(NYC HDC rendering)
For more than a year there has been wrangling and discord among developers, housing advocates, organized labor, and our elected leaders over an agreement on spending for affordable housing. A “memorandum of understanding” was drafted, but a budget and legislative session came and went in Albany without a consensus.
Now, we finally have a state budget that gives us more than $2 billion in spending on housing. It will have its critics, but by and large this plan puts in front of us the resources and the political will to address the housing and community revitalization needs of cities large and small throughout New York.
This commitment of state resources is more critical than ever as we face a hostile federal budget that aims to eliminate housing programs that are integral to everyday New Yorkers, as well as those that provide safety nets and services to our most vulnerable citizens.
At The Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), small buildings have been our focus for more than four decades. What we’ve seen across our lending portfolio highlights the critical role they play in the stability of our neighborhoods, but also the challenges these properties face. They are where most low- and moderate-income renters live, and are an essential resource of natural affordability.
The state’s housing plan puts in place more than $60 million to help preserve this irreplaceable, yet often forgotten backbone of our housing stock.
Seventy-one percent of the multifamily buildings in the upstate markets CPC serves have fewer than 50 units. What’s striking is that 67 percent of units in these small buildings are in fair or poor condition. They tend to be older, more distressed, and their owners often lack the means to maintain their physical and financial health.
Why are they so important? The rents in these very same buildings are the most affordable in all markets. They are 16 percent below the average rent for their metro areas and 40 percent below the rent levels of the highest-quality buildings. State resources on this scale will be key in preserving and improving housing that is currently serving millions of New Yorkers, and ensuring that it will continue to serve millions more well into the future.
Supportive housing is one of the most compassionate, effective, and cost-efficient means to addressing homelessness. Section 8 has played a significant role in its funding, but with the program squarely in the crosshairs of the president’s budget, state funding will be key to continuing its production.
This deeply affordable housing provides stability and supportive services specifically tailored to the needs of at-risk populations such as formerly homeless military veterans, youth aging out of foster care, and those with mental illness who need additional support.
A joint report by New York City and State found that tenants of supportive housing spent fewer days in jail, homeless shelters, and state-operated psychiatric facilities. This can save taxpayers millions because these tenants are far less likely to need other publicly-funded programs such as government-subsidized health care and social services.
Governor Cuomo’s “Affordable New York” program, which replaces 421-a, will help jumpstart development of low- and moderate-income rental housing in working-class communities throughout New York City’s boroughs. This is essential in a city like New York where half of renters are rent-burdened – paying 30 percent or more of their income towards rent.
Contrary to the spotlight on luxury buildings in high-market neighborhoods, data shows that more than 64 percent of all residential units financed under the old 421-a program between 2010-2015 were created outside of Manhattan, most in smaller buildings.
Thousands of units of affordable and naturally affordable housing would not have been financially feasible and would not have been built without 421-a. Those properties are anchoring working-class communities, providing revenue to the city, and their construction, operation, and maintenance create jobs.
This plan makes good on the governor’s promise to provide an unprecedented level of state resources to address the housing challenges facing our state. It is time for the housing community to come together and recognize that we’re all on the same team. The federal budget, or lack thereof, is looming large over our efforts to strengthen our communities and serve those most in need. If we continue to fracture and fight amongst ourselves, the losers will be the New Yorkers who don’t have the luxury of waiting for us to get out of our own way.
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Rafael E. Cestero is the president and CEO of The Community Preservation Corporation and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. On Twitter @communityp.
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(photo: choreographer Blacka Di Danca)
New York City is experiencing a sonic boom. From electronic cumbia in the Bronx to thumping techno in an East Williamsburg warehouse to experimental sounds in a former Greenpoint luncheonette, the energy of the city’s diverse music cultures is at a creative and popular peak. At the grassroots level, a diffuse network of DIY arts spaces cultivates the next generation of musicians. These fiercely independent venues exist to create opportunities for emerging artists and new voices, offering a first show, a supportive crowd, and a sense of community.
But not everyone is feeling the good vibrations: archaic laws and a punitive bureaucratic mindset are stifling small, local venues that are already struggling to cope with skyrocketing rents. Given a severely lacking support structure for the city’s DIY music and art spaces, a single misstep can prove disastrous. In this environment, the selective enforcement of current rules and regulations serves to criminalize nightlife—dampening economic opportunity and making New York less safe.
One particularly draconian example, the Cabaret Law, was passed at the height of the Harlem Renaissance in a bid to curb the rise of jazz clubs in the prohibition era. In the words of the Committee on Local Laws, the aim was to rein in “the ‘wild’ stranger and the foolish native” by prohibiting restaurants and bars from allowing more than three patrons to dance without receiving a separate cabaret license. For more than 60 years, the law specifically banned the principal instruments used in jazz, until a 1986 ruling found that provision unconstitutional. Despite this overtly discriminatory origin, the law has remained in force to this day.
