NEW YORK – After moving from a homeless shelter to an apartment in the South Bronx, Kymm Moore said he found his new home plagued with mice, mold and multiple water leaks.
He said he couldn't get the landlord to repair anything, either, even after he called to complain to the city several times and inspectors issued violations. “It was very frustrating,” Moore said on Wednesday. “A lot of my stuff was going to get ruined.” He said he ended up paying $7,000 out of his own pocket for repairs before moving out.
A new bill approved by the City Council at Wednesday's stated meeting aims to give housing officials more enforcement tools to crack down on landlords who fail to fix underlying conditions that have been the cause of multiple housing code violations — before tenants like Moore are forced to move out.
The bill would allow the city's housing inspectors to make the repairs themselves, if necessary, and let them recoup the cost from the landlord.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn said in remarks before the Council vote that the legislation would empower the city’s housing inspectors to target “the root cause of repeat housing violations.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign the bill into law.
Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who sponsored the bill, said that Moore's case is representative of those that she sees. "Right now, [the landlord] kind of gets away with a fine here, a fine there," she said. Inspectors "have to keep going back and back."
An official with the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development said that the building where Moore lived had a large number of open violations and had been identified for proactive intervention by the agency. The building is not expected to be a prime candidate under the new law.
The building was foreclosed in 2012, and the debt was bought up by a private equity firm.
Moore's former landlord, Asher Neuman, said he did not recall Moore as a tenant. But he disagreed that repairs weren't made. "Any time someone came to me with a complaint they were always repaired,” he said.
The legislation could potentially save city taxpayers money. The Daily News reported that the city spent $26.3 million on repair jobs dealing with repeat violations.
Quinn said the exact savings to taxpayers may not be known for some time, but that “it could be quite significant.”
Besides cutting down the number of times that inspectors have to go out to a site for the same violations, repairing underlying conditions before problems get worse also may help to preserve the quality of the city’s limited affordable housing stock, she said.
“Certainly preserving it, making the housing livable, has much long-term savings,” she said.
Intro. 0967-2012 is a local law that would amend the administrative code of the city of New York and was discussed in the Committee on Housing and Buildings.
It would grant inspectors for the HPD the authority to issue orders to building owners requiring them to correct any underlying conditions that are causing repeat violations of any city or state housing code. Currently, the HPD is allowed to issue violations for “observed damage,” but not unseen root causes of that damage.
A building owner will have four months (with a possible two month extension) to fix the underlying condition and submit documentation to the HPD from a licensed plumber, registered architect, or professional engineer verifying that they have done so. The HPD will then re-evaluate the site and, if satisfied, rescind the violation.
Failure to comply with the HPD’s order could result in a fine of $1,000 per dwelling unit with a minimum of $5,000 per building.
The HPD will be charged with establishing the criteria that will bring about an order to fix an underlying condition. Vito Mustaciuolo, HPD Deputy Commissioner of Enforcement and Neighborhood Services, told the Committee on Housing and Buildings during his testimony that this process could take up to six months.
After this criteria is determined, Mustaciuolo estimated that during the first year of the legislation, 100 buildings with a history of multiple violations specifically related to water leakage and mold will be inspected by the HPD to check for underlying conditions.
Mustaciuolo emphasized that these buildings will not be ones that are under the authority of the Alternative Enforcement Program, which already repairs underlying conditions. Established in 2007, each year the AEP identifies the city’s 200 most distressed buildings and, throughout the year, works with their owners to address structural problems. The HPD will use the AEP workforce, however, in inspecting the buildings identified by this new legislation as possibly having underlying conditions that need correction.
Brewer said the new legislation came about when she realized there was an entire subset of buildings that did not fall under the AEP but that had chronic, underlying conditions that were going unrepaired. “That’s when I decided to do it,” she said.
The bill was first proposed by Speaker Christine Quinn in her February 2012 State of the City address. Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side and Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, sponsored it in the Council.
The bill has been backed by the HPD "as a means of ensuring residential units in New York City are well maintained and habitable,” Mustaciuolo said. “We are hopeful that this new initiative will better focus enforcement resources on properties which fail to treat repairs in a serious and holistic way.”
Tenants groups and housing advocate organizations, such as the Association For Neighborhood and Housing Development, Inc., and Tenants & Neighbors, also support the legislation.
Kerri White, director of organizing and policy at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, which also supports the bill, said that without the new law landlords can patch over problems without actually fixing them. Tenants, she said, “go through this cycle of patch repairs.”
She said this was a keen problem with mold. “The landlord will come and paint over the mold and say the problem is fixed,” she said.
A spokesman for the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents New York City landlords, said the group had some concerns about the bill.
“We’re going to take a wait and see attitude,” said Frank Ricci, director of governmental affairs for the RSA, in an interview on Monday. “We have some reservations about the bill, especially because of the subjective nature of inspectors determining what is or is not an underlying condition.”
This aspect of the bill was also brought up by Councilman Erik Dilan, chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings, at the bill’s hearing on Dec. 13, 2012.
“I think the bill is intentionally very broad in scope” — he said while questioning Mustaciuolo — “but it sounds, by your testimony, you have a limited scope which you hope to identify during the rulemaking process.”
The bill, which passed unanimously during the Council’s stated meeting Wednesday, goes to the mayor’s desk for his signature next. If it becomes law, there will be a rulemaking process to define the policy.
View Intro 0967-2012 legislation text and details
View Local Law 29 for the Year 2007, which established the Alternative Enforcement Program
View Urban Homesteading Assistance Board’s blog post about 836 Faile Street
___
Additional reporting by Cristian Salazar.
This version was updated on Jan. 11, 2013. The original post erroneously reported that Councilwoman Gale Brewer represents the Upper East Side. She actually represents the Upper West Side.
NEW YORK – Judith Patel, a disabled senior who was homeless for years until she got her apartment in 2009, is going to housing court this week for the third time in as many months. If she loses her case, she could be evicted.
Patel is one of thousands of New Yorkers – including hundreds who are disabled – struggling to pay bills and stay in their homes since a key rent subsidy, known as the Advantage program, was defunded last year. The program also provided help specifically for disabled New Yorkers like Patel through Fixed Income Advantage.
Patel said that without any kind of rent subsidy, she would be unable to continue paying for her Bronx apartment.
“Here are the cold, hard facts: I get $785 a month as of last January, and my rent is $936 a month,” said Patel, 62, during a recent interview.
The City Council’s general welfare committee plans to hold a meeting on June 6 to discuss how to help people who were once on the Advantage program. The state Court of Appeals is also expected to hear a lawsuit this week that would force the city to continue paying the subsidy.
But advocates for the homeless and people with disabilities fear the courts and city officials won’t act in time to prevent Patel and others like her from being evicted and finding themselves back in homeless shelters or on the streets.
“We have no idea when the court will make its decision,” said Pat Bath, a spokeswoman for the Legal Aid Society, which brought the lawsuit against the city.
Patel, who has diabetes and hypertension, became homeless in 2007. With an avalanche of medical bills compounded by a lack of health insurance, she couldn’t make ends meet. During a stay at a homeless shelter, she developed numbness and pain in her feet and was diagnosed with neuropathy.
One of the places she lived before moving into her apartment was the Valley Lodge shelter on the Upper West Side, one of two homeless shelters in the city for people with disabilities.
Since the rent subsidy was cut, the shelter has been working with the recently formed Coalition to Save the Fixed Income Advantage to lobby the state and city to develop a new subsidy.
Karen Jorgensen, the shelter’s director, said she worries some previous residents of Valley Lodge who, like Patel, moved out with the help of the now defunct Advantage subsidy, will be forced to return to the shelter.
“We never thought that they would be left dangling,” she said.
A Critical Rent Subsidy
The Advantage program was started in 2007 as a rent subsidy funded jointly by the city and state. New Yorkers could apply for the fixed income version of the program if they also received Supplemental Security Income, a federal fixed income program for people unable to work because of their age or disabilities. The two-year subsidy paid 40 percent of a recipient’s rent in the first year of the program, and 30 percent in the second year.
The state defunded its share of the Advantage program last year – including the fixed income version – when Governor Andrew Cuomo decided not to include funding for the program in his annual executive budget, citing the need for the state to tighten its budget.
The governor’s press office didn’t return several requests for comment for this story.
But Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto released a statement when the cuts were made public last year, defending the state’s position. “New York City has the funds to support the continuation of this program if it so chooses,” he said.
But when the state withdrew the funding, the city announced it would discontinue the Advantage program subsidy immediately, saying it did not have the money to continue it on its own. The city estimated the program would cost $140 million a year; the state disputed that, saying it would cost $103 million.
The Legal Aid Society sued the city and won a court order forcing it to continue paying the subsidy for the next nine months until an appellate court reversed the decision in February, effectively terminating the subsidy. The society appealed. The appellate court could make the city start paying the subsidy again until the two-year time limit on the program is up.
