COMMUNITY COALITION FOR HOUSING AS A HUMAN RIGHT, INC.
Prepared by Felix Severino
Working Plan for Housing Services, Training and Organizing
State Senate District #31, 01/01/18 – 12/31/018
Working Plan for Housing Services, Training and Organizing
Index Page #
Executive Summary 4
The New York City’s Housing Affordability Crisis. 6
Housing Supply and Availability in New York 6
The Community Coalition in the Context of the Above Referred Crisis 10
Our Housing Clinic Services 10
Organizing & Leadership Program 11
History of our Housing Clinic and Activities 12
Struggling for Preserving the Housing in Community Assembly District 31 12
Others Activities Preserving Housing and Prevention Displacement 13
Coalition Activities Preventing Displacement of Low Income Families. 14
Organizing and Outreaching Activities 16
Target Population 17
Project Plan Jan. – Dec. 2018. 18
Housing Services 18
Tenant Ownership Promotion 20
Organizing & Leadership Program 21
Evaluation and Outreach 22
Coalition Project’s Outcomes Definition and Evaluation. 24
Staffing Plan to Maintain and Expand Coalition Services 24
Coalition Offices and facilities to Provide Services. 25
Coalition Project’s Monitoring and Reporting System 25
Indicators for each activity 25
Budget Proposal Jan. 2018 - Dec. 2018 26
Others Coalition Documents (Charts, Graphs, etc.) 27…..
· Certificate of Incorporation
· Employment Identification No.
· 501 c(3) Letter
· Coalition Chart
· Board of Director List
Executive Summary
Working Plan for Housing Services, Training and Community Organizing in State Senate District #31, 01/01/18 – 12/31/018
The New York City’s Housing Affordability Crisis.
The existence of the relative housing shortage in our communities is impacting in different manners the distinct range of income and population.
The preservation of affordable housing has been impossible, especially for the working classes, and median income community. mainly because the public effort to expand the NYS housing supply depend on the two principal components of the NYS Housing System and its Market; the Rent Stabilization Law, (RSL), and the Rent Market Law, (RML), and both privileges the interest of Major Real Estate Companies, and not the interest of the general public.
During the last 8 years, the units below the RML increased 10% (88,322units) to 1.2 million units, and RSL remained practically the same near 1.0 million, decreasing the relative participation for units on Public Housing, Homeowners, Cooperatives, and Condominiums.
The direct impact of the referred market structure in the increasing pressure on the local community market rent has worseness the problem of affordable rent for the worker and median classes. This has had dramatic impact or areas like Community Assembly District #31, which concentrate families with income level below the USA median income of $ 50,000 yearly.
The Coalition pursues to gain the residents involvement, and participation on issues related to the access of affordable, decent and stable housing in our communities, and based on it we have implemented the Housing Clinic, to provide direct services and case management related to families’ housing struggles, and the Organizing & Leadership Program to assist them with housing organizing and training in the State Senate District #31.
The Coalition’s Plan on Housing Services and Training – Organizing Activities for 2018.
The planned services for the year 2018 have relied in the housing clinics services, the training and organizing activities executed in our prior years of operation. In other words we have assumed this experience as a pilot project to implement most of the activities planned related to Housing Quality Standards, Preventing Displacement, Building and Community Intervention among others.
Based on it the 2018 goals include to accomplish 330 cases related to Preserving the Housing Quality Standards thru HCR, HPD, Housing Court, and direct Mediation with landlords. 313 cases related with Displacement Prevention, and the assistance to more than 200 residents with entitlement services such as SCRIE, DRIE, S-8, etc., and most important to work with involvement and participation of 30 building and more than 500 tenants in other activities to advance the agenda of Community Building and Tenant Organizing. This implies the Reinforcement of Community Action, a Community Wide initiative that pursues the development of an Affordable Housing’s Community Agenda. This also implies to organize and maintains at least a dozen of Tenants Association in the State Senate District #31.
The budget required to launch and sustain this initiative during the year 2018 requires $156,147, in order to cover the cost of a program manager and two specialists; a Housing Case Worker, and a Community Liaison/Organizer. Additionally include the Intake Coordinator. These resources also cover for OTPS, and indirect cost of the project.
