsidy.

The plan would also end enhanced vouchers, which help tenants cover the rent in buildings that leave the Section 8 program to test the open market. After one year, those enhanced vouchers would be replaced by conventional Section 8 vouchers that would not necessarily be able to cover a higher, market-based rent on the same unit, a prospect that housing groups say would force out many families.

About 1,200 households in New York now receive enhanced vouchers; 500 more are in the pipeline.

Despite proposed cuts to other programs affecting homelessness, derelict public housing and the redevelopment of brownfields, which are contaminated industrial sites, city officials do not believe that the budget will severely hamper Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to build or rehabilitate 65,000 housing units.

But Molly Wasow Park, a budget and policy analyst for the city's Independent Budget Office, cautions that because some of the low-income units in the mayor's plan depend on vouchers to cover operating costs, they could be harder to support if the vouchers become harder to obtain.

Regardless of the budget's final shape, two themes may ultimately stand out, said Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution, who was chief of staff to Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros under President Bill Clinton.

The first, he said, is that "the message to the New Yorks of the world is, 'You're on your own, because Uncle Sam is going to be reducing our contribution.' '' The second, he said, is that housing policy is driven almost entirely by the budget process, not by a grander vision. It is enough to make him nostalgic for a former nemesis, Jack Kemp, HUD secretary under the first President Bush.

"At least with Kemp, they were putting forward policy reforms, and there was a competition over ideas," he said. "This is really a competition over what the federal government does at the most basic level. It's a very different debate, and housing is just a victim of broader decisions being made.''

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/housing/20040308/10/907

After Mitchell-Lama

by Joe Lamport

March 03, 2004

For more than 20 years, Marc Richardson has called the Lower East Side home and despite gentrification and increased rents in his neighborhood he has been able to do so thanks largely to the fact that he lives in a Mitchell-Lama apartment building.

But his days in the apartment may be numbered: The owners of the Lands End One complex, which includes 251 apartments, announced late last year that they have opted to buy out of the Mitchell-Lama program - and seek market rents for the apartments.

"Tenants are really feeling it," Richardson said, a member of the Lands End One Tenants Association. "There's very little affordable housing in this city. Where are we going to go? I really don't know where I'm going to start looking for an apartment."

There is growing fear among tenants of Mitchell-Lama apartments that they may have to leave their apartments or pay significantly higher rents. An appeals court decision at the end of February only added to their anxiety. City-sponsored legislation in Albany and City Council bills have set off a political battle.

There are about 60,000 Mitchell-Lama rental apartments left in New York City, mostly located in Brooklyn and Manhattan. They exist in buildings developed with state and city low-interest loans provided through a 1955 law sponsored by Manhattan State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and former Brooklyn Assemblyman Alfred Lama. The laws helped spur the development of almost 150,000 apartments in New York City, according to the city Comptroller's office.

"Mitchell-Lama housing is absolutely critical," said Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, who represents district 4 on Manhattan's East Side, which has several Mitchell-Lama projects in it. "It's one of the most well designed affordable housing programs the city has and a model for the nation. It's a force for stability in the city. you're going to undo the very stability you've created."

In return for the loans and real estate tax abatements, developers committed to keeping the apartments affordable. But not forever. A buyout option allows developers to take the apartments out of the program depending on what year they were built and whether the building's mortgage has been paid. For developments like Land's End One, which was opened for occupancy in 1978, a 20-year commitment to affordability expired in 1998. About 32,000 Mitchell-Lama apartments face a similar fate; 11 developments are currently in the process of buying out.

That developers can buy out of the program is not really the issue, advocates and tenants said. What is really at stake is what will happen to the rents. Rents will increase dramatically, perhaps four or five times the current rent, if developers are allowed to charge market rate rents. At the very least, tenants would like their apartments to become rent stabilized, with rent increases set by the Rent Guidelines Board and important tenant protections, like the right to lease renewals and sublets.

Running Out Of Rent Subsidies

For buildings built after 1973, some people have accepted that their rents will go to market rates. At the Lands End One development, that could be the case. Tenants might qualify for federal rent subsidies through Section 8 or Section 236 "enhanced vouchers." But federal assistance is facing radical cuts under current budget proposals from the Bush Administration. The vouchers would last only one year unless the money is increased.

The New York City Housing Authority recently confirmed that it has just 300 Section 8 vouchers left for 2004. These vouchers are reserved for the neediest cases - victims of domestic violence, intimidated witnesses and homeless families that have been separated. As more than 150,000 people who qualify for Section 8 assistance are currently on the waiting list, that is just one indication of how great the need for rental assistance is.

A spokesperson for Lands End Associates, which decided to buy out of Mitchell-Lama, said the company did not think it would lead to massive displacement of Lands End One tenants unable to afford higher market rents.

"Eighty-seven percent of tenants will qualify for the enhanced vouchers," said Devorah Fong. "For the remainder, (Lands End Associates) are sure they can make reasonable adjustments. They're willing to work with the residents."

Fong said she did not know the company's response to the possibility that enhanced vouchers might not be available due to budget cuts.

Will Ex Mitchell-Lama Apartments Become Rent Stabilized?

As February ended, an appellate court decision paved the way for one developer to charge market rents for apartments in three buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The ruling was significant because the buildings had been built before 1973. Until the ruling, the law seemed to indicate that pre-1973 buildings would become Rent Stabilized.

Carol Abrams, a spokesperson for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said state legislation sponsored by the city, which would place into rent stabiliziation all apartments that have left the Mitchell-Lama program, would not be affected by the appellate court's decision. State legislators will begin discussing the legislation this month.

"The question is whether, after a buyout, an owner could apply to adjust the rent under the provision of rent stabilization that was the subject of this ruling," Abrams wrote in an email message in response to questions.

Victor Bach, senior housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society, said the city-sponsored legislation did not go far enough. As many as 36,000 apartments that were built with federal assistance through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also may be expiring, he said, destined for market rate rents.