Since the end of the Advantage program, the city’s Department of Homeless Services has been emphasizing a “work-first” approach focused on helping families who are homeless find employment. Asked about programs that might aid people like Patel, DHS said it offered many eviction prevention options.
“We must reject the misconception that a rental subsidy is the only ticket out of shelters,” Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond said at a recent conference on homelessness in the city. “Most families can work and want to work.”
This focus on families and employment means that, in order to be eligible for many of the city’s eviction prevention programs, a person has to be working, have children under the age of 18 or have some means to pay rent in the future. Many of the disabled New Yorkers who were on the Fixed Income Advantage program don’t qualify for these programs and have nowhere to turn to for help.
A month after the city stopped paying the Fixed Income Advantage subsidy, Patel was in housing court facing eviction proceedings along with several other tenants in her building who receive the same benefits. Her leasing agent has twice adjourned their case to give the tenants time to resolve the situation out of court. But since Patel and her fellow tenants had nowhere to go for help, they found themselves back in housing court this week confronted with another round of eviction proceedings.
Advocates described the situation for the city's disabled as dire. “We are in the face of a catastrophic housing crisis for the disabled,” said Susan Dooha, the executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, one of the groups behind the Coalition to Save the Fixed Income Advantage.
Dooha said that 41 percent of New Yorkers living with disabilities face difficulties paying their rent. More than 806,000 New Yorkers are living with disabilities, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. That number, Dooha said, is likely to grow in the near future. The city projects that the number of New Yorkers over the age of 65 will increase from more than 937,000 last year to more than 1.35 million in 2030.
“As age increases, the prevalence of disabilities go up as well,” Dooha said.
Those with disabilities who get evicted often wind up either in shelters, or in supportive housing and nursing homes that are more restrictive than they need, she said. Supportive housing and shelter stays also cost the taxpayer much more than rent subsidies.
“I don’t need supportive housing. They’d be paying for services I don’t need,” Patel said.
But the city receives federal and state funds for homeless shelters. The city would have to pay any rent subsidies on its own, since the state changed its executive budget last year to prohibit any future rent subsidies to residents of New York City.
Waiting for Help
The Coalition to Save the Fixed Income Advantage has been lobbying since the state defunded the program last year to get a rent subsidy to replace it, but it is unlikely that any subsidy will be made available in time to help those disabled New Yorkers like Patel who are already in housing court.
The Department of Homeless Services could use some of the funding that it receives from the City Council to provide a short-term subsidy for disabled New Yorkers facing imminent eviction, said Eduardo Sanchez, a social worker at the Valley Lodge shelter who is involved with the coalition’s lobbying efforts.
But he said the city is unlikely to support any short-term subsidies without state aid.
“The sad reality is that with the end of the Advantage program, a great number of formerly homeless individuals are in dire straits,” Councilwoman Annabel Palma, who chairs the general welfare committee, said in a statement. “Those individuals on a fixed income will be in a particularly difficult position with few, if any, options to fill the void left by the elimination of the voucher payments.”
The Council is in negotiations with the mayor’s office about ways to keep people out of shelters, said Council spokeswoman Robin Levine. She would not comment on any specific proposals being discussed.
Meanwhile, many who had come to depend on the Fixed Income Advantage program are waiting for help that may never come.
“It’s really not fair. We have no other programs or alternatives,” said Sharon Franklin, 55, another formerly homeless disabled New Yorker who got off the streets with the help of the Advantage subsidy. “We’re all about to get thrown out.”
Like Patel, Franklin has also been in housing court since she lost the subsidy. She has until June 23 to pay her rent arrears or she will be evicted. She is hoping to receive a grant from the city’s Human Resources Administration by then to pay her back rent. But she is afraid that if she doesn’t get the grant she will have to go back to a homeless shelter.
“I feel like I’m reliving my past. It’s bringing up a lot of bad memories,” Franklin said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo touted it as “the greatest strengthening of rent laws in decades” when the state Legislature approved a package of bills last year that renewed the city’s rent control laws until 2015. But the most optimistic housing advocates would only call it a draw in their battle with real estate interests.
Tenants Political Action Committee and other tenant advocacy groups wanted more -- they wanted the state to limit landlords’ abilities to claim that they made costly repairs to apartments, thereby pricing them out of rent regulation. They wanted tougher enforcement to make sure claimed improvements to apartments were actually made. And they wanted the 2011 increases to keep up with inflation. But they didn’t get any of it.
While still smarting from last year's brawl with real estate interests, advocates for tenants have renewed their push for rent law reform this year, arguing that current policies are continuing to decimate the ranks of rent-controlled apartments and making it harder for low-income families to live in the city.
Last Wednesday night, several of the groups, including the Real Rent Reform Campaign -- made up of organized tenants, labor organizations and community groups that advocate for “progressive” pro-tenant legislation -- held a well-attended town hall meeting in Brooklyn (they estimated the crowd at about 200 attendees) while the board of the influential Tenants PAC met separately and decided on endorsements for state legislative races.
The groups hope that, with the entire state Legislature up for re-election this November, they can help get candidates into office that are more willing to pass legislation they favor.
Meanwhile, the groups are sensing a deal between the Assembly and Senate might be possible because of the sunset of the J51 tax abatement that gives developers tax breaks to renovate apartment buildings as long as they provide low income housing.
The idea goes something like this -- the real estate lobby wants the tax renewed and, while Senate Republicans want to give it to them, the Assembly Democrats won’t pass it unless pro-tenant sweeteners are included.
Meanwhile, the piece of legislation that could have the greatest impact on rent that is being backed by advocates would change the requirements for serving on the Rent Guidelines Board -- the group that sets the rates for rent-controlled apartments and give the City Council approval over the Mayor’s appointments to the body. The board has raised rates by around 3 percent each year for the past 40 years. Its deliberative process is secret.
Putting the mayor’s picks in the hands of the Council would be a major loss of power for the mayor. Currently, the nine-member board is made up of two appointees to represent owners; two tenant representatives; and five members representing the general public.
Jack Freund, vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, slammed the bill.
“We think it’s a catastrophic idea. It would be the death knell for private rental housing in New York. There would be zero increases forever. I certainly hope the bill doesn’t go anywhere,” he said.
Stefan Ringel, spokesman for City Councilman Jumaane Williams, said his boss thinks the current makeup of the RGB “fails to reflect the interests of real people. It seems like no matter what the economic condition is, the rent goes up.”
State Sen. Daniel Squadron and Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh are sponsoring the bill. The City Council is expected to pass a resolution in support of the legislation, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn has attended rallies and spoke out against the RGB. At a rally to support the legislation held in front of City Hall on April 16, Quinn compared the RGB to a "kangaroo court" because its decisions seemed to be preordained.
NYC Council Proposed Res. 1329-A
Michael McKee, treasurer of Tenants PAC, said the 2011 increases were “bare bones” and didn’t even keep up with inflation.
The deal raised the level at which apartments can be removed from rent regulation from $2,000 to $2,500, and the income threshold for rent-control apartment eligibility from $175,00 to $200,000. But the $2,000 -- set in 1997 -- should now be somewhere around $3,100, tenant advocates argued.
In June 2011, McKee had practically lived in the capital for weeks with fellow tenant activists by his side, chanting, cajoling, arguing and pleading with legislators and staffers for rent laws that would end loopholes that allow landlords to take rent-regulated apartments off the roles.
The Tenants PAC had watched in horror for the past two years while the Senate Democratic majority they had helped elect ignored and buried their legislation.
Former state-Sen. Pedro Espada was not shy about his ugly relationship with housing advocates. Espada, recently convicted of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the network of Bronx clinics he helped start, was repeatedly accused of bottling up housing bills. In multiple interviews with the Gazette, he said he disdained tenant advocates who he insisted did not care about his constituents’ interests. In 2010, the Tenant’s PAC made a commitment to defeat him and helped elect Gustavo Rivera to replace Espada.
Gov. Cuomo had never made it clear in the lead-up to the legislative showdown what qualified as tougher rent laws -- only that he wanted them.
The new laws were scheduled to sunset in 2015 -- meaning that advocates wouldn’t have the benefit of the pressure created by an evaporating law to lobby legislators. But, on Dec 31, 2011, the J51 Rent Abatement expired, and tenants’ advocates saw opportunity.
In April, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver held a news conference focusing on tenant legislation. The to-do list read something like this: close the preferential rent loophole; make rent increases for major capital improvements temporary; reduce the vacancy bonus; limit a building owner's ability to recover a rent-regulated apartment for personal use; and reforming the Rent Guidelines Board.
That was only the start of an ambitious list -- ambitious because Senate Republicans have almost religiously sided with real estate groups that donate generously to their party’s candidates; ambitious because the laws are not set to sunset and be vigorously reviewed until 2015; and ambitious because real estate interests have generally opposed these sorts of changes.