Working Plan for Housing Services, Training and Organizing in State Senate District #31, 01/01/18 – 12/31/018
The New York City’s Housing Affordability
At first instance, the lack of affordable housing imply two possible situations acting independently, but simultaneously influencing the housing market condition; the family income and the housing supply. The existence of housing shortage might be measured by the vacancy rate in the required neighborhood; which will be impacting the different range of income in different manners.
Given the structure of the housing market, and the household income, New York City’s policies have targeted mainly the supply of the housing market or the housing stock. Based on it, the city has developed dozens of initiative pursuing to eliminate restraining in the housing market, and pursuing to secure stable housing supply. The policy intervention has secured stable housing supply, but this has implied growing restraining for those families located in the lower level of the income distribution, or those with most limited income. Let overview the situation of the housing market in the city of New York, in order to better understand the matter of “housing affordability”.
Housing Supply and Availability in New York
According to the evidence during the period 2009 – 2017, disregarding that the total housing supply has increased to rate of 0.86% (27,516 units), the level of units belonging to the Rent Stabilization System or available for lower income families has remained stable, because only changed 0.3% (3,077 units). This has been the outcome, basically from the city policies, such as J-51, and others, which promote the rehabilitation and foment of buildings conditions constructed before year 1946. Nevertheless, the preservation of affordable housing has moved backward and this has been mainly due to the negative impact from homeownership growth of 1.16% (12,127 units), the new reduction on the units from the rent controlled system by 33.2% (13,441 units), and overall for the large impact of the increases in non controlled apartments in near 10.0%; (88,322 units), to 848,721 controlled units. Considering 305,658 uncontrolled units from the market rent, totalizing 1,154,379 uncontrolled units reined by the private law, converting the market rent system in the determinant factor to set the whole housing market condition in the city of New York.
This tendency is quite related also with the weakness of the Rent Stabilization System, (1,029,917 units) running in the state that privileges the private ownership and tend to punish the tenants and residents ownership which counter weight the pressure of dismantling the old controlled system during the initial of such process some decade ago.
The Rent Stabilization Law, (RSL), that pursued restrain the increases of rent of the referred process, contrarily has provoked rent increases, for leases from one and two years, ranging between 500% and 800% respectively during the last 57 years of implementation. The Rent Control System has eliminated about 1.8 million units from its original protection, caused mainly for the imposition of fixed rent increases of 7.5 % annually, without considering others additional charges derived for Fuel Cost Adjustment, Major Capital Improvement, or Individual Apartment Improvements, provoking accumulated rent increases near of 2,600 % in the same period. Both situations without considering the also the illegal violation of the rent history of the rent stabilized units which are occurring intensively in the last decade with the entire complicity of DHCR, who renounced to its prosecutor’s role, resulting in quite vulnerable NYS Housing Judicial system, monopolized entirely for the landlord and real estate corporations.
The impact on the market rent of this entire situation is the unstoppable increases of rent and the worseness of the problem of affordable rent for the worker and median classes. According to “2015 City habitat market report”,* “the average rent for a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan is $3,895, that’s roughly equal to the entire monthly income of the typical U.S. worker”
The other important factor to consider in other to better understand the problem of Housing affordability in this city of New York is the problems of income distribution, and wages from inside this city, because areas such as the Community Assembly District #31, particularly the Zip-codes 10027, 10033, 10040, 10034, 10463, located in the upper side of the district, concentrate the lower quartiles of the income level, below $49,000 annually income. This areas are also among the ones with highest cost of living is the in the United States, as described by the Office of NY Controller. **
The information gathered from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistic during 2016, that disregarding the entire borough of Manhattan had average income of $2,783, over the national average of $1,043; the community assembly district #31 had average weekly income of $999 or lower; to an average of $825 per week.***
Other studies show that the same result for upper north of Manhattan and the zip-code included in the Assembly district #31 (10025, 10023,10027, 10033, 10040, 10034, and 10457) with median income below 42,000 yearly (808 per week)****
One of the effective way to defeat effectively the New York City’s Housing Affordability Crisis, shall deal with both side of the problem described above and impacting the housing market; the residents ability to afford for the asking rent of the available units, and with the cost of the rental housing supply.