"We are urging whatever the bill it should include HUD-subsidized developments," Bach said. "These are not officially Mitchell-Lama and are not covered in the mayor's bill. If they are not included then they will be lost."

Bach said that legislators need to understand that the loss of affordable housing provided by the programs would cause even greater problems for the city. City and state leaders need to be more assertive, he said: "I think the city and the state need to understand the dimensions of the crisis, the kind of the loss that will occur, the displacement, and how it will increase pressure on the homeless system."

Moskowitz said she was committed to preserving Mitchell-Lama.

"There's a lot of support on the council" for the two pieces of legislation to protect Mitchell-Lama. "A lot of us grew up middle class."

Lands End One tenants have responded, Richardson said, but it has not been without great effort.

"There's a lot of confusion," he said. "We've had to really scramble to get ourselves organized. We've been all about town to talk to various organizations. There's a lot to do in such a short time."

They are hoping to hold city leaders to the promises they have made.

"At least there are some politicians showing some concern for this issue," he said. "We just have to make them connect their words to action."

[i]Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.

[Kris]

Affordable Housing in 2004 (http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20040405/200/936)

[Kris]

Housing for All (http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0404/pub/index.html)
A growing concern leads to a search for new ideas in the ways we live.

[Kris]

May 2, 2004

Transforming City's Housing: Act 2

By DENNIS HEVESI

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/05/02/realestate/cov.583.2.jpg
Morton Place in the Bronx, before (1992) and after (1999) construction took place through the new homes program of the New York City Housing Partnership.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/05/02/realestate/cov.650.2.jpg
212 West 140th Street in 1994 and in 1996 after renovation.

TWENTY-TWO years after New York City launched a federally financed $50 million plan to create 25,000 units of affordable housing, the program is winding down, successful beyond the imagination of even many of those involved. The stock of 10,000 buildings that formed the backbone of the plan — buildings seized by the city for tax delinquency — has been reduced to fewer than 800, and well over 200,000 housing units have been created or restored.

Now the city and the affordable housing community must struggle with the question of what's next. It is a problem at the core of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's $3 billion New Housing Marketplace program to build or preserve 65,000 more homes and apartments over the next five years.

"There's no single answer, no silver bullet," said Shaun Donovan, the city's new commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development. "It's not just the dollars and the units, which are critically important. It's also about setting a framework for where the new pipeline for development is coming from."

The proposals and plans — some are already works in progress — include extensive rezoning of manufacturing and waterfront property for residential use, remediation of brownfield sites and building on vacant land that is either on city housing projects or adjacent to them. Other notions call for a shift from the construction of two- and three-family homes (a standard model for affordable housing) to higher-density co-ops or condominiums; teaching developers used to rehabilitating buildings how to perform ground-up construction; and retooling financing instruments to cover the cost of acquiring property, now that foreclosed properties are so scarce.

Already, Mr. Donovan said, "Just the rezonings currently on the boards will create room for thousands of new units."

The assumption that city initiatives can lead to the creation of large numbers of desirable homes for working-class people dates back, at least, to Jan. 14, 1982, when President Ronald Reagan, Mayor Edward I. Koch and 100 top business leaders, recruited by David Rockefeller, gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to announce the start of the New York City Housing Partnership. Over time, the partnership would be seen as a keystone in the creation of a structure by which major lenders, government subsidies, the expertise of local housing advocates and, increasingly, community-based developers would be harnessed to build homes for lower-income New Yorkers.

In the last 15 years alone, 212,000 new or rehabilitated homeownership and rental units — in broad swaths of full blocks and in-fill scatterings of two or three here, four to eight there — have infused new life and commerce into still-struggling communities.

Extensive Privatization
Areas Restored Via Foreclosures

The sites that have been rehabilitated were seized through a legal procedure known as "in rem foreclosure," and in the shorthand of the housing industry they are widely called in rem properties. ("In rem" is Latin for legal action taken "against the thing.") Since 1986, the city's inventory of in rem buildings has dropped by 92 percent and in rem units by 96 percent.

The transfer of those properties to for-profit and nonprofit developers, Commissioner Donovan said, "is quite simply the largest privatization of housing anywhere in the country."

And in a welcome offshoot of the process, a cadre of small community-based builders has seized the opportunity to reseed their old neighborhoods.

Ten years ago, Desmond Emanuel, president of Landmark Projects Inc., was a subcontractor doing the hammer-and-nail work assigned by established developers. "Then we got introduced to the partnership," he said. "They were interested in small contractors redeveloping communities they either lived in or were familiar with."

Mr. Emanuel grew up in a railroad flat with three brothers and seven sisters on Kelly Street in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. "I played stickball on the block," he said.

One of his first projects through the partnership was the development of 50 two-family homes around the corner from Kelly Street. "That was 1996," Mr. Emanuel said, "and at the time they sold for $147,000. Now they go for $300,000, minimum." Since then, his company has built 650 homes, mostly in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.

The Housing Partnership is certainly not the only, and not even the first, of what are sometimes referred to as intermediaries — organizations bringing together public agencies and private lenders, developers and contractors. But its basic financial model of transferring title of city-held properties to local developers and organizations has become standard in the affordable housing sector.

"The city provides land that's been taken in rem and turns it over to the Housing Partnership for a minimum price," said Kathryn Wylde, a former president of the partnership — sometimes for as little as $1.

A developer designated by the partnership and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development then designs the site and secures a construction loan. The negligible cost of the land and public subsidies cover the difference between construction costs and the home's market price.

"Typically, the gap between what the market would bear and the house price was 20 percent," said Ms. Wylde, who is now president of the Housing Partnership's parent organization, the New York City Partnership, a leading business and civic group. "So if you built a home for $100,000, the most you could sell it for would be $80,000. And the public subsidy would make up the difference in the cost to the builder."

"In most of the neighborhoods where we built," she added, "this was the first private financing for residential construction in 50 years. It had all been public construction."

