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"Section 8" And The Single Landlord


Many people might assume Gerardo Diuccio is the stereotypical mean landlord: On a recent afternoon he was at the Brooklyn Housing Court, trying to evict a tenant who has always paid her rent and has never caused him any grief. She has not damaged his apartment or run up the water bill. Diuccio has not had heated arguments with her about noise, where she puts her garbage or anything else.

He is evicting her anyhow. He doesn't want her out - he wants Section 8 out. Diuccio is tired of having to deal with the administrative rules and procedures of Section 8, the federal housing subsidy that helps thousands of low-income New Yorkers pay their monthly rent.

"I can't take it anymore," he said. "I don't even want to hear the name Section 8 anymore." Diuccio is not alone. Until about five years ago, owners of unregulated apartments could not "opt out" of Section 8. But a change in federal law now means that they can, and they are. More and more landlords seem to see the subsidy program as so bureaucratic and slow they are withdrawing their apartments from it.

And that is effectively denying New Yorkers affordable housing.

As of March 31, 85,229 apartments in New York City were rented under the Section 8 program, according to the New York City Housing Authority's web site. People on Section 8 receive the help in one of two forms: they either live in a Section 8 project or they have a Section 8 voucher allowing them to rent from a landlord who has signed up for the program.

The number of people who qualify for Section 8 far outnumbers the number of vouchers available; more than 150,000 New Yorkers are on a voucher waiting list, which was closed in 1994. With demand high, only people in homeless shelters, suffering domestic abuse or considered to be intimidated witnesses can get new vouchers. Section 8 recipients contribute 30 percent of their household income to pay their rent; the subsidy covers the rest.

Diuccio is one of almost 30,000 private landlords in New York City who participate in Section 8. His troubles started in 2002, when Section 8 accepted his request to increase the rent by $43 per month. Yet, he said, he's never seen one penny of it.

"They never give me that raise," he said. "Every time it's something. 'I can't find the paper.' They keep saying, 'Don't worry you're going to get your money.'� I don't want to deal with it anymore."

It is difficult to tell how many landlords are reacting like Diuccio. But Randi Massey, senior staff attorney at Legal Services of New York-Bronx, said she has heard so many such complaints that she has considered filing a federal lawsuit to compel improvements in Section 8's administration.

Among other administrative headaches for landlords is a lack of cooperation from Section 8 administrators that is mystifying, Massey said.

"If (a landlord) calls the tenant's worker to see what the problem is, they very often say, 'Sir, I can't give you that information, you have to subpoena it,'" Massey said. "There's no legal reason for that secrecy. That's ridiculous."

By paying landlords who have several tenants receiving Section 8 one lump-sum check, the Section 8 administrators create more problems, too. Given just one check, a landlord is hard-pressed to know which tenant has been cut off the subsidy or which apartment has been recertified after passing an inspection.

For Diuccio, more of Section 8's rules will make leaving the program difficult because he wants to help his tenant get a transfer from Section 8, which will allow her to move to a new Section 8 apartment. And in order to do that, she has to be evicted. After three visits to Brooklyn's Housing Court, Diuccio said that evicting his good tenant would cost him about $350.

"I'm sorry I got involved with Section 8," he said. "I did it because I want to help people. I'm a good person. It's going to cost me money now to get out."

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Variances: How To Undermine Zoning and Make a Profit


"They're more concerned with profit than improving the neighborhood," snapped Georgina Bailey, a resident of Astor Row in Harlem.

Bailey went with her neighbors and representatives of Manhattan's Community Board 10 to speak out against the proposal to build a 14-story building with 102 apartments on a site located at Astor Row and 130th Street. The Harlem residents testified at a recent meeting of the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA), a little-known body that has the power to grant property owners exemptions from the city's zoning regulations.

The Harlem contingent brightened up the board hearing room, a dark cave in an office building at 40 Rector Street in Manhattan, nestled in the protective shadows of Wall Street. The chambers are otherwise decorated with well- groomed lawyers in serious business suits.

The developer in this case, Uptown Partners, Inc., went to the board because they want to build a larger and taller building than would be otherwise allowed under the current zoning. They started out earlier this year asking to build a 24-story building with a total of 222,013 square feet. After meeting community opposition and several rounds of negotiations, they cut down their proposal to 19 stories, then 16, and now 14 stories. The local residents are still outraged because they think the new building will be entirely out of context with the surrounding blocks, where most buildings are no more than five stories high.

In their first proposal Uptown Partners claimed that they had to have at least 24 stories in order to make the project economically feasible. The residents look back at this claim and say that it was false because now the developer is willing to settle for 14 stories while at the same time saying they now need at least 14 stories to make the numbers work. This proves, they say, that the motive is more profit.

The developer also says that unique sub-soil conditions on the site make it necessary to have a bigger building in order to recover the high cost of site development. The neighbors say that soil conditions are no different than they are for most adjacent properties. And if every property owner in the area can exceed the zoning limits, then what good is zoning?