“Last year we were able to ensure the rent regulations were renewed and strengthened,” Kavanagh said. “This year, we hope to see some modest improvements to the system.”
Specifically, his bill would change the requirements to serve on the RGB.
Current requirements dictate an appointee must have a background in financing, economics or housing. But Kavanagh’s bill would add allow appointees to have backgrounds in social sciences, urban planning, public service and philanthropy.
The assemblyman said he thinks the current requirements “don’t reflect all of the aspects” that need to be considered by a board that is tasked with setting guidelines for rent-controlled housing.
“If the bill passed, it would make a significant improvement in how the guideline board is structured,” said McKee.
No deal has been proposed, and tenants’ advocates like McKee said the real estate industry has not been making much of a fuss over J51. “In a non-sunset year it is really hard to get the Legislature to do anything on rent,” said McKee.
“No one has said a specific trade is on the table,” Kavanagh said. “But many think the real estate lobby would like to see a renewal of the J51 tax program this year. Its sunset prevents the city from giving out new exemptions.”
Freund said he thinks there won’t be any deal. “I think J51 will be renewed because it is in the city’s interest. When the city puts its weight behind it, it will happen and it won’t be tied to anything.”
The Legislature and the Council would have to approve any renewal of the abatement.
Kavanagh’s bill has made it out of the Housing Committee and could come to a vote in the next few weeks. A spokesman for the Senate Republicans did not return requests for comment. The Council’s resolution is still in the housing committee.
Still, if things go awry this legislative session, the Tenants PAC is ready to try the electoral route. They have backed a number of Democratic Senate candidates.
McKee’s group will be focused on backing a challenger for Republican state Sen. Martin Golden -- one of only two Republican Senators from the five boroughs -- but it has so far not endorsed a candidate in the race. Golden has voiced support for tenant bills at times, but has angered advocates like McKee for not pushing his majority harder for tenant rights.
Golden has at times insisted that the problem of vacancy decontrol -- where landlords claim to make repairs to vacant apartments to price them out of rent control -- is not a real problem in his district but instead a worry for Manhattan legislators. However, a 2008 study found that 30 percent of Golden's constituents lived in rent-controlled housing. Golden did not return calls requesting comment.
Tenants PAC is backing Rivera again, as well as Sens. Joe Adabbo, Toby Anne Stavisky and Neil Breslin. They are also backing challengers like Assemblyman George Latimer, who is running in the 37th Senate district, and Ceceilia Tkaczyk, who is running in the new 46th Senate District.
“It is not a foregone conclusion that the Republicans will control the Senate in 2013,” McKee said.
When a group of battered women and homeless individuals and families, agreed to leave public shelters and become tenants of private but rent subsidized apartments offered by the City of New York, they expected to occupy them for one to two years. The City was to pay all or a portion of each unit’s rent for one year and renew for a second year if the occupant met the eligibility requirements for the Advantage Program, including that they fulfilled public assistance requirements and worked 20 hours a week at minimum wage jobs. However, the Program ended soon after it began when federal and state funds were cut off. And the formerly homeless and victimized faced homelessness and violence once more.
A lawsuit against the City of New York sought continuation of the Advantage Program. But trial judge Judith Gische dismissed the case, finding that there was no contractual promise to provide the apartments. Last month that decision, known as Jasmine Zheng v The City of New York, was upheld by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Saying, "We sympathize with plaintiffs and realize that an adverse outcome places them at risk of again ending up in the New York City emergency shelters… ," the four judges agreed that "defendants [City] are not contractually obligated to continue making rent subsidy payments under the Advantage Program."
What was the relationship between the shelter occupants and the City when the moves from shelter to individual apartments took place? "Simply social services," said the judges. With one judge dissenting, the Court held that making apartments available to people who gave up their places in homeless shelters was "simply social services and the defendants did not intend to be bound contractually."
An Opinion by four of the five judges who heard the appeal, held that "the existence of a binding contract is not dependent on the subjective intent of the parties, but on the objective manifestations of intent." The City argued, and the Court accepted, that the signatures on City-prepared documents were only to "ensure that the participants were aware of the terms of the program." In other words, the signatures on a document and the use of such words as "agree" and "guarantee" did not mean it was an agreement or a contract, and the tenants simply did not understand that it was within the City’s discretion to terminate; there was, the judges ruled, no "meeting of the minds," an essential element of a contract.
Since there was no contract, there was no obligation to continue the rent subsidy. The Court rejected tenants’ argument that they gave up something – places in shelters – for the subsidized housing, seeming to say they would have had to do that whenever so directed by the City, anyway (despite the obligation to provide housing accomodations), meaning that they really gave up nothing. The plaintiffs’ argument that they were induced to leave the shelters to move into into apartments they could not afford without the subsidy, was also found to be "without merit.
While four judges concurred, only Justice Karla Moskowitz dissented, finding that the plaintiffs were induced to leave the "relative safety of the shelter system and to enter into leases for apartments they could not afford [without public subsidies]." She found that there were enforceable contracts under which the "city agreed to pay plaintiffs’ rent in return for plaintiffs leaving the shelter system." The rent payable to the landlord was, according to Justice Moskowitz, a commitment not only to the residents, but also to the private landlords the city would be paying on their behalf. Analyzing the legal elements of a contract, she found that the agreements were, in fact, binding contracts even if they were also part of a "social benefit program." In addition, she said that the written documents prepared by the City and signed by the plaintiffs, described itself as an "agreement." The participants then signed leases with private landlords with the City paying the Advantage portion directly to the landlord. The agreements stated that the City was paying the rent in return for the plaintiffs leaving the shelters and said, the "Advantage program guarantees that the subsidy portion of the rent will be paid ..." The conditions that the participants remain eligible was never breached by them and the only condition for continuing the program into the second year was that on-going eligibility. Most telling for the dissent was that the City never conditioned the program on the continuation of state or federal funds and that the City concedes that it is less costly to fund the Advantage Program than to house plaintiffs in shelters, and that continuation would not only mean honoring a contract, but would save the City $133million.
Disagreeing with her colleagues, Justice Moskowitz describes their Opinion as a "red herring," and "buying into" the argument that "plaintiffs had a legal obligation to seek housing anyway." But, she argues, they had "no preexisting obligation to move into apartments they could not afford on their own. Nor did plaintiffs have an obligation to place themselves in a worse situation than they were [in] before." This left them legally bound to leases they "could not afford on their own." Parsing the language of the documents, the dissent refers to the City’s chosen words: guarantees, shall pay, will pay, assures, commitment as demonstrating "an intent to bind oneself contractually."
Seeking apartments for themselves at the beginning of the process, the would-be tenants had to show private landlords the documents prepared by the City and the landlords undertook the leases containing language that "the City ... will pay directly to me, the Landlord, monthly rent .. .’" These the dissent said, constitute a clear "assent to guarantee rent payment....." Judge Moskowitz said that the trial judge who dismissed the case was incorrect in finding that the landlords did not manifest assent when, they agreed to accept the tenants, and to continue the tenancies for a second year based on the City’s determination of eligibility, and agreed not to raise tenants’ rents, and forego other property rights in exchange for guaranteed rental payments for one to two years. This, Justice Moskowitz calls, "a textbook example of mutual assent." Also, the landlords would be unable to collect rent from tenants who never had the ability to pay the rent on their own, and would have the burden and expense of undertaking eviction proceedings which they never bargained for in dealing with the City. With the majority upholding the Gische decision, the tenants would be left with apartments they could not afford on their own, and the prospect of homelessness. Those who were victims of domestic violence, would lose not only their places in shelters, but also the protections against their abusers. "...they may be forced to return to the dangerous homes they sought to escape in the first place. Some may simply take to the streets," concluded the one judge who would have upheld the agreement as a binding contract
The judges in the majority were Justices Gonzalez, Sweeny, Renwick, Richter.
In addition to the actual parties, amicus curiae (friends of the Court) briefs were filed by Sanctuary for Families, New Destiny Housing Corporation, Center Against Domestic Violence, Safe Horizon, Violence Intervention Program, In., New York Asian Women’s Center, Good Shepherd Services, Barrier Free Living and Homeless Services United.
The plaintiffs were represented by The Legal Aid Society and Weil Gotshal and Manges LLP.The City of New York was represented by Corporation Counsel. The Amicii were represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Emily Jane Goodman is counsel to Siegel Teitelbaum & Evans, LLP
First your heat is turned off. Then the leaks start. Mold is growing and harmful lead paint begins to peel. Countless calls to the landlord go unreturned, because the management stopped paying bills months ago — the building is facing foreclosure and soon, an even-more anonymous bank will own the building.
With hundreds of residential building facing foreclosures each year, these conditions are not uncommon; they are also exactly what a new City Council bill hopes to prevent.
The bill, 501-A, will require banks to notify the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) fifteen days before a foreclosure action is taken on a residential building. This will allow the HPD to help keep buildings up to code and ensure the building’s sale to new, responsible buyers.