Over the years, that basic formula would transform dozens of neighborhoods. "It worked as well on Staten Island's north shore as it did in the South Bronx or central Brooklyn," Ms. Wylde said. "It received tremendous support from the City Council, the Legislature, governors and mayors."

Denise Scott, director of one of the original intermediary organizations, the Local Initiative Support Group, or LISC, is similarly impressed. "Koch created this affordable housing program, and it's actually continued with every mayor since," Ms. Scott said. "I don't think there's any other city that has invested as much in housing development as New York. And it's a credit to the city, phenomenal, in fact, that this kind of commitment has spanned many mayors, Democrat or Republican."

The New York office of LISC, an organization serving 35 cities nationwide, opened in 1979. And through its portfolio of 50 community development corporations, most not-for-profit, it has worked with the housing preservation department to rehabilitate 20,000 units in apartment buildings in central Brooklyn, the South Bronx and Harlem. At the same time, it has helped create about 1 million square feet of commercial and retail space in those communities.

Doing `Great Things'
Sick Blocks, Made Better

When Deborah Wright wants to remind herself of what is possible, she goes to 140th Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards in Harlem.

"It was dubbed the sickest block in the city," said Ms. Wright, who served as housing commissioner from 1994 to 1996 and is now president of the Carver Federal Savings Bank. "There was a two-page article in The Daily News and that was the headline, with a graphic showing the indices of distress: building code violations, sick children — it may have been TB — the percentage of people unemployed, drug incidents."

Back then the city owned all but three buildings on the block. "Most of the tenants weren't paying rent," Ms. Wright said, "and, in my view, appropriately so because our service was so poor. Many buildings didn't have front doors, certainly no operating intercoms; trash bags all around. It was the poster child for what was wrong with our policy of holding onto these buildings."

Eventually, through the Housing Partnership, the city handed over all its buildings to a combination of local private property managers and a nonprofit group, the Harlem Churches for Community Improvement. These days, the complete internal renovations of the fully occupied buildings, their stylish facades and canopies, their delicate detail work and the landscaped garden that once had been a garbage-strewn lot, offer a joyful contrast to the past.

"We brought together the city's most prominent banks and small local entrepreneurs, business people who were not typically on a first-name basis with major lenders," Ms. Wright said. "You get local actors in the same room with major private resources and government as a third partner, and great things happen."

Now, with the city's in rem stock largely dissipated, but its affordable development structure firmly in place, housing officials and advocates are examining a panoply of possibilities to continue their work.

Rafael Cestero, director of the New York office of the Enterprise Foundation, another leading intermediary, sees the need for a finely tuned piecemeal approach. "The tricky part of what's next is that the problem isn't so visible," Mr. Cestero said. "It's putting even more of an onus on us to hit all the nooks and crannies where poorly run property still exists."

The Enterprise Foundation, which opened its New York office in 1987, was the creation of the late James Rouse, a Baltimore developer of planned communities who, in his later years, turned toward producing homes for poor people. Enterprise has created 15,000 units in New York City.

"A major challenge," Mr. Cestero said, "is to purchase poorly run properties so they can be refinanced and rehabilitated as affordable projects. The idea is to work with financial institutions to develop early intervention strategies for acquiring properties facing foreclosure."

"If you get in early and work with the banks, you can save the cost and pain of foreclosure to the bank and, frankly, to the landlord," Mr. Cestero said. "You either work with the existing landlord who really wants to do a good job or with the bank to negotiate the purchase of the property prior to foreclosure."

"There are literally thousands of units like that around New York," he said.

Larger Scale Actions
Using Rezonings

And Other Means Commissioner Donovan is thinking on a larger scale. Under the mayor's housing plan, he said: "We have already, in partnership with City Planning, begun the most aggressive rezoning the city has ever seen." The process, so far, calls for a combination of upzonings — which increase density — and use changes for abandoned manufacturing sites in East Harlem, Park Slope, Morrisania and parts of Staten Island.

"We believe that just the rezonings recently completed or under way make room for between 30,000 and 50,000 new housing units," Mr. Donovan said. "And we will be looking at many more in coming years." Some sites, he said, will require varying degrees of environmental remediation.

At the same time, the commissioner continued, "We have already worked with the New York City Housing Authority to start revitalizing a number of their properties."

It is a notion that boggles the mind of Ms. Wright, the former housing commissioner. It speaks of "the remarkable success that the city, the private sector and the community groups had in revitalizing what were considered tough neighborhoods," she said.

"One constant in those neighborhoods is public housing," Ms. Wright said. "Thirty years ago, no one believed you could sell a brownstone for $1 million literally a block from public housing. Today, a $1 million brownstone in Harlem is unremarkable."

"Thirty years ago, nobody would have believed that land adjacent to Housing Authority property would be attractive for homeownership," she added. "The time is right to blow away that myth."

It could be co-ops or condominiums for lower-income people on those kinds of sites, said Naomi Bayer. Ms. Bayer is both director of the New York office of Fannie Mae, the mortgage-purchasing corporation, and chairwoman of the Housing Partnership.

"I think we're transitioning from the traditional two- and three-family homes that have been the model for the partnership over the past two decades into multifamily homeownership options like condominiums and cooperatives," Ms. Bayer said.

Two- and three-family homes have been the bellwether of the affordable housing movement because they allow the home buyer to use the rental income from the other units to help pay the mortgage. "Condos and co-ops provide the opportunity for more units on a single site," Ms. Bayer said. "Each buyer would benefit. So if it's a 200-unit property, there's 200 new homeowners on that site. And there would be a similar subsidy model to what has been used on the two- and three-unit properties."

Whatever the complex formula, no one expects it to fully solve the city's chronic housing squeeze. From 1990 to 2002, according to City Planning Department statistics, the number of newly built units increased by 123,200. Over the same period, however, census data indicates, the city added more than 154,000 households.