The Board of Standards And Appeals and Variances

The Board of Standards and Appeals has five members, all appointed by the mayor for terms of six years. One must be an engineer, one an architect, and one a city planner. No more than two can come from any one borough. But judging from the chummy banter among the guys in the bpard chambers, it would appear that testosterone level is a membership criterion. Women are permitted in this club, but apparently only men can call each other by their first names. See the board's own explanation of how it works.

The board grants exceptions to the zoning law know as variances. The property owner must show that they meet five conditions before they can get a variance. Briefly, they are: 1) that there are unique physical conditions on the site (for example, an odd-shaped lot); 2) the variance is needed so the property owner can get a "reasonable return" on their investment; 3) it won't alter the "essential character" of the neighborhood; 4) the economic hardship wasn't created by the owner; and 5) the change being requested is the minimum necessary to relieve the owner of their hardship. The board also grants special permits in a wide array of cases. The full powers of the board are set out in the city's Zoning Resolution (in pdf format).

Too Many Variances

Neighborhoods throughout the city have complained long and hard about variances and the ability of the Board of Standards and Appeals to hand them out as if they were free parking permits. Actually, they're hardly free. Lawyers charge clients dearly for their knowledge of the arcane language spoken at the board. The legal gurus know what to say as "proof" that each one of the five conditions set out in the law have been met.

The main problem is that there's no limit to the variances that the board can dole out in any neighborhood. As a result, entire neighborhoods have been developed in ways not allowed in the zoning.

For example, in the last decade speculators moved into the West Village, converting industrial buildings one-by-one with the blessing of the Board of Standards and Appeals. This speeded up the gentrification process. Industrial properties tend to restrain the rise in property values and rents and provide needed jobs for working people. When industry goes, so do the jobs and many options for affordable housing for workers. During this saga, the city's planning department dozed away and then, when it was too late, changed the zoning. But the zoning change only recognized the developers' windfall after the fact (can you call this planning?) and opened the way for even more development opportunities in the future.

More recently, speculators in Bedford-Stuyvesant (Brooklyn's Community Board 3), moved into an industrially-zoned area en masse, got a truckload of variances, and built apartments that are not allowed by zoning. The effect has been to push out businesses and jobs in a low-income neighborhood with relatively high levels of unemployment. By the time the community realized they needed to have a housing plan it was already too late. Once again, the City Planning Department moved in to mop up after the storm.

Community Planning versus Ad Hoc Planning

In the long run, the Board of Standards and Appeals engages in ad hoc planning, or planning by variance. That should not be its function. The board was created along with zoning regulations to address unique circumstances not anticipated by zoning that make it impossible for some individual property owners to actually do what the zoning intended them to do. The board is a quasi-judicial body that, if working properly, will resolve minor disputes without expensive and time-consuming court battles. But the Board of Standards and Appeals was not created as a planning body. That's the role of the City Planning Commission and its support agency, the Department of City Planning.

The more fundamental problem is that, with only a few exceptions, the city's official planning bodies don't have plans for neighborhoods. In the absence of community plans, it's not surprising that ad hoc planning easily takes over. The reliance of the Department of City Planning on zoning also lends itself to an ad hoc approach. Zoning rules get changed to accommodate development that is already taking place. It would be far better to have community plans that reflect a consensus about what the future neighborhood should look like. That way "neighborhood character" would be more clearly defined and could guide both the Board of Standards and Appeals on variances, and the City Planning Commission, which is charged with making decisions on land use in the city. If communities could be proactive and say what they do want, then they wouldn't always have to be reactive and say what they don't want.

Alas, neighborhoods are largely sidelined on land use decisions. The votes of community boards on land use issues are strictly advisory. At the BSA, community boards are notified about variance requests, but their input isn't required. The understaffed community boards sometimes don't respond or inform neighborhood groups, whose volunteer members are frequently no match for the three-piece suits in the board chambers.

Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs & Planning at Hunter College, Editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community- based Planning.

The Tragedy And Neglect Of The Staten Island Ferry


The crash of the Staten Island Ferry Andrew Barberi that killed ten people should serve as a warning to New Yorkers that this icon of New York City travel and tourism is in desperate need of attention, and innovation.

Though the tragedy involved a single vessel, it paralyzed the entire ferry system for more than 12 hours. Can you imagine if the Midtown Tunnel or Grand Central Terminal were closed for such a long time? Train stations have numerous platforms and toll plazas have dozens of lanes but, incredibly, Staten Island is only served by a single ferry terminal and single ferry service. Operated by the New York City Department of Transportation, the ferry is an aberration, a municipal anomaly: There is no other transportation system anywhere in New York City that is actually operated by a city agency with city employees.