In addition to its redundancy—strict rules already govern noise, alcohol, crowds, and other late-night nuisances—the Cabaret Law continues to have a chilling effect on specific styles of music, encouraging local music and art spaces to book rock bands or folk performers instead of hip-hop artists or salsa musicians that might inspire the crowd to dance. Applying for a license involves a gauntlet of additional regulations and costs, including additional security, surveillance, operational, and recordkeeping requirements. The cost and complexity help explain why just 94 of the city’s 25,000-plus food service establishments currently hold a cabaret license.
This regulatory relic is just one example of the adversarial relationship that characterizes the city’s interactions with independent nightlife and local arts communities. Many DIY spaces never recover after accruing multiple violations and thousands of dollars in fines. Even modest fixes can be out of reach, especially for smaller spaces: changing a certificate of occupancy, applying for a public assembly permit, or undertaking renovations to comply with byzantine building codes all pose significant hurdles. The lost revenue from just a few days spent closed for repairs can mean the difference between making rent and risking eviction.
In a city where one experienced entrepreneur cites costs upward of $1 million to open a 100-capacity venue, it’s no surprise that artist- and youth-run spaces end up mired in a constant struggle to operate legally. The result is that the city’s small, local arts venues—which account for more than 12,000 jobs and $800 million in annual economic output—struggle to make ends meet.
Rising rents are a major contributing factor, but the city government presents obstacles of its own. In order to prepare for the onslaught of city agencies, DIY spaces are not only paying artists and staff, but also attorneys, expeditors, compliance consultants, and contractors to satisfy health, building, fire, water, gas, and electrical regulations. Faced with escalating costs, zoning pressures, and an enforcement-focused system of regulatory agencies, New York City’s status as an incubator of arts and culture is under threat.
The Center for an Urban Future’s Creative New York report found that at least 24 music venues closed between 2011 and 2015, with more DIY spaces, such as Palisades and Shea Stadium, shuttering in the past few months (although the latter is poised to return). A recent report from the Mayor’s Office of Entertainment and Media confirmed these findings, announcing that more than 20 percent of the city’s smaller music venues have closed over the past 15 years.
Sustaining independent music and nightlife means supporting efforts to create safer physical spaces. It is essential that all spaces comply with common sense safety rules, such as clear paths of egress and working fire extinguishers. But the existing financial and regulatory burden creates a two-tiered ecosystem, with fully licensed, for-profit venues operating aboveground while many artist-run or not-for-profit spaces are forced into the shadows. This has the paradoxical effect of pushing vital arts spaces further underground, making artists and patrons less safe, not better protected.
New York needs a strong base of local arts venues to create opportunities for emerging artists and sustain the next generation of musicians, organizers, and cultural producers. The city should take steps to cultivate its grassroots music and nightlife venues, or risk undermining the foundation of its creative growth. The creative sector now employs roughly 300,000 New Yorkers, or 7 percent of all jobs in the city. And small clubs, bars, and music venues account for thousands of additional jobs, fueled by live performances every night of the week.
A strategy to support these entrepreneurial endeavors could include free or subsidized legal advice and architectural services for artists and venues; a grantmaking or matching-funds program for urgent safety improvements and public assembly permits; a program to provide mock inspections to local music and art venues; and a nightlife liaison inside City Hall—an approach successfully undertaken by some of New York’s cultural rivals, including San Francisco and Berlin.
Perhaps the simplest step in the right direction is to repeal the Cabaret Law. After nine decades of antagonism toward nightlife, the time has come to let New York dance.
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Eli Dvorkin is managing editor of the Center for an Urban Future and a founding member of the Silent Barn. On Twitter @nycfuture.
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(Photo: @NYSEDNEWS)
When voting Nov. 7, 2017 on whether to call a state constitutional convention, New Yorkers should consider enhancing social welfare rights
New York’s Constitution mandates that every 20 years New Yorkers be asked via a statewide ballot referendum whether they want to call a state constitutional convention. The next such referendum is on the ballot on November 7. If passed, the agenda for the constitutional convention that then occurs should include enhancing social welfare rights, including healthy public schools.
The state constitutional convention held in New York in 1938 passed amendments mandating healthy work conditions for government employees, including healthy work hours. These amendments were added at a time when the conditions in public schools were very different. For example, the one-room schoolhouse remained common, dedicated public bus transportation to schools was just emerging, and forcing children to attend school before dawn was exceptional. If New York’s Constitution guarantees healthy work conditions for government employees, it should do the same for children attending public schools, who have even less choice over the place and hours of their work.