At the same time, according to the 2002 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, 22.7 percent of all renters, or 460,000 households, pay more than half their income in rent, and 14.3 percent of all homeowners, or 143,000 households, pay more than 60 percent of their income for housing.

It took a lot for Carmen Liburd, 46, to afford her dream.

Ms. Liburd, a single mother of two daughters, worked day and night — as a teacher's aide and caring for children with cerebral palsy — scraping together the $20,000 down payment on a two-family partnership-built home on South Road in Jamaica, Queens. "It ended up being my birthday present," she said. "We closed two days before my birthday." That was in 1998.

While renting in the area, Ms. Liburd said, "I saw the houses building up."

"So," she said, "I did the Joshua walk, like in the Bible when he walked around the walls of Jericho. I put down some footsteps. That's how I claimed that one day I would own one of these properties."

Ms. Liburd is from the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis where "people usually don't pay rent," she said. "They stay home with their family and save up to buy, even if it's just a two-room house. That was the mentality, save to get your own."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

May 4, 2004

Housing Subsidies for the Poor Threatened by Cuts in U.S. Aid

By DAVID W. CHEN

New York City is facing a shortfall of at least $55.5 million in federal housing subsidies this year because of a recent regulatory change affecting the government's primary housing program for poor Americans.

The change, retroactive to January, stems from an effort by the Bush administration to control spiraling housing costs. In the past, the federal government paid the full cost of the 1.9 million rent vouchers given to poor tenants nationwide to help them pay for housing under the Section 8 program. But on April 22, the Department of Housing and Urban Development told housing agencies that it would pay only the cost of a voucher as of last August, plus an inflation adjustment.

The change could affect more than 900 of the nation's 2,500 public housing agencies, particularly those in cities where rent increases outpace inflation, according to the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. New York City housing officials say that historically, the local cost of providing vouchers has gone up faster than inflation.

The total national shortfall could be hundreds of millions of dollars for the current fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington research group. That shortfall, in turn, may force housing agencies to freeze the number of vouchers, demand more money from tenants or do something that has never happened in Section 8's three-decade history: evict tenants from federally subsidized housing because of insufficient funding.

No city has more at stake in the ruling than New York, which issues more than 118,000 rent vouchers a year, far more than any other city. While city officials are cautiously optimistic that they can work with HUD to avoid any evictions, they acknowledge that several thousand tenants with vouchers appear to be in a far more precarious position today than they were a few weeks ago.

To underscore their concern, the city's commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development, Shaun Donovan, and other top housing officials lobbied HUD officials in Washington last week. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a letter on Friday to Alphonso R. Jackson, the secretary of housing, warning that the new formula would "undermine the legitimacy of the Section 8 voucher program" and leave many New Yorkers without housing.

"This formula falls well short of the actual cost of vouchers in 2004 for many housing agencies in New York, and will leave our most vulnerable residents without critical housing assistance at a time when the economy is uncertain at best," wrote Mrs. Clinton, who is a Democrat.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers from several other states, as well as the governors of Massachusetts and Minnesota, both Republicans, have written their own letters to HUD expressing similar worries.

In response, the agency's assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, Michael Liu, said in a conference call with reporters last week that the department was merely complying with Congress's desire in its own 2004 appropriations bill to contain the voucher program, which constitutes more than half of HUD's total budget.

"The law is the law," he said.

But others, while agreeing with the need to cap costs, have criticized the agency methods. Chief among them are Governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, two first-term Republicans.

"Unless the federal government remains a strong partner, our mutual goal to end long-term homelessness and satisfy other critical housing needs will be at risk," Governor Pawlenty wrote in a letter on Wednesday to HUD, warning that 2,000 families may lose their rental assistance as early as June.

In Fargo, N.D., housing officials are reluctantly asking tenants to contribute about $30 more per month to their rent, which now averages about $575 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. Otherwise, officials will have to stop giving vouchers to 46 of 1,100 families in the program, said Lynn O. Fundingsland, executive director of the Fargo Housing and Redevelopment Authority.

Last week, Massachusetts housing officials were on the verge of mailing out termination notices to about 650 tenants because of a gap of $550,000. But state and federal officials struck a deal to intervene and were working to come up with a solution.

Any local housing agency that believes it deserves more money has until July 15 to make its case, Mr. Liu said. In a subsequent interview, he said that HUD would work hard to help. "There will be dollars available to deal with needed adjustments in individual housing authorities," he said.

Mr. Liu also suggested that some doomsday predictions were exaggerated, and might be the result of inefficient local management. For example, he said that reported shortfalls in Los Angeles and Boston were largely plugged after HUD scrutinized the books.

"There are an array of tools, management tools, that housing authorities can employ to manage their costs," he said.

The debate stoked by the rule change illustrates a broader war of ideas over the Bush administration's determination to revamp the voucher program by employing market principles and fiscal discipline reminiscent of the welfare overhaul of the 1990's.

Last year, the administration tried unsuccessfully to turn Section 8 into a block grant program for state governments, using a complicated formula to determine aid instead of basing it purely on the number of needy people. The attempt was turned back by Congress.

Now, with this administrative ruling, HUD has infuriated lawmakers and housing groups who say the agency's actions could undermine confidence in the program among tenants, landlords and lenders who finance low-income housing.

"This is a cataclysmic failure of the federal government to keep the public trust," Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group, said last week in a statement that also announced a rally outside HUD's headquarters in Washington.

Section 8 has long been popular with elected officials, private landlords and financial institutions because it steered the government away from public housing developments and toward the private marketplace. The program enables poor, disabled or elderly tenants to receive vouchers from a local housing agency and redeem them with any private landlord who is amenable. Tenants pay 30 percent of their income in rent, while the vouchers pay the rest, up to a limit set by the federal government, depending on the local market.

