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Council Wants To Force Landlords To Fix 'Underlying Conditions'


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.

WHY THE POLICY MATTERS      

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.

WHAT THE POLICY DOES

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.

WHO DID WHAT?

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.”   

NEXT STEPS

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.

REFERENCE

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.

 

After losing rent subsidy, disabled NYers face eviction


rental lg

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.

NY tenant groups gear up for another round


 housing

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

Missed Opportunity

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.

Another Bite

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.

Back-Up Plan 

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.



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