The bill will press banks to take more responsibility for the fact that the assets they seize still have tenants living in them, Quinn said; “you lent the money, you own the building.”
In addition to deteriorating physical conditions, distressed buildings are particularly susceptible to corrupt buyers and illegal conversions (as buyers convert units to boarding houses to raise cash fast).
With a nod to the New York Daily News investigation that found limited city efforts to crack down on illegal conversions, Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she hopes the new bill will prevent those conversions from ever happening by allowing the HPD to work with banks to vet out corrupt buyers from buying distressed properties from the banks.
“Slum lords exist on the belief that no one is watching,” Quinn said yesterday. “They’re a little bit like roaches, when the microscope is on them they run away.”
The bill will require the HPD to update their website quarterly with the number of foreclosure actions that exist in each community district. For buildings with twenty or more units, the HPD must list basic building information on the site so tenants and neighbors can be informed of foreclosure activities. This data will also help city officials to monitor struggling areas.
The bill is the latest passed legislation that Quinn proposed in her 2011 State of the City address, coming just two weeks after the Fair Parking Legislative Package, which was a major goal of last year’s speech. Quinn’s State of the City for 2012 is scheduled for next week.
Another promise from the 2011 address was to more aggressively monitor city contracting; following on December’s Outsourcing Accountability Act, the Council passed a Contract Transparency Bill today, which requires the city to create an online database of the cities 15,000 contracts (which costs the city $10 billion a year) with information on the money spent, the contractors, and the contract details in plain English.
This bill aims to combat costly confusions, like the one that occurred over whether the city or a contractor was supposed to shovel the snow around bus shelters. Councilman Domenic Recchia, Jr. read one 1500-page contract only to find that an outside company was contractually obligated to remove the snow around bus shelters — something the Sanitation Department was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to do.
“Faced with the current fiscal reality and a ballooning contract budget, it’s imperative to know how each and every City dollar is spent,” Quinn said. “That way, both the Council and the public can see exactly where our money is going and where we can cut back.”

The database will be partially available on July 1st 2012 and fully completed by the same date in 2013.
Homelessness is at a record-breaking high in New York City, and affordable housing remains scarce. In the case of one housing development project in Brooklyn, political and religious rivalries only add to the problem.
On Jan. 4, 2011, Justice Emily Goodman issued a preliminary injunction barring New York City from moving forward with the affordable housing project.
The Broadway Triangle project, which was approved by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009, promised the development of 1,800 new housing units located in Brooklyn—44 percent of them for the poor.
But the ongoing lawsuit over the project raises questions over whom, exactly, the plan will benefit. The battle pits multiple organizations from the black and Hispanic communities against the mayor, and rival branches of the Hasidic Jewish community against each other, all of which are fighting for the same ultimate goal: more housing.
According to reports released by the Coalition for the Homeless in November, there are currently over 10,000 homeless families in New York City. And, “at the end of October there were 41,204 homeless adults and children sleeping in New York City municipal shelters, an all-time record.”
And a census bureau report stated that between 2005 and 2009, 18.6 percent of New York City residents were living in poverty, compared with 15.1 percent nationwide.
The report also stated that between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites, for Blacks, and for Hispanics.
In spite of a general need for affordable housing, the lawsuit complicates the issue.
The Broadway Triangle Community Coalition (BTCC), a group of 40 Brooklyn-based organizations filed the suit two years ago, alleging that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Raphael Cestero, commissioner of New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, discriminated against the Latino and African-American communities, and in favor of the Hasidim.
Political schisms and a federal investigation of one of the organizations involved in the project, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, have brought development to a halt, while thousands of low-income families still require affordable housing.
The BTCC sees this project as targeting a population unrepresentative of those in need. In a no-bid process, the city delegated the project to the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc. (UJO) a Hasidic community group directed by Rabbi David Niederman, and the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, an organization founded by New York State Assemblyman Vito Lopez.
According to New York State Supreme Court records, the plaintiffs alleged, “Hasidim are significantly over-represented in the three Williamsburg developments in that white families, who constitute 10 percent of the Housing Authority’s applicant pool, constitute approximately half of the families.”
“UJO pushed for the rezoning of the Broadway Triangle â€exclusively for its own uses,’” the plaintiffs stated.
Specifically, they cited UJO’s plan to create six-or-seven story buildings with very large apartments as catering to the Hasidic community. Lower buildings are more convenient for the Hasidim, who do not use elevators on the Sabbath, and larger apartments would suit their typically larger families.
In the petition and complaint, the BTCC stated that “the City’s rezoning only for 6 or 7-story low density buildings is an intentional and unjustified limitation on the number of others, namely non-white families, who would otherwise be able to live there and who currently make up more than 90 percent of the borough-wide waiting list for affordable housing, particularly for 1 to 2 bedroom apartments.”
Gabriel Taussig of the NYC Law Department issued a public statement on Wednesday calling the plaintiffs’ claims “outlandish,” stating that they had “no merit.”
Of the 40 community groups in the BTCC, 38 represent Latino and African-American communities in Brooklyn, which have felt friction with the Hasidim over housing for decades.
However, the remaining two organizations, United Jewish Community Advocacy Relations and Enrichment (UJCARE) and Central Jewish Council are in fact, members of the Hasidim.
Why are these two Hasidic groups aligning themselves with a coalition fighting against the Hasidim? Gary Schlesinger, the CEO of UJCARE, blames the UJO. Schlesinger believes that not enough of the Hasidic population is being supported by current housing developments, many of which were also overseen by the UJO. “Schaeffer Landing had 150 units. Only 29 Jewish families moved in,” he said.
In response to UJCARE’s participation in the lawsuit, Rabbi David Niederman of UJO said, “On the one hand they’re saying that there are too many Jews, and on the other they’re saying that there are too few Jews. Explain to me that logic.”
Whatever the logic, there is a reason.
The rivalry between the UJO and UJCARE is rooted in a feud over rabbinical legacy five years ago that ruptured the Williamsburg Hasidim.
When Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum, the leader of the Satmar Hasidim for 27 years, died in April 2006, it was still unclear who would succeed him. Though traditionally a rebbe selects his successor in his lifetime, the case of the Teitelbaum brothers was more complicated.
Sam Beck, a Cornell University professor of human ecology in an unpublished draft of his recent essay, “Satmar Hasidim in Williamsburg” writes, “It did not take long for [Moses’s] sons, Aaron, the eldest, and Zalman, the younger, to start fighting over who was going to take over the reigns of the community and the Satmar rabbinical title.”
The repercussions of that feud are still felt today. In the BTCC’s petition and complaint, UJCARE describes itself as a “not for profit corporation dedicated to representing the interests of the Hasidic Jewish community, the majority of whom, among others, the UJO has abandoned because they support and/or are associated with the followers of the Satmar Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum.”
But Niederman claims that the UJO serves all of the 70,000 members of the Williamsburg community, which represents over half of the Satmar Hasidim nationwide. “The UJO represents each and every one in the community,” Niederman said. “On a personal level, I belong to the Zalman synagogue. I continue to pray there but I work very closely with the institutions that belong to Rabbi Aaron.”
However, in December 2009, the UJO vigorously opposed the Rose Plaza, a housing development project proposed by a UJCARE affiliated developer.
In 2008, WNYC radio reported that UJCARE had received $200,000 in funding from the city council for the new fiscal year, a move that angered the UJO, which had received $210,000, a drop of 30 percent from the previous year.
The antagonism between these two community organizations has not only affected the housing development projects in Brooklyn, but also holds broader political implications.
Historically, the Hasidic population has represented a valuable cache of political influence, according to Hasia Diner, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University. She explained that because the Hasidic community was so firmly united, in the past they could ensure 100 percent of the vote.
Schlesinger is aware of this political clout but talks about how it has changed. He says that since the split, “The UJO can’t guarantee the entire vote anymore. Politicians know—you can’t fool them twice.”
That is the case of Broadway Triangle Community Coalition v. Bloomberg. Part of the Hasidim, which formerly showed strong support for Bloomberg, is now engaged in a legal battle against him.
On the other side are UJO and Vito Lopez, a powerful ally of the UJO, who is at the center of federal investigations revolving around accusations of fraud at the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and related nonprofits.
Lopez’s Chief of Staff, Leah Hebert declined to comment on these allegations.
Pending these investigations, Justice Emily Goodman had suspended proceedings on the case over the Broadway Triangle development project.
Perhaps the most affected are those families who are in need of affordable housing but instead find themselves the incidental victims of politics.
Dana Donaldson, a 27-year old single mother of two with another baby on the way was the victim of domestic violence. She says she’s been living in shelters for the past 14 months.
She talked about the lengthy process of finding housing. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which assigns housing by a lottery-based system, can take years.
“Housing takes three years,” said Donaldson. “I wanted to be out of here at least before I had the baby. No one wants to have a newborn inside of a shelter.”