The coalition perspective focus on the reasons which are impacting the cost of the housing stock, and is abstracting those others important factor impacting the level of income and the restraint derived from the labor market. Our perspective includes initiatives to work with the renter and residents, pursuing to impact the supply of the housing units. Our strategy pursue to impact inversely the increasing cost of the city housing stock, and the NYC housing legal system, and other issues related with the tenancy and immediate control of the housing vacancy stock. Among the envisioned option we target the formulation of programs and initiative that place the emphasis on residents and tenants control and ownership that in the worse of the cases might attenuate the pressure of housing affordability for the worker and people with income below to the median of the whole population.
One of such initiative might include those HPD programs which encourage resident involvement and participation. HPD should re-launch programs which focus on Tenant and Resident Control and Ownership as the Third Party Transfer and Neighborhood Restore pursuing to drastically restrain the source of the affordability crisis.
Our coalition has among its initiatives, the organizing and leadership project in order to advance in the tenant and residents organizing agenda. We emphasize also in the organizing process at community wide, and work with Community Action for Housing, a tenant community organization which pursues community development.
* https://smartasset.com/mortgage/what-is-the-cost-of-living-in-new-york-city
** http://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Minimum-Wage-Briefing-.pdf
***.https://www.bls.gov/regions/new-york-new-jersey/news-release/pdf/countyemploymentandwages_newyorkcity.pdf
****.https://statisticalatlas.com/state-upper-legislative-district/New-York/District-31/Household-Income
http://www.nycrgb.org/downloads/research/pdf_reports/09HSR.pdf
http://www.nycrgb.org/downloads/research/pdf_reports/17HSR.pdf
New York City's Housing Number Variation 2009 and 20172009 / 2017 / Changes / %
Rent Controlled / 40,480 / 27039 / -13,441 / -33.2041
Stabilized Post 46 / 301,503 / 263621 / -37,882 / -12.5644
Rent Stabilized Pre -47 / 725337 / 766296 / 40,959 / 5.646892
Non Regulated / 765,399 / 848721 / 83,322 / 10.88609
Other Regulated / 311,934 / 278619 / -33,315 / -10.6801
Renters / 2,144,653 / 2,184,296 / 39,643 / 1.848458
Stabilized system / 1,026,840 / 1,029,917 / 3,077 / 0.299657
Condo / 91,106 / 116134 / 25,028 / 27.4713
Co-Op / 314,312 / 330,679 / 16,367 / 5.207246
Conventional Home / 639,935 / 586413 / -53,522 / -8.36366
Homeowners / 1,045,353 / 1,033,226 / -12,127 / -1.16009
Total / 3,190,006 / 3,217,522 / 27,516 / 0.862569
The Community Coalition in the Context of the Above Referred Crisis
“The purpose of the Community Coalition for a Housing as a Human Right Inc. is to engage in any lawful activity … to reduce the lack of resident’s involvement, and participation on their community’s matter, especially to those related to the growing difficulties to the access of an affordable, decent and stable housing in our communities. We believe these objectives can be attained by increasing the level of awareness, and organizing in order to empower residents and the communities for the permanent solution of such housing and communities problems.”
The Organizing Model implied in our mission in order to preserve and enlarge the affordable Housing in the long term is to endow the people with the strength to become subject of their own life and their future.
Our organizing model assigns a very important role to tenants’ participation in the preservation process and to the collaboration between the Coalition and other local and citywide institution in order to eliminate barriers for affordable housing. Additionally we encourage tenant to participate and enforce owners to maintain city housing standards in their housings.
Some of the activities we normally deploy to attain preservation of quality standards in NYC housing Stock, and to fight the growing tendency of non affordability are implemented thru our Housing Clinic and the promotion of Housing Awareness, tenant organizing, and community building..
Our Housing Clinic Services
The Community Coalition conducts Housing Services thru our program called Housing Clinic, which normally run daily from 10:00 to 5:00. We had used the Centro Altagracia, at 511 West 164th Street for the period 11/2013 – 08/2016. Actually we are providing partly services at Centro Cultural Tamboril, at 2005 Amsterdam Ave. 3rd Fl, and at 5030 Broadway, Suite #640, in State Senate District #31. When running full time we had used up to four housing specialists on a volunteering base, but now this number is in the minimum level due to financial hardship. Normally the host institutions generously provide fully-equipped offices, printers, computers, telephones, and internet access without charge. Every housing specialist has years of experience as a tenant advocated and is bilingual in English and Spanish. A most detailed description is provided ahead in the working plan of this proposal.