The New York City Housing Authority provides 90,000 vouchers, or about three-quarters of the total in the city. About 83 percent of the authority's voucher recipients have incomes of less than $16,320. The median contribution from tenants with vouchers from the authority is $216 per month; the median payment to landlords is $670. Other vouchers are issued by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

In the last three years, the Section 8 budget nationwide has ballooned by 27 percent, said Representative James T. Walsh, a Republican of Syracuse, who is chairman of the House subcommittee that controls spending on housing. The situation has been most acute in places where the real estate market has been tight.

At the same time, Mr. Liu said, too many housing authorities have become so accustomed to HUD's carte blanche approval of Section 8 costs that they have not performed with maximum efficiency. If the current system continues, he said, HUD will face a $191 million deficit.

Mr. Liu acknowledged that some agencies would find the budget limits a "challenge." But he expressed confidence that local authorities would soon adjust, because "those who have worked with the program for years are used to change."

Representative Walsh agreed. "I think we have treated Section 8 very well," he said. "They got a 14 percent increase in '04. Given the federal budget, I can't think of anyone else who's gotten that kind of an increase."

In New York, meanwhile, city and federal officials have been scrambling to register their objections and plead their case with HUD. City officials said they understood the budgetary reasons behind the agency's decision, but they questioned whether Washington understood the human implications of its decision.

"The thing that's most clear is that the world has changed in Section 8, and I understand why," said Douglas Apple, the city Housing Authority's general manager. "But we're hopeful HUD will understand. I don't believe it's HUD's intention to force people out of housing."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

May 8, 2004

A Rent-Free Place, if You Can Find a Spot to Park

By COREY KILGANNON

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/05/08/nyregion/08camper.184.jpg

Let other people moan and groan about sky-high rents and real estate in New York City. Jimmy Hines, 50, has found a solution: living rent-free in an R.V.

"It's my apartment on wheels," he said, leaning back this week in his faded 27-foot Gulfstream Sun Sport camper that was sitting on a fairly busy Queens street, wedged next to the curb in a line of parked cars.

Last fall, Mr. Hines gave notice on the Queens apartment he was renting and bought a camper with his savings. It is his sixth month living curbside in the camper, and he swears he will never have a landlord again.

Mr. Hines is no skylarking eccentric looking to prove a point about human self-sufficiency. He is rather a man pushed to an extreme situation by extreme circumstances: the New York City housing market.

He parked the rig on a busy stretch of Main Street south of the Long Island Expressway, on the edge of a commercial strip in an Orthodox section of Kew Gardens Hills, where streets are lined with kosher food shops and boxy brick houses.

Stepping out his front door to the sidewalk, he faces a cemetery. To the right is a bus stop and to the left a gas station. In accordance with city parking regulations, he moves the vehicle at 7 a.m. on Mondays for one half-hour, for street cleaning.

Mr. Hines said he was paying $900 a month for an apartment on Kissena Boulevard. He had recently lost his job as a vending machine repairman and was receiving a $150 weekly unemployment check.

"I started really thinking about what they're getting for an apartment in the city these days and I figured: `Why should I keep paying rent? It's crazy,' " he said.

So Mr. Hines took most of his savings and bought the 1987 Sun Sport for $6,000. He began living in the camper in December. Rather than ramble to less expensive areas, Mr. Hines wanted to stay in Queens, where he was born and raised and still near his friends.

"It was the wisest thing to do, considering my conditions," he said, stretching out in the camper on a smallish bed that barely accommodates his 6-foot frame.

The place rivals some Manhattan studio apartments. Mr. Hines, who is single, keeps the place like a typical bachelor pad. There are dishes in the sink, overflowing ashtrays and a picture of his first hot rod. Traffic whooshes by, several feet from his window. He keeps his shades down for privacy.

"Don't mind the place, it's a bit of a mess," he said, showing a visitor around on Thursday. The inside of the R.V. has shag carpet, simulated wood paneling and floral-patterned wallpaper. There is a comfortable couch, and some swivel seats next to a smallish table. In the rear, past the bathroom, refrigerator and closets, is a small bedroom with twin beds.

His kitchen console includes a four-range stove, oven and refrigerator, all powered by propane. A gas-powered generator provides electricity and heat. Mr. Hines also keeps perishables in a plastic cooler, replenished daily with store-bought ice.

His portable toilet deposits the waste in plastic bags, which he puts in street trash cans. For water, he fills up large jugs at a gas station. Without a water hookup, he takes showers at a friend's or at the gym at Queens College. His mail is sent to a friend's house.

After paying $500 a year for auto insurance, camper living is incredibly inexpensive, Mr. Hines said. Except for extreme hot or cold weather, he pays about $10 a week for propane, for which he must drive the camper to Nassau County for refills. He pays $25 a week in gasoline for the generator.

He spends $7 a day on cigarettes, $4 on coffee and the rest on food.

"I make a mean chicken cordon bleu in that oven," he said. "I don't even have an excuse to eat out."

He has a 9-inch color television with a built-in DVD player for movie rentals. He is set to buy a satellite dish for more channels.

"It's got everything my apartment had, except space," he said. "But who has a lot of space in New York?"

He holds regular poker games with his friends and has even taken a date back to the camper.

"The guys like coming here to get away from their old ladies," he said, adding that they debate what is crazier: living as an urban camper, or a lifetime of indentured servitude to a mortgage?

"A lot of my friends have kids and bills and they're all bald," Mr. Hines said. "Me, I'm not living large, but life is still good. I'm living on my own terms. I have an apartment on wheels. I can pick up and go whenever and wherever I want."

Mr. Hines grew up in Flushing. His camper is parked near John Bowne High School, which he attended. Mr. Hines calls himself "a product of the 60's" and wears his hair in a ponytail, his head wrapped in an American flag bandanna.

The high cost of housing has forced people in Manhattan to go home to the Midwest and other locales, and some with fewer resources go homeless. But for a man from Queens with meager means and a few friends, living in camper just made sense.

There is a steady stream of people on the sidewalk who pass his camper and another, larger R.V. that Mr. Hines said was owned and parked nearby by a local homeowner. But few take notice, even when Mr. Hines is standing in his doorway sipping his coffee.

