Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Opinion

Protecting Tenants from Construction Harassment


sts op ed

photo, including three of the authors, via the Progressive Caucus


We’ve seen it in our districts. A new landlord takes ownership of a building and starts a construction project that never finishes in order to evict long-term residents. They may turn off the cooking gas indefinitely; they may even knock out the boiler with no explanation.

For too many New Yorkers, this nightmare is their reality. The stories are plentiful: heat and gas shutoffs in the middle of winter, jackhammering causing cracks in apartment walls, loss of power, and lead dust in the air lasting for months on end. For years, city and borough officials and community advocates have encountered a critical mass of stories like these, detailing the unscrupulous conduct of landlords as well as the insufficient response from the City of New York.

We, as members of the City Council members and its Progressive Caucus, see the writing on the walls: our city needs more protections in place for tenants facing construction harassment.

Understanding the need to strengthen the ability of the Department of Buildings (DOB) to protect tenants from construction as harassment, the grassroots Stand for Tenant Safety Coalition (STS) has partnered with the Progressive Caucus to put forth a package of legislation aimed at achieving just that.

These 12 STS bills, most of which are sponsored by members of the Progressive Caucus, with strong support in the Council, will put in place much tougher penalties against abusive landlords for illegal construction practices and enact preventative measures to help tenants protect their homes.  

The goal is to change the way DOB handles construction harassment so that the agency is empowered to become more proactive with regard to issuing construction permits and facilitating communication among tenants, landlords, and city agencies. Such renewed tenant protections are intended to quicken and fortify the City’s response to construction harassment so vulnerable residents in rapidly changing neighborhoods are able to stay in their homes and communities.

As policymakers, we know that construction harassment by unscrupulous landlords only exacerbates the affordable housing crisis already facing residents of New York City. In recent years, the average rents in some city neighborhoods have risen by 20%; in such neighborhoods especially, unethical landlords can use construction as a way of cashing in on rising rents instead of protecting the existing tenants. Calls the City has been receiving from New Yorkers reflect this; construction-related complaints number in the thousands each year.

Even as preserving and creating affordable housing has remained a focus of both the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, the myriad loopholes landlords use in existing laws allow the number of rent-regulated apartments to dwindle. With both the cost of living in the city and rent continuing to rise, protecting the health and safety of tenants through legislation is the minimum of what can be done, the least of how this city can maintain a fair and just society. With the city losing affordable housing every year, we cannot afford to ignore any way in which tenants are threatened by eviction from their homes.

As the clock ticks toward the end of the current City Council session, we need the Council to pass this Stand for Tenant Safety package of legislation as soon as possible. The New York City Council just made history by passing the city’s first ever Right to Counsel legislation, which will provide legal assistance to tenants facing eviction in housing court. We urgently need to continue making progress on tenant rights in New York City by strengthening preventative measures that will help keep tenants from facing eviction in the first place.

It is time that the City renew its commitment, through strengthening the enforcement power of the Department of Buildings, to standing up for residents living under adverse conditions and protect our communities from abusive, unethical landlords. As long as economic inequality and hazardous building conditions threaten health and safety, the City must continue to strengthen every person’s opportunity for a livable and affordable place to call home. As progressive City Council members, we hope our colleagues and the de Blasio administration will work together with us to ensure that our city’s most vulnerable tenants are protected.

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Antonio Reynoso, Donovan Richards, Helen Rosenthal & Ben Kallos are all members of the City Council and leaders of its Progressive Caucus. On Twitter @CMReynoso34 & @DRichards13 & @HelenRosenthal & @BenKallos, & @NYCProgressives.

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For 2018, The Center Must Hold


Cuomo NY Dems

Gov. Cuomo rallying to flip NY House seats (photo: NY Democratic Party)


If the national Women’s March was any indication, we are in for a Democratic tidal wave come 2018. We’re only seven months into 2017, of course. But if such a wave does occur, then the Republican Party in Congress will only revert back to ideological extremes and obstructionism.

Why? Because the seats up for grabs are largely the 50 seats held by moderate Tuesday Group caucus members. As their influence wanes, the influence of the Freedom Caucus and other extreme conservatives will only grow.

While governing is about compromise, politics is about winning, and having worked on several campaigns in New York, I certainly cannot begrudge Democrats for trying to unseat some of our more moderate Congressional members, as they are the campaign equivalent of low-hanging fruit.

However, in order to govern, the center must hold.

America needs the Tuesday Group. America needs Democratic blue dogs. Congressional Republicans need moderate leaders like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Charlie Dent, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

Without them, the party in Congress will see a return to turmoil, the likes of which we only briefly glimpsed after John Boehner announced his resignation in September 2015.

Ward Baker, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, wrote a lengthy memo last year to GOP Senate campaigns after it became clear Donald Trump was on track to win the Republican nomination for President. The message of the memo: run your own race.

Tuesday Group members, I cannot stress this enough.

Do not feel beholden to a toxic and unpopular and unpredictable White House. Support the Speaker, cast your vote, but vote your constituents, vote your conscience – not the Saturday morning Twitter spasms of an irrational and unstable Commander-in-Chief.

Reince Priebus and Howard Dean both proved that big tent strategy beats strict ideological adherence every time.

Dean built a 50-state infrastructure that helped Democrats navigate their way to the majority in 2006. Meanwhile, Priebus wrangled FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Ending Spending, and other conservative groups to do the same for Republicans in 2010 and 2014.

That’s the reason why my party is now gifted with talented pols like Joni Ernst, Rob Portman, Cory Gardner, Elise Stefanik, John Katko, and Marco Rubio.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has already declared “war” on Republican House members throughout the state, but based on his track record his bark is worse than his bite. Congressional Reps. John Faso and Claudia Tenney may face strong Democratic challenges, but Cuomo will be too busy padding his own reelection effort to take notice.

