Housing Campaign Goals
When our committee first started meeting regularly, homeless people set out the following demands as our main concerns:
- ♥ Money for housing, not shelters
A home is an absolute necessity to building a stable, dignified life. Current policies that prioritize shelters are not helping homeless New Yorkers move out of poverty. Nor is supportive housing accessible to many homeless people who do not fit into one of the “problem” boxes such as mental illness, substance abuse, etc. In the words of Picture the Homeless leader Charlie Heck: “With supportive housing, they got all these categories. Substance abusers and the mentally ill and people with AIDS… I don’t see any category for decent human being.”
- ♥ Lower rents, raise wages
While “homelessness prevention” is said to be a priority for the NYC Department of Homeless Services, there is no work being done to address the rising rents and lack of jobs that are the main causes of homelessness. Without lower rents, higher wages, and decent-paying jobs, the homeless population will continue to skyrocket.
- ♥ HPD: Take advantage of underutilized housing stock
Many buildings still in the hands of HPD or warehousing landlords can and must be used to create housing; in a housing crisis an abandoned building is completely unacceptable. If private landlords are unwilling or unable to renovate their buildings and make them accessible to the very poor, there must be a way to make it possible.
- ♥ HUD: Current “affordability” guidelines are not working
In a city like New York, where the median income is $60,000, it is absurd to base guidelines of affordability on the median income. For the hundreds of thousands of people living below the poverty line, “affordable housing” is not affordable! Re-evaluating “affordability” boundaries around the realities of poverty is essential if poor people are to have access to housing.
- ♥ Put DHS/city money into REAL housing vouchers
The astronomical profits that shelters make from each resident could better be channeled into housing vouchers, or rent assistance of some kind to get people into an apartment. The Housing Stability Plus initiative is a failed, flawed program that does nothing but create a revolving-door effect cycling people from shelter to housing and back to shelter.
- ♥ Place deadline on process of getting housing
Many people are stuck in shelters for years while shelter owners reap big benefits from DHS contracts. Shelters that are not working to get people into housing need to have their contracts cancelled.
- ♥ Remove criminal records as an obstacle to housing
Many homeless New Yorkers who have been through the criminal justice system find that even after paying their dues to society, their record prevents them from access to Section 8 based on federal regulations and local NYCHA process.
- ♥ Involve homeless people in all DHS decision making
None of the obstacles and problems listed above can be solved without the active participation of homeless people in real, substantive capacities.
As our work progressed, we began to focus our efforts on the issue of abandoned buildings, and ways we can get them opened up for housing. In the summer of 2004, we developed a Homeless Housing & Jobs Platform.
Its main policy goals are:
- ♥ Declaration of a “Housing Emergency” by the City Council and a commitment to identifying solutions.
- ♥ Redefinition of HUD’s “affordability” guidelines to prioritize families and individuals making $11,000 a year and under as “extremely low-income” for purposes of eligibility for “affordable” housing.
- ♥ Establishment of a no-interest revolving door loan fund (“NYC Homeless Housing Fund”) to allocate funds for landlords who demonstrate willingness but are unable to fix up their buildings or pay steep fines.
- ♥ Creation of an independent “Homeless Housing Trust” (HHT), including homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers, and other experts, to oversee implementation and funding of this plan.
- ♥ Creation of a Dedicated Revenue Stream to funnel tax-derived money directly into the Homeless Housing Fund.
- ♥ Empowerment of NYC Department of Buildings to expand the Building Code (Section [643a-13.0] 26-127 ) concerning “nuisance” buildings, to declare specific unoccupied boarded-up buildings “nuisances” on the grounds that they are “detrimental to the life or health” of the community at large, including homeless people.
- ♥ Empowerment of NYC HPD to levy an annual fine against non-compliant landlords in an amount equivalent to the cost of bringing the building online.
- ♥ Development of a process by which shelter residents can “opt out” of their shelters, with the money currently being paid by the City to their shelter being transferred into the NYC Homeless Housing Fund.
Concretely, we’d like to see the following steps made towards these goals in the next 2-3 years:
- ♥ Passage by the New York City Council of a resolution acknowledging housing as a human right, declaring a city-wide housing emergency, and urging city agencies to begin implementation of the Picture the Homeless Housing & Jobs Platform.
- ♥ Commitment from the commissioners of NYC HPD, DHS, and DOB to begin meeting regularly, with members of the Homeless Housing Trust, to implement the policy objectives of the Housing & Jobs Platform.
- ♥ Creation of a “Homeless Housing Trust Fund” and the beginning of active work to secure financing for the funding of a pilot program.
- ♥ An accurate, city-wide count of the number of buildings and units being kept off the market in boarded-up, unoccupied buildings, generated by interagency cooperation and the independent findings of community-based organizations.
- ♥ Selection by HPD of ten sites for the development of a pilot program to create mutual housing associations (MHAs) from abandoned buildings, which Homeless Housing Trust Fund financing will rehabilitate.
- ♥ Housing of 100-120 families and individuals, from the streets as well as from the shelters, in the pilot program buildings.
- ♥ Creation of a framework for expanding the pilot project to 1,000 new units of housing a year.
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