No one has tried to intrude on his domain, he said. A police officer did drop by a week ago, he said, to say that there had been a complaint about the noise from the generator, but Mr. Hines said he was not bothered.

"I think he just wanted to check me out," said Mr. Hines, who says his living situation is totally legal.

Is it? A half-dozen city agencies could not answer the question. A spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings said it had no jurisdiction. ("It's not hooked up to any utilities, so it doesn't seem like a dwelling.")

But Keith Kalb, a spokesman for the city's Department of Transportation, said that traffic rules prohibit keeping boat trailers, mobile homes and mobile medical diagnostic vehicles on city streets for more than 24 hours at a time, although the regulations are usually enforced only in response to complaints.

Several merchants in the area said Mr. Hines had done very little to attract attention in the past five months, so they gave little thought to why the camper was even there.

David Fisher, 79, a retired auditor who lives nearby, walked by the camper on Thursday. He did a double-take at Mr. Hines in the doorway.

"I see him here all the time, and I wondered if it's legal to live in that thing," Mr. Fisher said. "It takes up parking space and is a bit of an eyesore, but if the man needs it, I guess it's necessary."

He added: "It's a unique solution. I wish him luck."


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

May 10, 2004

Killing Off Housing for the Poor

The Bush administration's tax cuts for the well-to-do have taken a heavy toll on the nation's most important social programs for the poor and working class. Prominent casualties include child care assistance for working mothers and federal aid for needy college students. The latest victim appears to be Section 8, the government's main housing program for the poor. The program provides rent subsidies for two million of the country's most vulnerable families and encourages private developers to build affordable housing.

Section 8 subsidies go primarily to families that live at or below the poverty level, in households that include children, disabled people or the elderly. These families pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent and the Section 8 vouchers pay the rest. Some cities give priority to battered women, many of them with children, who have to find a new place to live to escape danger. The need is so great that families often wait years for vouchers, which become available when voucher holders die or become ineligible after getting better jobs.

Congress rejected an administration proposal that would have placed a financing cap on the program and turned the money over to the states. But the administration's assault continues, through the appropriations process in the House and through administrative rulings at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has been trying to put the brakes on the voucher program. Last month, the department issued new guidelines to the country's 2,500 public housing agencies declaring that it would no longer pay the full cost of the vouchers but would cap the federal contribution at the level of August 2003, adding an adjustment for inflation.

This has already caused some private builders and financiers to back away from projects that would have produced desperately needed affordable housing. In addition, public housing officials in many states have made it clear that the new policies will force them to raise rents or evict tenants. Having paid lip service to the goal of ending chronic homelessness, the Bush administration is now threatening to kill off the only program that could possibly achieve it.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/housing/20040510/10/971

Back To The Fore?

by Joe Lamport

May 05, 2004

The City Council recently held what for them was a first, an awards ceremony honoring six people for their work in affordable housing.

Did all the effort and expense for the ceremony – Council chambers filled with friends and family, an elaborate buffet, an appearance by Speaker Gifford Miller – mean anything more than just another event at City Hall?

Yes, insisted Councilmember Gale Brewer afterward: Housing, she believes, is back as a potent political issue.

The competition for attention is stiff. In one poll, New Yorkers ranked the economy, the city budget, and terrorism as the most important problems. Only two percent put housing first. But that poll, by Quinnipiac College, was conducted more than a year ago. Ask local officials now about constituent calls, and the answer is different:

“Housing is the number one problem in my district without a question,” said Councilmember Robert Jackson of Harlem in a recent interview. “I see it every day. Rents are going up so high and people are being evicted.”

Councilmember Letitia James of Brooklyn said she was getting “three or four” calls a day from people with housing problems, and helping landlords and tenants reach agreements that do not involve actual eviction.

There are also about a dozen council resolutions concerning housing issues pending now. In the city budget, the council has proposed using money from a commuter tax to finance affordable housing construction. At the state level, Vito Lopez, chairman of the Assembly’s Housing Committee said there are probably “10 percent” more bills about housing this year than last.

People are paying more attention not just because rents are going up, but also because

• A new commissioner of the city’s housing department has taken over;
• Cuts to the federal Section 8 program that could increase the number of homeless people are going into effect.
• The probable loss of more Mitchell-Lama apartments is uniting tenants.

The attention will only intensify in coming weeks. On May 13, two events will bring out hundreds, perhaps thousands of tenants: a rally to compel City Council members to adopt a bill to enable tenants to obtain roof-to-cellar inspections of their buildings and an overnight vigil at City Hall Park that begins at 2 p.m. At the same time, the Rent Guidelines Board is continuing hearings to determine whether and how much to raise rents on rent stabilized apartments.

But outside of the city, housing is not as potent an issue.

“I don’t hear much about housing,” said Erik Kriss, who covers Albany for the Syracuse Post Standard. “It’s not a steady issue.”

In his January 20th budget address, Governor George Pataki mentioned housing only once; in his State of the State address two weeks earlier, he had not mentioned housing at all.

State Senator John Bonacic, chair of the senate housing committee, said housing was important but simply a victim of a full agenda in the legislature that is dominated by education, health care and homeland security.

“You won’t find one person who will not say affordable housing is not important because it is,” said Bonacic, a Republican. “It goes hand in hand with economic development, to take care of the economic engine. And there is a critical need for affordable housing, especially for the mid-Hudson to the city, Long Island and Hudson. In terms of a political issue, I don’t think it’s a high political issue.”

A spokesman for Senator Joseph Bruno, majority leader of the State Senate, said housing did not stick out as an issue because the primary solutions to housing problems rest with the private sector, not the government.

“We prefer to see things that can be done to encourage competition through the strength of the market to encourage construction of housing, rather than the government just coming in and building homes or units,” said Marc Hansen, from Bruno’s office.