“If you don’t want to sit back and wait for housing, you need a job for your own place,” she said. Nelson does occasional work as a hair-stylist but says it’s nearly impossible to find work since she’s expecting her baby within the month.
“I go to people’s houses and do their hair even though I’m not supposed to be,” she said. “Anything I’ve got to do, I’ll do it for my kids but it’s hard.”
Gloria Nelson, 39, has been homeless since November 2009 and now resides in the Salvation Army Bushwick Corps shelter. She takes care of her husband, who suffers from diabetes, and her two small children.
She said it’s difficult for her to imagine a future for her children. “It gets to the point where you do whatever you have to do,” she said.
She also described the difficulty of the lottery process. “We submit applications, applications, applications. You got to keep doing it until something comes up.”
Juliet Morris of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development estimates that over 90,000 applications for apartment housing lotteries are received per year. “It is clear that there is a critical need for affordable housing in New York, and it is a need that our mayor has prioritized during his administration,” she said.
Morris declined to comment on the Broadway Triangle project.
“Everything is politics but the only ones feeling it is the ones at the end of the totem pole,” Nelson said. “My biggest hope is getting a place for me and my family. I just need to get my kids out of that whole system.”
(UPDATE: On Nov. 10, the City Council released a letter from the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance saying it had not approved the change in the screening procedures for the shelter system. It also criticized the city for trying to implement the change so quickly and for not consulting with the New York State Supreme Court. For more on the letter, go here. And on the afternoon of Nov. 10 the city agreed to delay the rules pending a court hearing. For more on that, go here.)
Thirty years ago, under a court order, New York City, the state and homeless advocates agreed to a decree that has governed the treatment of homeless adults in the city ever since. Last week, the Bloomberg administration revealed that it would change those rules and create new requirements for single people seeking admission to New York City shelters.
At a press conference and a hearing yesterday, City Council members and advocates sharply attacked the city's plan. Under two hours of overwhelmingly hostile and sometimes combative questions Commissioner for Homeless Services Seth Diamonddefended the changes and tried to rebut council members who took issue with the general thrust of the city's policy on homelessness and the increase in the number of homeless people under this administration.
As the day drew to a close, the new policy remained set to go into effect on Monday. The Legal Aid Societyplanned to go to court today to stop the change, and some council members held out hope the state might intervene to block the Bloomberg administration's move.
All this occurred as the Coalition for the Homeless released another report saying homelessness in the city had climbed to a new record high. And it took place against a backdrop of anger among many council members and social service advocates about the administration's widely perceived failure in combating homelessness.
"Rather than addressing the real issue, which is housing, the mayor has chosen to shut the front door of the shelter system" to the mentally ill and other vulnerable New Yorkers, Mary Brosnahan, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said at a press conference. "For the first time in New York City's modern history, we have no housing program for homeless individuals."
Under the new rules, the city would set stricter eligibility standards for entering the shelter system, changing the policy of the past three decades. An intake interview that now takes 45 minutes could run as long as two hours, according to the department.
In particular the policy will require people to detail where they have stayed over the past year in the hopes of determining, as Diamond told City Council Wednesday, whether they have another viable place to live. If they do, the city could deny them a bed in a shelter.
The system could result in one out of every 10 single adults seeking access to city shelters being denied it, Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless testified.
The new procedures, Diamond made clear, will aim to keep people out of the shelter system and in the community. It is, he said, "consistent with preserving precious resources for people who have no alternative."
Diamond estimated the change would save some $4 million -- even taking into account additional staff hired, at a cost of about $2 million, to conduct the more vigorous screening. He denied though, that that was the primary motivation.
"We didn't do it for the savings," he said. "We did it because we believe that people who have other options should explore those options."
Council members and advocates, though, fear that "exploration" -– and forcing people to provide an accounting of their whereabouts -- could deter many homeless people, particularly those with mental illness or substance addiction, from seeking shelter. That, they said, would add to the ranks of homeless people sleeping on the streets as winter approaches.
They also expressed concern about how the city would determine that the person had another place to go. Council members repeatedly pressed Diamond on the specifics of what would make a place appropriate housing. Did it have to have a bed for the homeless person. A bedroom? What if the people do not get along?
He refused to respond to hypothetical cases, said "If at the end of the day, there's not space, there's violence involved, it’s not a viable option."
What though, Councilmember Stephen Levin wondered, if a family simply does not want the person living with them.
"Brothers should take care of each other," Diamond said.
Probably no one would disagree with that in the abstract. but many questioned how the city could force someone to take in another person, however in need of a place to sleep he or she might be. The effort to compel people to offer their home to another person "is a basic infringement of the role of government into the decision making authority of a primary tenant," Christy Parque, executive director of Homeless Services United, a coalition of nonprofits serving the homeless, said in her testimony.
"Who is the city," Councilmember Jumaane Williams asked, "to tell someone you have no jurisdiction over who they should let people into their home?"
Diamond said the city decided to make the change because it found that of the single adults applying to the shelter system only 15 percent came from the streets. Many more were living with someone. In addition, he said, the city has had a similar policy for homeless families for 15 years, and he believes has proved largely successful.
Although Diamond did not say this explicitly, the Bloomberg administration in other instances has ascribed some of the increase in the shelter population to improvements it has made in the shelters. As Annabel Palma, chair of the city General Welfare Committee, put it, city officials like to say people "flock" to shelters.She and other dismiss the idea that anyone would go to a shelter who did not have to. Going to a shelter is "a cry for help," said Parque. "It's a matter of poverty and a lack of affordable housing."
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and others argue the family intake program has not been as successful as the administration claims. But even if the approach has worked for families, many say that does not mean it will work for single adults. Those involved with homelessness -- whatever their view on policy -- agree that homeless adults represent a more vulnerable population than members of homeless families.
The Department of Homeless Services estimated at the hearing that some 60 percent of homeless adults suffered from mental illness, had serious substance abuse problems or both.
It was that population who the Callahan decree aimed to protect. Coming out of case filed in 1979 on behalf of homeless men -- and bearing the name of a man who later died on the streets -- it provided a right to shelter for men who qualified for welfare or who were homeless "by reason of physical, mental or social dysfunction."
Legal Aid believes that the new city policy violates this decree. But Diamond challenged that contention saying any people denied shelter under the new rules were not technically homeless because they had a place –- albeit often not a place of their own –- to sleep.
Rather than neglecting the city's most vulnerable, he said, the policy will help them. It will seek to identify mental illness, he said. And it will provide assistance so people can stay in or move to alternative shelter – helping find mediation for family disputes, pointing a family in direction of aid that might make it easier for them to take in their homeless relative and so on.
"No one wants to have an increase in people on the street," he said. "It's not or intention to make barrier for the chronic street homeless. They have no other options."
But Steve Banks of the Legal Aid Society said the process itself can create a barrier. "Bureaucracy can kill people," he said.
Councilmember Gale Brewer, said the policy points up what she sees as a blind spot in the Bloomberg administration. "This administration does not support, fund or understand mental health, she said.
Along with the substance of the decision, council members raised concerns about the way the administration made it. Many seemed irritated that they heard of the new rules, not from the administration, but from a report on WNBC Thursday night.
Quinn called that "curious." "When the Bloomberg administration has a policy they think is good, they usually call," she said. With this policy, which she branded "wrong-headed and mean-spirited," they did not.
Diamond said the city had provided two weeks notice, although under questioning, said a letter had gone out to Legal Services – not the court involved or the council – alerting them of the change last Thursday.
With two legal holidays this week (Election Day and Veterans Day), the council scrambled to hold an emergency hearing before the measure went into effect. Beyond that, though, it remains unclear what council can do to stop the move.
Some council members held out hope the state could intervene. Quinn said the council would review its options following the hearing..
The outcry represents the latest chapter in a long string of disputes involving the Bloomberg administration and the homeless. After vowing to cut homelessness by two thirds, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has seen it increase on his watch. Diamond tried to spin the numbers, saying that family homelessness had declined from its peak and the rate of increase had slowed. He could not, though, refute figures showing homelessness among single adults has risen, and that homelessness overall has increased.
Under a relentless barrage of questioning from Williams, Diamond portrayed the administration as having made major gains in its treatment of homeless people, improving the family intake process, treating people with more compassion and building a new intake facility in the Bronx. His comments were greeted with smatterings of derisive laughter.
The Coalition for the Homeless report –- probably not coincidentally – -only served to reinforce the arguments of his critics. It found that, as of Oct. 31, the shelter count reached 41,204. As for the record of this administration, it said that the total homeless shelter population is 33 percent higher than it was when Bloomberg took office with the number of homeless families 45 percent higher.
"At what point," Levin said at the press conference, "do you call it like it is and say these policies have been a failure?"
"I'm paying over 71 percent of my check toward rent. A lot of times I struggle to make it to a medical appointment because I don't have transportation money," said 48-year-old Wanda Hernandez, who is HIV positive. Hernandez is one of thousands of low income HIV positive people who receive some form of rental assistance from the city's HIV/AIDS Services Administration.