Other transportation agencies and authorities have had plenty of reason to neglect or ignore the Staten Island Ferry. They see themselves as competing with it, and they are clearly winning; it’s barely a contest. The reality is that ferry ridership (In PDF format) between Staten Island and Manhattan has been declining in recent decades, mostly due to two factors. First, Manhattan as the center of gravity in the region’s job market just isn’t as strong as it used to be, because of the emergence of business districts outside Manhattan, as well as growing work opportunities on Staten Island. The travel patterns of island dwellers has changed, but the route of the ferry, unfortunately, has not.

The second factor in declining Staten Island Ferry ridership is because investments made by other agencies in highways and buses, etc. are paying off handsomely. For instance, in the late 1990s as subway fares were hiked throughout the city, the fares for express buses were cut by $1. This happened just after the ferry fare had been cut $.50 on July 4, 1997. Still, the increased savings on the bus trip has encouraged more riders to shift from boat to bus, leading to another five percent drop in ridership between 2000 and 2001 alone.

In some ways, the city’s operation of the ferry has ignored important trends seen elsewhere in the region’s ferry market. First, the dispersal of the region’s job base to Brooklyn and Jersey City has spurred the creation of seven new ferry landings in these two places in the last decade alone. While Staten Island commuters are migrating to jobs in these places, the city has not kept pace at either promoting or creating ferry linkages between Staten Island and these two growing business districts.

To the city’s credit, there are three new boats on order, including the Guy V. Molinari, which was just launched from the Marinette Shipyard in Wisconsin shipyard last month, and new terminals are under construction at Whitehall Street in Manhattan and St. George in Staten Island. Yet, to its discredit, funding for these investments were not a part of the city’s typical capital budgeting process. They were made financially possible only by a loan secured from the nationwide tobacco settlement of 1998. Had millions of Americans not died from smoking over recent decades, the capital stock of the Staten Island ferry would be still declining.

The city is failing to learn from private operators not just in routes but in ferries themselves. The ones the city is investing in are simply too big, behemoths that cost $40 million and carry 4,500 passengers. They do not help solve the key problems for the Staten Island ferry such as the need for improved night-time service (currently boats only operate hourly), or reduced waiting time between boats. A bigger fleet of smaller boats could give islanders the chance to depart to or from Manhattan every five or seven minutes, and they would surely vote with their MetroCards--if given the opportunity to do so.

To a degree, the service is a prime case of “you get what you pay for.” Since 1997, Staten Island Ferry riders have been paying exactly nothing. It’s the best free ride in the city. More of an accident of history than a conscious public policy, the change in the fare from 50 cents to nothing came with the advent of MetroCard. It would be too expensive, said then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to outfit the terminals with MetroCard turnstiles. It would be easier just to let everyone in for free. To critics, this lack of a stable revenue stream has made it too easy for the city not to continue to invest in the system as it should.

Making the Staten Island Ferry part of the MetroCard system may not be very easy. Because it is the only form of transportation that the City of New York itself operates, it does not enjoy the benefits of coordinated scheduling or economy of scale as if it were part of any larger system, such as the MTA.

Ironically, the MTA even uses the Staten Island Ferry in their promotional television ads known as “Going Your Way.” Viewers are treated to sleek trains winding along the bucolic Hudson River, quiet buses whizzing along an Expressway, rapid new subway trains racing across the skyline. The ad closes with a magical only-from-a-helicopter shot showing the big orange boats sliding across the Harbor. Suspiciously absent is the dark blue paint that says “New York City Department of Transportation” on the side of it.

This inclusion of the ferry is particularly ironic given the state of mass transportation on the island. Basically, a web of buses ring and criss-cross the island, while express buses carry passengers to the central business districts. Running north to south is the Staten Island Railroad, itself another stepchild of transportation history. Known as the Staten Island Rapid Transit, it is really anything but rapid, and includes virtually no express service. Particularly aggravating is the common occurrence of northbound trains arriving at St. George only a minute or two after the ferry has departed for Manhattan.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is also operated by the MTA and is widely seen as the biggest cash cow in the MTA’s Bridges and Tunnels system, generating more than $300 million per year. Small wonder then that the MTA under-invests in all other forms of Staten Island transit, choosing instead to grab $7 in tolls from each driver, and pour that money into transit investments that maximize the number of $7 tolls it can collect from vehicles.

The crash of the Andrew Barberiexemplifies how far we’ve isolated ourselves from our greatest natural transportation asset, the waterways. The creation of regularly scheduled ferry service in 1642 launched two centuries of water transit innovation that led to the invention of steam power, the development of a network of canals and waterways that spanned the continent, and the creation of the Clipper ship, which together made New York into a city that is truly a beacon to the best and brightest in the world.

The Staten Island Ferry, as the last vestige of a vast harbor infrastructure which fueled four centuries of growth, could and should symbolize a turning point for the city in leading the way into a new age of innovation on our waterways.

Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.

 



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