Michael McKee, associate director of New York State Tenants and Neighbors, a statewide housing advocacy organization, said attention to housing outside of the city was virtually nonexistent.

“I don’t think any of the players in Albany are paying attention to housing, affordable housing or any tenant protection program,” McKee said.

Assembly Member Lopez begged to differ.

“There is definitely more chatter,” Lopez said. “There is more attention because there is a serious housing crisis.”

Lopez said he expected the Assembly this year to commit $70 to $90 million for construction of affordable housing in the state budget. But that is far short of what is needed, affordable housing developers and advocates have said. In contrast, the mayor’s plan will spend about $3 billion on the preservation and construction of 65,000 affordable housing units through 2008 – and that is short of what is needed, too, experts have said.

This difference in how much attention housing gets in the city and in Albany is not lost on housing advocates. They are planning to apply more pressure on politicians to make housing a priority, particularly by rolling back luxury decontrol, which is part of the rent regulation laws renewed last year.

Luxury decontrol, which allows landlords to deregulate apartments that reach $2,000 monthly rent vacant or when the rent is $2,000 or higher and the household income is greater than $175,000 for two years consecutively, has been blamed for the loss of as many as 100,000 rent stabilized apartments.

Although Republicans in the legislature vocally oppose rent regulation, McKee said advocates are not targeting them alone. Democrats who have failed to win political battles for tenants are being targeted, too, he said. Tenants and Neighbors organized a rally outside of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office on a recent weekend.

The Democrats’ “whole response is, ‘what do you expect us to do?’” McKee said. “It’s pretty pathetic…. Well, we expect you to play hardball.”

Acknowledging that making housing a potent issue in Albany would be difficult, McKee said the recent rally was just the beginning of putting pressure on state politicians.

“Normally, the legislature never deals with rent regulation unless it’s a sunset year,” he said. “They’re not going to want to do it. They’re not going to do it unless there is an enormous effort by tenants and advocates.”

Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.

[Kris]

May 16, 2004

Steady Focus, Evolving Vision

By JOSH BARBANEL

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/05/16/realestate/cov.583.jpg
Monte Hinds and Dorine Clark talk at Nehemiah homes built in 1990.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/05/16/realestate/cob.render.650.jpg
A rendering of a design for the next phase.

IT was closing day, once again, at Nehemiah Housing as 13 quietly anxious families passed through an assembly line of folding tables, document checks and seemingly endless signatures in the living room and basement of a model row house on Hinsdale Street in the East New York section of Brooklyn.

At the crowded but never chaotic scene unfolded 10 days ago, buyers took title to some of the last of 2,900 low-cost homes built in Brooklyn by Nehemiah, a housing program that grew out of a church-based organizing movement and brought several troubled neighborhoods back to life.

Now as Nehemiah looks to the future, it is remaining remarkably true to its vision, but changing with the times as well. It will soon begin construction on a new round of row houses that are larger, more urban in feeling and more architecturally ambitious than earlier models, but will still be among the lowest-cost houses in the city.

Five blocks away from the closing, on Williams Avenue, a row of 18-foot-wide houses of brick and aluminum siding silently awaited as the 13 families went through the final paperwork. Workers from Monadnock Builders meandered across the freshly sodded front lawns, resetting door locks, gathering stray trash and going through a final punch list of things to do.

There, at No. 674, was the new home of Pamela D. King and her 16-year-old daughter, Tiffany. Ms. King, a welfare supervisor, was so nervous about the closing that as she packed up the night before, she accidentally threw out the purchase checks. She found them after dumping all the trash on the kitchen floor.

No. 680 was ready for Basil A. Clarke, an auditor with the Department of Education's food service division, and his wife, Hazel, a school cafeteria worker. Waiting for a seat at the title company table, Mr. Clarke said he could think only of finally escaping the drumbeat of noisy feet on the ceiling of his current fifth-floor apartment in East Flatbush.

Pelham C. Van Cooten Jr., a programmer at the Department of Education, was looking forward to moving his wife and three children to No. 684. He could not help grinning from ear to ear as he waited with his attorney, Howard Chu, a lawyer from his union, District Council 37. He had kept the closing a secret at work and in his family, and was looking forward to surprising his parents and co-workers with the news that he finally owned his own home after three years of waiting.

Each house has three bedrooms, a backyard and 1,300 square feet of living space, and was about to be sold for about $85,000 plus a $20,000 city subsidy that will eventually have to be repaid. The sale price is a small fraction of the market value, even on the outer reaches of Brooklyn in East New York, where after decades of abandonment and decline, property values have soared in the last few years. Each new house was sold at cost, through a lottery, to a first-time home buyer, one with an income as low as $26,000.

The houses on Williams Avenue that were sold at the closing 10 days ago, were among the last of a batch of 700 homes built on what had been an abandoned wasteland west of Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York by Nehemiah, a housing program dating back to the 1980's that grew out of a church-based community organizing movement. To date, Nehemiah has built 2,900 houses in Brooklyn and has helped to develop 1,000 more in the South Bronx.

Nehemiah and its parent organization, East Brooklyn Congregations, have been widely credited with restoring the economic and social stability of East New York and Brownsville, at a time when no one else would consider building there. Now private developers vie for small building sites once passed over by Nehemiah and put up market-rate houses without subsidies — and at a profit.

As it completes its third wave of housing construction, Nehemiah has remained remarkably true to the vision that led it to press City Hall to provide vacant, and all but worthless, city land for large swaths of small single-family houses, mass produced in Levittown fashion, without profit, so cheaply that even low-paid neighborhood people could afford them.

But Nehemiah's vision is shifting with the times. Its houses are becoming more spacious, and emboldened by its successes, Nehemiah is broadening its approach and ambitions even as the church and community leaders say they are also remaining true to their original mission, empowering people in the neighborhood to control their own destinies.