The amount of rental assistance that a HASA client may receive varies depending on income. Hernandez, who makes a modest living working for a large corporation in the city, receives a small housing stipend and must pay most of her rent herself. This leaves her with little money to pay for basic things like electricity, a cell phone and transportation.
Some people receiving housing aid are guaranteed that their rent will total no more than 30 percent of their income from disability payments, with the government making up the rest, Hernandez and many other disabled people with HIV do not qualify for that.
Left with only about $340 a month after rent, Hernandez said, "I don’t get to travel, I don’t get to do social things that my friends will do, I cannot even buy toiletries because you can't buy them with food stamps."
Now, new policies adopted by HASA may make it even more difficult for people like Hernandez to obtain affordable housing, let alone pay for it.
In March, the administration announced that it was halving the amount of money it will pay to brokers working with HASA clients and will no longer provide cash security deposits to landlords who rent to their clients. Instead it will issue vouchers the building owners can use to request compensation for any damage. According to a study by Shubert Botein Policy Associates, 95 percent of HASA clients indicated these new policies as obstacles to securing affordable housing.
"My clients, because brokers are refusing to show them apartments or help them with housing, they're going back to sex work," Howard Haughton, program supervisor for case management at Village Care, said in a http://www.housingworks.org/activism/detail/new-nyc-policies-damaging-ability-to-find-aids-housing press release for Housing Works, which provides housing and healthcare support for people with HIV.
HASA currently serves 45,415 people in the city, an increase from 44,644 in May . Of these people, more than 26,000 receive some level of rental assistance. About 5,500 receive non-emergency housing and 1,700 receive emergency housing.
Affordable housing is a critical issue for low-income people diagnosed with HIV. With high living and medical costs, many must decide between paying their medical bills or rent every month.
Many of those who manage to obtain an apartment or rental assistance through HASA, still struggle to pay their rent because HASA assistance does not go far enough. To remedy that, Housing Works and other advocacy groups have pressed for the 30 percent rent cap for all of HASA clients. They argue that, without sufficient rental assistance from the city, many HIV positive people move into homeless shelters, where their chances of transmitting the disease and of their health deteriorating increases sharply.
"We should all be protected by the 30 percent rent cap, whether we live in supportive housing or not," Hernandez said.
In addition, HASA only provides rental assistance to people who have been diagnosed with AIDS. According to organizations like VOCAL, an advocacy group for low-income people with HIV, this spurs some low-income people who are HIV positive but do not have full-blown AIDS to stop taking the medication that will keep their disease from getting worse.
"The perverse thing is that if someone is newly diagnosed and they're HIV positive but they're in the shelter they face a choice between going on meds and hopefully staying healthy and not progressing to AIDS, but that means they stay in the shelter. Their other option is not taking their meds and not going to the doctor, so they get sick enough to qualify for a rental subsidy," VOCAL spokesperson Sean Barry said.
The city has adopted many policies over the years to improve the lives of residents living with HIV/AIDS and prevent the transmission of the disease. It was one of the first cities to adopt a free needle-sharing program to reduce HIV transmission, and its HASA program is one of the largest of its kind in the country. In addition to housing, HASA also provides its clients with medical care, employment and vocational services, counseling, and Medicaid and food stamps benefits.
Despite these achievements, New York City has over 107,000 people infected with the HIV/AIDs, a rate almost three times the national average. The New York metropolitan area has the fourth highest rate of AIDS – number of cases per 100,000 people -- in the country after Miami, Baton Rouge and Jacksonville. Even after decades of breakthroughs in medical treatment of HIV that have drastically increased the life spans of people with the disease, HIV remains the third leading cause of death for New York City residents.
To reverse this, many academics and advocates believe that the city should expand its HASA program to all low-income people with an HIV diagnosis and guarantee none of these people pays more than 30 percent of his or her income toward rent.
Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have shown that having a stable home is crucial to maintaining the health of people with HIV and reducing the transmission of the disease.
"When you control for every other type of intervention, housing makes the number one difference in someone's health and how likely they are to transmit the disease to someone else," Kristin Goodwin, director of New York City policy for Housing Works, said.
Angela Aidala, a professor of public health at Columbia University, has done extensive research on the effects that housing has on the lives of people living with HIV. In her work she has found that the little things that go along with having a permanent home can prove crucial in reducing the transmission of HIV and maintaining the health of those infected.
"People who are unstably housed are much less likely to have the supportive networks that can provide them with social support. If you need a ride to an appointment or a reminder to take your medication, all of those things that the rest of us who live in stable housing take for granted, are absent for those who do not have stable living arrangements," she said.
Aidala added that people who are homeless or unstably housed have little structure in their lives and struggle to maintain permanent relationships.
"That means there are more partners, more transactional sex, more casual sex," she said.
According to Aidala, the earlier people with HIV receive healthcare and adequate housing from programs like HASA the better.
"If people had healthcare as soon as possible after finding out they were positive and they had other resources like stable housing and adequate food, would it reduce transmission? Certainly that's what the data that we have now would indicate," she said.
Although research has shown that housing plays a critical role in fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the city and state have rejected legislation to extend HASA to all low-income people with HIV and guarantee a 30 per cent rent cap because of the projected cost. In 2008, City Councilwoman Anabel Palma introduced a bill called HASA for All, which would have expanded HASA rental assistance to all qualified HASA applicants diagnosed with HIV. The bill, opposed by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn who said it was too expensive, never made it to the floor for a vote.
On the state level, a year ago, a bill that would have guaranteed a 30 percent rent cap for all HASA clients passed both chambers of the state legislature, but was vetoed by former Gov. David Paterson also because of its price tag.
Despite the initial high costs, advocates of these two bills believed they would have saved the city and state money in the long run.
"If somebody becomes homeless as a result of being evicted because they can longer afford to pay 60 percent of their limited income for housing, the city and state are required to provide them with emergency housing which is frequently substandard and more expensive,” Assemblymember Deborah Glick, the author of the rent cap bill, said. "While there may have been some start-up costs, we believe in the end [the rent cap bill] would be saving money."
Goodwin of Housing Works said a program like HASA for all would reduce Medicaid costs and spending on emergency housing and homeless shelters.
"Housing is very expensive so it seems like it's not worth it financially, but in the long run if you look at everything else, it's the most cost effective thing you could do," she said.
Beyond housing, many low-income HIV positive people also need counseling, job training, and medical services. Supportive housing offers this in addition to a place to live, but the city's supply falls short of the need, according to Goodwin. Housing Works currently has long lines for 170 supportive housing units that it owns.
In an e-mail interview, city Human Resources Administration spokesperson Carmen Boon said she did not expect any proposals to guarantee a 30 percent rent cap would be introduced in the state legislature anytime soon.
Echoing Boon's words, Glick said she does not plan to reintroduce her bill in the near future. "We are in a regroup process. We lost a number of people who were yes votes and we lost a number of Democratic seats in the [2010] election," she said.
VOCAL spokesperson Sean Barry said he has little hope that the city would pass something like HASA for All with its tight budget and different priorities.
"We've seen a wholesale abandonment of Bloomberg's first term promise to both reduce the amount of HIV infections in the city and significantly reduce the population of homeless New Yorkers," he said.
Barry has more faith in Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
"We've got a governor, a former HUD secretary who worked on homelessness in the '80s, so we think we have a sympathetic audience in Albany," he said.
According to Barry, VOCAL wants to get the rent cap bill enacted through Cuomo's Medicaid redesign process. Barry said members of Cuomo's administration have acknowledged that soaring Medicaid costs in the state can be partially attributed to homeless people cycling in and out of hospitals.
"If you give someone affordable housing with a rent cap, you're going to spend less money on shelter costs. … That's before you even consider Medicaid savings, which will be even more savings, but indirect savings," he said.
As for the city, Barry said he is looking forward to the 2013 mayoral election.
"People with HIV are starting treatment much earlier on so they don't progress to AIDS and that means we must acknowledge that our medical eligibility for HASA assistance, which was developed in the 1980s, is outdated. We want to make [eligibility for HASA] an issue in the next mayoral race," he said.
To read and join the discussion on rent regulation go here.
On Monday Sen. Bill Perkins and Assemblymember Jose Rivera were arrested with about a dozen fellow protestors as they marched on Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.
"Stronger rent laws now, renewal's not enough," chanted a group of around 200 who were in Albany to press lawmakers to pass stronger rent laws.
On June 15 the laws that keep apartments affordable for millions of New Yorkers will expire. With Democrats pushing for stronger regulations and Republicans supporting a simple extension of the existing law, things seem to have come to a standstill. To further complicate matters, the issue has been tied to the passage of a cap on property taxes in most of the rest of the state.
With their affordable housing in jeopardy, tenants are hearing mixed messages from legislators and advocates.