Democrats, if they’re interested in winning, need to ditch – and quit praying at the altar of – a Vermont demagogue and remnant of the Old World communist left, who still refuses to even identify as a Democrat, and instead embrace such 21st Century party pragmatists as Cory Booker, Patty Murray, Tom Perez, and John Hickenlooper.

If not, Democrats will only continue to flounder, and suffer more “close but no cigar” moments like Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Jason Kander in Missouri, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, and, quite obviously, that glass ceiling-shattering candidate who was supposed to win the White House in 2008 and 2016.

Democrats, I may not be your friend, but I’m certainly not your enemy – Putin and ISIS are the enemy. Your party is in turmoil, you need to figure out what you stand for, and then bring your A-game.

Show Americans you’ve got what it takes to provide jobs, provide roads and bridges, provide health care, education and equal justice, provide prosperity, liberty, safety, security, and the freedom of choice for all.

However, if you can’t do that, if you can’t organize for something other than marching, if you can’t resolve your own petty internecine warfare between intransigent Bernie believers and mainstream party practicables then you deserve to live in the minority until you do.

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John William Schiffbauer was the Deputy Communications Director for the New York Republican State Committee 2014-16. Last fall, he served as campaign manager for Republican Melinda Crump’s State Senate campaign in New York’s 31st District. On Twitter @jwschiffgop.

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Did Street Homelessness in New York City Really Just Increase by Nearly 40%?


de Blasio walking snow

(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


Is the number of people homeless on New York City streets skyrocketing?

There were 3,892 unsheltered homeless people on the streets or outside in public places on the cold night this past February when New York City conducted its annual street homelessness count, according to the City’s own statistics released this month. That’s a jolting 39-plus percent increase in one year over the 2016 street homelessness count of 2,794.

The good news is that many advocates and academics don’t really think there was a 39-plus percent increase in street homelessness in one year. The bad news is that’s because most of them never thought the decreases in street homelessness reported in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were accurate either.

New York City’s HOPE Count (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate) is an annual one-night count of unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on New York City streets, or in public places. The City readily notes it’s really an estimate. It is the point-in-time (PIT) census type count required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development from all communities in order to qualify for certain federal funding for homelessness service programs.

These PIT canvasses count both people who are sheltered and unsheltered. In most communities the great majority of people experiencing homelessness are unsheltered. In New York City, though not in any other major city, there is a an enforceable legal “right to shelter” for most people in need, so that the great majority of homeless people in New York City -- more than in any other U.S. community -- are sheltered. The city can provide a completely accurate “daily census” of people in the Department of Homeless Services shelters each and every day. Counting people who are living rough on the streets or in other public places is a very difficult proposition.

Any large scale “count” in a city like New York is a massive undertaking. New York City annually mobilizes between 3,000 and 3,500 volunteers to work with city staff in counting in over 1,500 defined areas, all over one night. They even have a “decoy” program, employing people to be on the streets in the role of unsheltered homeless people over the time of the HOPE count to see how many of the decoys (call them a sort of control group) do or don’t get counted, and use the ratio of counted to uncounted decoys to assist in making the estimate.

These kinds of counts were invented in New York City. Experts have called the New York City effort “the gold standard” of the point-in-time count. This, of course, is not to say the HOPE Count is actually accurate.

There are both unavoidable inherent reasons the accuracy of the count is problematic and problems with the way the count is conducted. To understand the inherent problems, just recognize that this is an effort to count many people who are hiding from view, and many people who do not want to be included in the count.

One of several major problems in the way the count is conducted is that it intentionally limits itself only to counting those on the streets or in public places. But every New Yorker knows many unstably housed people often spend very cold nights in what might be called semi-public enclosed spaces. Think people who hang out overnight in a 24-hour McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts. And remember, the point in time count is typically scheduled on a January night which tends to be extremely cold. In fact, at least twice in recent years the point in time count was pushed back to the first week in February due to snow storm predictions, but still was held on bitterly cold nights.

For the last several years the Bronx Health and Housing Consortium has conducted their own fascinating count on the very same night as the city’s HOPE Count -- but counted inside in some of the emergency rooms in the Bronx. Consortium President Henie Lustgarten, an organizer of the project that began in 2014, spoke about how the project works.

This volunteer project operating just in a few emergency rooms of hospitals that agreed to participate has developed an ingenuous methodology. In each emergency room they survey they count two groups of people as “homeless.”

First, anyone who registers for emergency treatment indicating they have no address or that they live in a shelter (but wouldn’t be in the DHS census for that night because they aren’t in shelter that night) is counted as homeless.

Second, people who spend the night in the emergency room area but never register to receive medical care are counted as homeless. Lustgarten indicated most of the time this unregistered cohort are sleeping in the waiting room or the emergency room hallways. In recent Consortium emergency room counts those not registered at all account for about half or more than half of their entire emergency room count.

In 2015, for example, surveying just five Bronx emergency rooms, the Bronx Health and Housing Consortium count was 120. The complete HOPE count for the Bronx that year was 69. The numbers and percentages vary, but consistently the Consortium emergency room count has been greater than the HOPE Count of street homeless people in the Bronx.

So the population of unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in New York City probably didn’t increase by 39-plus percent this year. Unfortunately, the real number is almost certainly more than the 3,892 people estimated in the 2017 HOPE Count.

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Jeff Foreman, who resides in Queens, is Policy and Advocacy Director for nonprofit Care for the Homeless. On Twitter @JeffForeman2 and @CFHNYC.

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