The Proposal
I recommend two additions to New York’s Constitution. Currently, its bill of rights includes the following provision: “Labor of human beings is not a commodity nor an article of commerce and shall never be so considered or construed. No laborer, worker or mechanic, in the employ of a contractor or sub-contractor engaged in the performance of any public work, shall be permitted to work more than eight hours in any day or more than five days in any week, except in cases of extraordinary emergency.”
Analogous to this bill of rights for government employees (“labor”), I recommend one for public-school students: “The state shall not compel students to sacrifice fundamental biological needs to attend public school.” This would include forced attendance at school prior to dawn and at times that make it impossible to get appropriate sleep.
I also recommend adding a health provision to the education clause in the main body of the Constitution (addition marked in italics): “The legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free and healthy common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated.”
Note that in New York’s Constitution the term “common schools” refers to what we nowadays call public schools. Although this clause may appear vague and unenforceable to the casual reader, New York’s top court has interpreted it to mean that the Constitution guarantees every New York student, including disabled, delinquent, neglected, and dependent children, a “sound basic education” through high school.
As applied to school start times, the proposed change to the education clause could be interpreted to entail a due process requirement when a public-school district mandates pre-dawn start times; for example, that a school district couldn’t arbitrarily schedule a poor child to take a public-school bus at 5:55 a.m. (before dawn) to attend a high school starting at 7:17 a.m. (also before dawn during winter months) without providing a reasoned, public explanation for its decision that explicitly considers children’s health and safety.
Manageable court remedies for a school district with persistent unhealthy bus pickup or school start times could include mandating a healthy time or, less onerously, that the district offer the harmed students a voucher based on the district’s current average student cost. The voucher could then be used to allow the student to get a sound healthy education at another school.
It’s arguable that New York’s clause, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law” already includes a right to sleep and health more generally. For example, on February 28, 2016, India’s Supreme Court ruled that “sleep is a fundamental human right” based on the clause in its constitution protecting the “right to life.” But given the history and wording of New York’s Constitution, such a court interpretation in the context of public schools is unlikely.
New York also has a clause mandating that its “state board of social welfare shall make inspections… as to matters directly affecting the health, safety, treatment and training of [reformatory institutions’] inmates.” But public school children are clearly exempt from this requirement.
Other social welfare clauses likely to be proposed at a New York State constitutional convention would be a guarantee of affordable basic healthcare coverage for all; affordable, debt-free tuition at public institutions of higher education; and a clean and healthy environment, including water and air. Redefining the definition of “needy” in the “aid, care and support of the needy” clause would also be likely. Consequently, it could be smart politics for the social welfare groups backing such proposals to form an alliance prior to the Nov. 7 referendum.
The Process and Opposition
The constitutional convention process grants the public three votes (see graphic): 1) whether to call a convention, 2) who to elect to a convention, and 3) whether to approve any of the convention’s proposals. The purpose of the mandatory referendum provision is to provide a mechanism to bypass the Legislature when the Legislature would otherwise have veto power over constitutional amendments involving its own power and the special interests to which it is beholden. In other states, the constitutional initiative serves a similar function, albeit in a less deliberative and democratic way.
Since the institution of a constitutional convention is a check on the Legislature, its natural enemies include the Legislature and any powerful special interest group that has a successful track record of influencing the Legislature. Coalition partners of these groups, who fear opposing their most powerful allies, are also its natural enemies, which may entail either taking a neutral position or actively opposing a measure that, absent the imperatives of coalition politics, they would support. Alas, many of these coalition partners are social welfare groups.
A primary argument that state constitutional convention opponents make is that a convention cannot be controlled by the Legislature and is thus a “Pandora’s Box.” But that is its prime virtue because if a Legislature could limit its agenda it would defeat the purpose of calling a state constitutional convention in the first place.
The more relevant question is whether the people can be trusted to vote in their own self-interest. For thousands of years, the enemies of democracy argued that the people were incapable of making reasoned judgments about their own self-interest. They have a point, but in the long run actions premised on the people’s incapacity for democracy—including their incapacity to override a legislature’s veto power over constitutional amendment—have proven far more harmful.
Conclusion
The health of our children should not be subject to the special interest politics that too often dominate American public education and intimidate parents whose children are held hostage. If Big Education views the cost of healthy public schools as a zero-sum game that comes out of its members’ paychecks, then it should be bypassed. In New York, the only available bypass mechanism is the state constitutional convention. If government workers have a right to healthy work conditions, so do children—even more so because they are children and have no say in the matter.
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J.H. Snider, the president of iSolon.org, is the editor of The New York State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse and author of Does the World Really Belong to the Living? The Decline of the Constitutional Convention in New York and Other US States, 1776–2015.
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