On one hand, Republicans and some Democrats say tenants would feel little, if any, immediate effect if the law expired. Those Republicans and Democrats have different reasons for saying that. Democrats want time to work for a better bill; Republicans think the longer it takes to get a bill the more likely they will be able to simply renew the existing regulations rather than strengthen the law. With little time left in session, it is becoming apparent that Republicans do in fact have the upper hand in negotiations.
Other legislators -- many of them with particularly strong ties to tenant groups -- counter that missing the June 15 deadline could set off panic and prompt landlords to quickly raise rents on many homes.
Underlying the question of deadline lies a debate over what type of rent regulation New York should have.
"Is an on-time bill better than a stronger bill?" asked Democratic Sen. Liz Krueger, a major supporter of strengthening rent laws. "No. I would prefer to have the better bill."
Over the weekend Republicans quietly introduced an extender that would keep rent laws in place until Friday -- Republicans want session to end on Friday despite Monday being scheduled as a legislative day. So far, neither the Assembly nor Cuomo has expressed support for te extender. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he hopes that a deal can be reached on the rents laws without any extender.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, whose conference opposes any tightening of rent laws, has insisted that it is not important whether the laws are renewed before the deadline.
On June 6 Senate Skelos told reporters there has so far only been "very, very preliminary discussions," about rent laws. "Nothing of real substance," he said before noting the deadline is June 15 -- "next Wednesday, that's an eternity away."
Sen. Adriano Espaillat called Skelos' comment that the laws need not be renewed before June 15, "tragic. I think it is like yelling 'Fire!' in a theater. It is almost like inciting a riot." Asked what would happen if the laws were not extended, Espaillat said, "We will be in uncharted waters. … I would say shark infested waters."
"I could not disagree more strongly with Sen. Skelos," said Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who says he has about 72,000 units of rent controlled housing in his district. "This is about millions of New Yorkers losing their homes, this is not something to be played with. This could have an impact of a crisis level on the state."
Rivera said he thinks any lapse in the laws would be felt immediately. "When you have a law that expires, it can no longer be implemented, so therefore you have landlords who can move forward without the protections rent regulation allows. They can start kicking people out, raising rent. When you have a family that is barely able to make it and all of a sudden they are asked to pay twice, three times their rent, which is no longer regulated because the roof has come off, what happens?"
Krueger disagrees. She said she doubts many leases expire on June 15, and even if they did, when an agreement on rent laws is reached any regulation could be made retroactive.
Tenant advocates like Michael McKee, treasurer for Tenants PAC, are advising people not to panic, "We have been here before; people forget that the laws expired in 1997. They lapsed for five days and the sky did not fall; they passed it retroactively," said McKee.
McKee thinks Skelos wants to get tenants worked up and frightened so that they will demand that Democratic legislators simply accept a straightforward renewal, without any stronger protections for tenants. The real estate industry, which is close to the Senate Republicans, wants a straightforward extension -- nothing more.
Upstate Sen. Catharine Young, who chairs the housing committee, told NY1 that the changes Democrats want would amount to "giving special privileges, benefits and enrichments to very wealthy people." Young has sponsored legislation that would weaken the current rent laws.
McKee and tenant advocates as well as Democratic legislators from the city don't want to settle for simple renewal. Most importantly they want to make it more difficult for landlords to remove apartments from the rent control system.
"We need the laws strengthened, we need to end vacancy decontrol, step up enforcement so that landlords can just stop registering and say they spent the money and raise the rent so the apartment is no longer on the rolls," McKee said. "Who knows how many apartments we have lost to fraud."
Currently, landlords remove their apartments from regulation by claiming they have invested in major improvements. McKee says the law does not require any confirmation that the upgrades have been made.
"If all they do is renew it and raise the cap a little, we will scream bloody murder," says McKee. "We will not be nice if that is all they do-- especially because not one has talked to us."
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has insisted he is for stronger rent laws, but he has refused to publicly state specifically what he supports. Espaillat said Cuomo had assured him that the governor fully supports extending and strengthening the laws.
Last week black and Hispanic lawmakers criticized Cuomo for skipping a tenants rally in the city. Cuomo responded by recording a robocall encouraging tenants to call their lawmakers and tell them to support renewing and strengthening rent laws. It isn't clear which legislators were targeted with the calls.
This, though. did not exactly satisfy the disgruntled lawmakers. They say Cuomo could have dealt with rent regulation earlier in the year and are annoyed that he did not make it a priority during his state tour.
Tenant advocates say that with less than a week left in the session, Cuomo has very few remaining chances to establish credibility as a Democrat who supports progressive causes. They say his reputation as a Democrat relies on the passage of marriage equality and rent laws. However, this week passage of same-sex marriage seems much more likely, and some advocates and legislators worry that Cuomo may feel that a win on that will be enough to satisfy Democrats.
City legislators privately say will risk losing their support if Cuomo does not deliver on the rent issue. Given the the amount of popular approval, Cuomo enjoys a loss of backing from a handful of Democrats might have little effect. Nevertheless there are indicators that Cuomo takes rent control very seriously.
Earlier this month Cuomo, Skelos and Silver reportedly met with representatives of the real estate industry, including members of the Real Estate Board of New York and the Rent Stabilization Association. Representatives from REBNY and the RSA did not return calls for comment.
Tenant advocates have heard that Cuomo told industry people, "You have had your way for 18 years, and things are going to change."
Tenant advocates don't know what to make of that. "The reports were that the governor was very forceful," said McKee, "but we don’t know what that really means -- we haven't heard anything from the second floor [the governor's office], we have not been involved in negotiations."
Democratic legislators would have liked Cuomo to have acted on rent regulation earlier in the year when he could have used the budget as leverage.
Instead the issue has become tied up with the tax cap. The Republican-controlled senate has already passed Cuomo's version of the cap -- with no link to rent regulation -- but the Assembly refused to move on it. Last month Silver and Cuomo announced they had reached a deal that would enact a property tax cap that would remain in effect only as long as rent regulation stayed in place. Skelos was not pleased. Skelos has said that a putting a sunset date on the tax cap is a deal killer.
While his constituents clearly favor a cap, Skelos may privately wonder whether it is really the best way to deal with rising property taxes. "Who knows what Skelos wants?" said McKee, "They say he doesn't really want a cap-- he wants ... the Assembly to take the blame when it fails."
Krueger takes Skelos at face value. "There was some confusion earlier in the year, but Dean has been very firm that he wants this legislation. His house has passed it, and he wants the Assembly to do the same," she said.
Krueger says it does not matter that "at this point in time that I don’t think a tax cap is good public policy." People in the state seem to want one and she represents a district that has no stake in the issue."
Krueger seems to think a trade is in order. "I think there are a lot of parallels between the bills," she said. "They say the communities outside of the big cities need a tax cap, the Senate has passed it, the governor supports it and the people want them to deliver. We say we need rent laws for the five boroughs, the Assembly has passed it, the governor supports it and the people want it."
But advocates whisper that Skelos is holding out for a bigger reward to strengthen rent laws. They note that the Republican majority has benefited greatly from the financial support of the real estate industry. McKee says the only thing that has done more to keep Senate Republicans in the majority over the last few decades is their ability to draw district lines.
"What Skelos wants the most is to keep his lines the same. He wants to keep being able to gerrymander; he wants to make sure there is no independent redistricting. It is the only way they will keep the majority," McKee said.
The effort to pass an independent redistricting bill has stalled in the Senate, as Skelos has insisted that a bill would be unconstitutional and that a constitutional amendment is necessary. Cuomo, meanwhile, has pledged to veto any lines that are drawn unfairly. It is impossible to say how -- or even if -- all of these issues are connected. But at this point in session, it seems unlikely that negotiations over any important legislation are entirely self contained.
With only a few days left Democratic legislators and progressive groups say Cuomo has to use his power to buck Skelos and pass a rent law that extends controls and dramatically strengthens the law to make it harder for landlords to deregulate apartments.
"Andrew has the chance to be the leader of the Democratic Party," said McKee. "Andrew has a chance to do something Democratic, unlike what he has done up to now, which has been very Republican. He has a chance to do something for the Democrats with rent. I hope the governor keeps his promise."
Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg created a firestorm when he told reporters, "There aren't many panhandlers left" on the subways.
Bloomberg expanded on this the following day when he suggested panhandling in general had also declined.
To advocates for the poor and the homeless, these comments only reinforced their view of the mayor as being out-of-touch. Joel Berg, executive director for the New York City Coalition Against Hunger was quoted as saying he would "love to live in whatever city the mayor lives in -- it's an entirely different one from the one that I and 8 million other New Yorkers live in."
Bloomberg's remarks came as his administration moves to eliminate Advantage, the city's controversial rent subsidy program designed to provide permanent housing for homeless families. The city has said it cannot afford the $140 million Advantage costs. It also has indicated that Advantage may have encouraged some people to claim to be homeless in order to get city aid.