Although the group once tenaciously clung to the notion that home ownership itself, in the form of single-family homes, had a redemptive power that could transform a community, it is now planning a new development in Spring Creek, on the edge of East New York, that will include two- and three-family town houses as well. The new development, built on landfill, will include 843 homes that will be wider, at 20 feet, and larger and roomer than earlier models.

Forsaken Areas
From Empty Lots to Rows of Houses

The first houses built by Nehemiah were austere, with plain brick fronts and small windows, designed by architects hired directly by the contractors. Cars were parked in front yards so owners could keep an eye on them.

In contrast, for its next phase Nehemiah has hired its own architect, Alexander Gorlin, who has put together a sharply different vision for the new neighborhood. The facades have been redrawn with a new look of brick and colored panels that will vary from house to house. Front stoops are back, with cars relegated to rear yards. Still, as the ambitious project moves forward, the stress remains on keeping costs low.

Nehemiah has moved from simple awe over the miracle of building anything at all, let alone blocks and blocks of houses in a neighborhood all but forsaken by the city government and the private market, to the hiring of Mr. Gorlin, who has written a book on the history of the town house and has designed luxury town houses and is designing an apartment for Daniel Libeskind, the master planner of the World Trade Center site. He talks about the new development as an exemplar of the "the new urbanism" and celebrates the return of the classic New York front stoop.

"We were very careful to create a sense of identity for each house so they blend together," Mr. Gorlin said of the evolving designs for the next Nehemiah homes. "The sense of color enlivens the street and makes it more cheerful."

As vacant land in Brooklyn becomes scarce and expensive, Nehemiah is already planning several projects in which it will build low-cost midrise, four- to six-story, apartment houses on scattered vacant lots that will be operated as below-market-rate rental apartments.

"When we started here, there was nothing but empty lots — we are talking about total devastation," said Msgr. John Peyton of St. Rita Roman Catholic Church on Shepherd Avenue in East New York, co-chairman of East Brooklyn Congregations. "We developed a community that supported itself and all that was around it. The mission has never changed; the mission is about people, the process was housing."

Over the last two decades, the city has seen the resurgence of entire neighborhoods, as thousands of city-owned properties have been restored or rebuilt, creating or fixing 200,000 homes, according to city officials, making the devastation of the past a distant memory.

Church-Based Group
A Plan to Revive Dying Areas

The story of Nehemiah begins just beyond this horizon, before this resurgence began, as church leaders, struggling to find ways of stabilizing Brownsville and East New York, banded together and adopted the organizing techniques of Saul Alinsky, the legendary Chicago community organizer.

East New York, an immigrant working-class neighborhood with a mix of wood-frame houses and brick apartment buildings, had gone through a period of steep decline — white flight, followed by housing abandonment, followed by arson fires that destroyed what was left on many blocks. In 1970 to 1980 East New York lost one out of six residents and 5,000 households, according to census figures compiled by the Department of City Planning. As organizers held a series of meetings across the neighborhood, they found that housing was the most pressing priority after crime.

In early 1980's the group began working with I. D. Robbins, a builder and civic reformer who had advocated building very-low-cost row houses, affordable to families with modest incomes. With the help of church leaders — and a promise of construction funds from Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Episcopal church groups — the group began pressing Mayor Edward I. Koch for land to support the plan.

Nehemiah, now formally known as the Nehemiah Housing Development Fund Corporation, was born. It was named for the Old Testament prophet who called for a new Jerusalem to be built on the site of the old. The group sold their first homes in Brownsville in 1984, for $39,500. Construction in East New York began in 1987.

Nehemiah's Vision
First-Time Buyers in Low-Cost Homes

From the first, Nehemiah had a distinctive development strategy. It sought to build only single-family row homes to create a sense of neighborhood ownership. It built in large batches, using a single developer, to cut costs to the bone — pouring a single foundation for an entire block, for example. By building on large sites, the group hoped to create a critical mass of homeowners large enough to change the character and culture of an area.

And while other groups were scrambling for federal grants and local subsidies, Nehemiah rejected outright government handouts as a matter of principle and insisted that any subsidies be in the form of loans. Prices were kept low and profit eliminated.

While other groups look to provide housing for a mix of income groups in a neighborhood, Nehemiah was content to provide the lowest-price housing it could for first-time home buyers, according to Michael Gecan, a senior organizer with the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, who began working with the East Brooklyn churches in 1980.

"We believe that the highest value is creating ownership at the starter level," he said. "That is exactly the place where there has been less of a commitment in a lot of new construction."

This is in sharp contrast to the New York City Housing Partnership, which has sponsored more than 18,000 subsidized houses since it was established in the early 1980's. Kathryn S. Wylde, who ran the housing partnership program for many years, said it was designed to create a housing market and attract private builders and private investment in neighborhoods that had been ignored for 50 years.

Under the program, builders received subsidies and low-cost land, in exchange for limited returns. Ms. Wylde is now president of the housing partnership's parent organization, the Partnership for New York City. New two-family houses built under the program sell for $270,000 to $360,000, city officials say.

Shawn Donovan, the new commissioner of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, did a study comparing the two programs while at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He said that while Nehemiah set a goal of empowering the community through home ownership, the partnership set a goal of developing and empowering a new generation of home builders.

"The means to the end was home ownership," he said. "The ends were quite different."

But for Nehemiah homeowners, the decision to take a chance on East New York was sometimes a difficult one.

It was with some trepidation that Robert James, a project manager with I.B.M., paid $71,000 in 1990 for a 1,100-square-foot house on Barbey Street in the first round of Nehemiah houses built in East New York. He had visited the area in the past and remembered being intimidated by the vagrants, drug addicts and others hanging around abandoned buildings in the area. "All of that stuff kind of disappeared," once the houses started going up, he said.

And his house and block have changed, too, since he moved in. On a block once spare and plain, neighbors have put up fences of iron or brick, sometimes with pillars topped with pyramids, pineapples or lions. Front porches and colorful verandas appeared. He and his neighbors joined together to build rear fences, one house each weekend. Vinyl floors were replaced with ma