While advocates for the homeless have long criticized Advantage, they worry about what, if anything, will replace it. "Right now, the Bloomberg administration has no policy for helping homeless families move from shelters to permanent housing. And Mayor Bloomberg is the only NYC mayor since modern homelessness began not to have such a policy," Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless said in an email.
The city, though, says its policy focuses on families before they go into shelter. "We will continue to emphasize linkage to employment and services to employment” as the most effective way to prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place," Commissioner for Homeless Services Seth Diamond said.
The mayor's executive budget calls for a 6 percent cut in homeless services, including the elimination of the Advantage program. This will total $22 million in savings, Diamond said in recent testimony before the City Council’s Finance and General Welfare Committees. City Council may be able to restore some of those services as it has done in the past.
In the meantime, though, the courts have stepped in. Last week, a state appellate court ruled the city must continue the Advantage program until September, when it issues a final decision in the case. While recipients expressed relief, the administration criticized the court's action. "At a time when the city is already forced to make major cuts due to the state budget," Diamond said in a statement, "we will now have to shoulder a new bill of $15 million each month that we simply cannot afford, which will mean more cuts to other city services."
The effort to eliminate Advantage along with cutbacks and changes in other programs, basically leaves the city with very few tools left to combat homelessness beyond placing people in shelter.
Meanwhile homelessness in the city remains monumentally high. By the end of February, the nightly census of homeless adults and children in the municipal shelter system -- 39,542 people -- reached the highest point ever recorded. While some figures show the number of homeless families has declined slightly, the number of homeless single adults in municipal shelters has soared to the highest levels since the late 1980s, and the number of homeless single women in the shelter system has reached the highest point since the city has kept records, according to the coalition's State of the Homeless 2011.
The city's effort to cut Advantage leaves the approximately 15,000 households who were enrolled in Advantage -- and thousands more who had been accepted into Advantage but had not started the program -- basically out of luck. In March, Diamond sent a letter to local real estate brokers to inform them no new Advantage enrollees would be accepted.
With these vouchers, recipients had to pay 30 percent of their monthly income in rent for the first year and 40 percent for the second year, with the city making up the rest. Families could receive vouchers for no more than two years. Advantage working families have average rents of around $1,000 a month and average incomes of around $1,100 amonth.
Annabel Palma, who chairs the City Council's general welfare committee, said enrollees were reporting back to her they had been told by their case workers to "rip [their Advantage voucher] up and throw it out."
State Assemblymember James Brennansaid the city should have made plans for the funding shortage. In the state budget "New York City took tough hits," that Brennan said he believes were "a little unfair, ... but the city's been unrealistic, the writing was on the wall a year ago."
The city's decisions leave the homeless with few places to go. For years, homeless families could turn to federal programs for assistance. But in 2004, that changed as the Bloomberg administration unveiled an ambitious five-year plan called Uniting for Solutions Beyond Shelter, which was supposed to cut homelessness by two thirds within 10 years. Linda Gibbs, the current deputy mayor who was once commissioner for Homeless Services, is widely believed to have been behind the decision -- part of the 2004 program -- to cut off the homeless from federal housing assistance like Section 8 vouchers.
The city also stopped making units in projects run by the New York City Housing Authority available to the homeless. This continues to be the prevailing policy.
Administration officials have frequently expressed concern that opening Section 8 vouchers or NYCHA apartments to the homeless would crowd out other low-income New Yorkers. “Most New Yorkers work every day," and must pay their rent without any subsidy, Diamond said.
"NYCHA units are for people in the communities, not people in shelters," he has said.
Furthermore, Diamond said, "The reality is that there is no Section 8 available," and years-long waiting lists for NYCHA.
Markee countered the city could indeed place homeless families into housing authority buildings or get federal housing vouchers for them. "All that DHS has to do to move homeless families to NYCHA public housing is refer their names to the top of the waiting list, as was done for nearly 20 years under four mayors," he emailed. "We advocate that the city allocate one third of those resources -- roughly 2,000 public housing apartments -- to help homeless families leave shelters."
The city housing authority has some 180,000 apartments. It expects to admit about 5,800 new families over the course of the year. Currently, 144,00 and 120,000 people are awaiting public housing and Section 8 vouchers, respectively.
As to the Section 8 vouchers, Markee confirmed none are currently available for the homeless or anyone else. He expressed hope "there may be vouchers available in 2012 and beyond depending on the economy and budget decisions made by Congress." However, given Congress' efforts to slash spending, that seems unlikely.
Markee said the state would like the city to once again let the homeless participate in federal programs. Gov. Andrew Cuomo "is behaving differently" from previous governors, Markee said. "He gets what needs to happen and the best way is [through] federal housing programs" to combat homelessness.
Even if it had vouchers to distribute or vacant apartments in public housing, city officials say giving this help to a homeless family could entice some families who might otherwise be able to find a home on their own to become homeless.
Palma dismisses this notion. "I was homeless," she said. "I didn't wake up one morning and say to my son, 'Let's go be homeless and let's get a NYCHA apartment.' It’s not reality."
Last year, the city also reportedly cut some 200 eligible families from homeless prevention services called Homebase. According to its website, this "is a city-wide program designed to help families and individuals overcome immediate housing problems that could result in becoming homeless, and to develop a plan for long-term housing stability."
Advocates condemnedthe cutback as a cruel experiment by the city.
The administration, though, says the move was essential to evaluate the program's effectiveness. The city is "committed to enhancing Homebase," Diamond said in an inteview, but "there are questions about the program after the stimulus money goes away."
In addition, there are plans for some reductions to the homeless youth program operated by the Department of Youth and Community Development, according to recent testimony by Commissioner Jeanne Mullgray. After 10 rounds of budget cuts where this program remained intact, which "speaks to how valuable the program is," said the youth department's chief information officer, Andrew Doba, outreach and drop-in centers were slashed in December because the department's "focus has been to provide beds." The council was able to restore that funding.
Now, though, because of the state budget, the city plans to cut 14 beds out of approximately 200 in the FY2012 budget.
Meanwhile Diamond has supported the idea of having young mothers with children under 10 share apartments. Because this is currently illegal, city law must be changed to allow for this. The city Independent Budget Office reports this plan "would affect 2,560 homeless families … saving $4.5 million in city funds in 2012 and $9.1 million in future years."
Other than apartment sharing, if the city has an alternative to Advantage, it is a familiar one: shelters.
In his letter and in testimony, Diamond said the cuts in state support and resulting reductions in Advantage and other programs would compel the city to ultimately build 70 new homeless shelters.
While shelter costs are shared between the city, state and federal governments, the city bears sole responsibility for housing programs, such as Advantage, according to Diamond. "We need more of a shared responsibility," he said in an interview.
Markee, though said that already exists. "The state’s position was (and has been) that the City of New York, like other localities in New York State, should use some of its own housing resources (like public housing) to address the problem of homelessness. Then the state will help," he explained in an email. And, Markee added, the city always has the option to pay for Advantage in its entirety.
The city spends about $3,000 a month to keep a family in a shelter.
A recent Independent Budget Office analysis of the Mayor’s Preliminary Budget confirmed shelter use would probably increase with the elimination of Advantage. "It is likely that some … would be unable to pay their rent and would return to the shelter system if the program ends," the report said.
The office examined two different scenarios for 2012. If 30 percent of households now receiving Advantage had to return to emergency shelter, the analysis projected, spending on shelters would increase by $279 million or 40 percent above the amount now budgeted for fiscal year 2012. Of this, the city would be responsible for $115 million. The Independent Budget Office's other scenario had 70 percent of households return to shelter, ratcheting shelter spending up $455 million -- a 66 percent increase -- with the city bearing $188 million.
Palma, though, said she has not seen where the money for the shelters will come from. "Wouldn't it be cheaper to invest in permanent housing?" she asked.
To advocates, the latest shift in efforts to deal with homelessness represents a failed philosophy and marks the latest in a series of unsuccessful tactics.
The elimination of Advantage may be about more than money. Certainly the program did not dramatically decrease homelessness in the city. Last year, the Coalition for the Homeless issued a report documenting what it saw as the failure of programs such as Advantage, calling them "a revolving door back to shelter."
In general, Berg said, the administration suffers from a "fairly distorted notion." They think, he continued, that "at the root of the problem is behavior. … They see people in a vacuum…that homelessness is a personal failing," and do not consider the state of the economy.
Advantage and its predecessors failed because of poor planning, Palma said. When the city was creating "programs for the most vulnerable … it wasn’t including [the relevant] stakeholders at the table."
Palma emphasized, "The city has been intent on keeping people out … and creat[ing] obstacles."
As bad as Advantage was, Palma said, offering nothing is worse. "There is absolutely not a replacement in the pipeline," she said. Though the state is giving the city $15 million dollars to fight homelessness, Palma added, "it won't be to create a [new] rental subsidy program."
What it will be for, though, remains unclear.