The signs of eviction -- abandoned furniture dotting the hallways, renovation crews climbing stories with paint cans in tow -- characterize the latter years of Terry Bocanelli's stint on the West Side of Manhattan.
A resident there for more than 15 years, Bocanelli's 31st Street apartment building has become a revolving door: rent stabilized tenants leave and higher income residents swoop in. The newer transplants bring more than their belongings. They bring with them higher rents.
"You'd see immigrant workers in the hallways with their tools, plaster buckets and building materials in my neighbors' former apartments," Bocanelli told the City Council earlier this week. "A curious phenomenon: low-wage immigrant workers renovating apartments where other immigrants lived in order for higher paying tenants to move in."
Thanks to a loophole in the state's rent stabilization laws, advocates say, vacant apartments, like those in Bocanelli's building, can quickly morph into market value residences. Dating back to the 1970s, vacancy decontrol (the process of transitioning a vacant rent stabilized apartment into a much more expensive market one) is just one of the rent control issues landing on the City Council's plate as of late.
The council is poised to approve the extension of rent control by the end of the month -- standard procedure for the past three decades -- but other battles, which are priorities of Council Speaker Christine Quinn this year, could prove to be tougher than initially expected .
Every three years, the City Council must declare a state of " housing" emergency in the five boroughs in order to reauthorize rent control . With the administration's support, the council is expected to do so without controversy by the April deadline.
What could cause sparks, though, are two other proposals being pushed by Quinn: the rescinding of vacancy decontrol and the state's Urstadt law. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's position has not yet been entirely confirmed on either of these issues -- though he has raised serious questions on the repeal of Urstadt.
Both issues are also in the hands of legislators upstate. The repeal of Urstadt would give the city home rule over eviction and rent authority policy -- a power it gave up in 1971. The bill in Albany, introduced by State Senator Liz Krueger has garnered 10 sponsors. It has already passed the Assembly.
At a hearing on Monday, City Council members, advocates and scores of tenants came out in favor of the repeal.
"Let our people go," Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz cried out with a particular air of nostalgia. "Having these decisions made in Albany benefits nobody expect the real estate industry and its lobbyists for sure."
Others echoed his sentiments.
"I would rather trust this council -- for better or worse -- to govern the lives of the people of the city of New York than people who have absolutely no interest in our lives from upstate New York," said Councilmember Lewis Fidler of Brooklyn.
With the handing off of the Senate majority to Democrats this year, many advocates were reassured that this would be the year for Urstadt's repeal. Quinn even inserted the policy into her state of the city address.
In addition to myriad issues monopolizing Albany's agenda (such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority bailout or the state budget crisis), the mayor's uncertain position could also drive Urstadt deeper underground. When asked last month, Bloomberg said : “We also have to be mindful that the housing rules in New York City can’t be enacted or maintained in a vacuum any more than the country’s laws in this day and age be maintained in a vacuum.”
His statements are far from a vote of confidence.
What could have better luck is the speaker's call to do away with vacancy decontrol. Also a child of rent control revisions in the 1970s, vacancy decontrol, the council estimates, could have taken as many as 300,000 apartments off of the rent stabilization rolls.
To lose this stabilization status, these apartments would have to have rents higher than $2,000 a month and, as inferred by the policy's title, become vacant.
State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins , who represents Yonkers, introduced legislation to repeal these provisions and bring back many of those decontrolled apartments. It would allow for apartments to become destabilized if rents exceed $5,000.
Stewart-Cousins said the bill currently has 23 sponsors. The assembly has already approved the bill.
Advocates say landlords have intimidated or harassed tenants out of stabilized apartments so they can charge market rates once they are vacant. "While there are some protections against retaliatory evictions, the protections are not very strong and some tenants are too fearful to take the risk," said Louise Seeley, the executive director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, at this week's council hearing.
The proposal has its critics. According to a statement by the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group, "Extending and expanding the existing web of rent regulations will have dire economic consequences for the city, while failing to address housing affordability. On the other hand, continued and expanded deregulation will generate economic benefits for the city and its residents, including increased tax revenue which could be used for housing assistance targeted to the truly needy."
Bloomberg has remained silent so far. Though Stewart-Cousins admits Albany is distracted currently, she is confident the State Senate will review and possibly approve the bill once the budget has been approved.
"It would be premature to say anything is definite, but I can say we are certainly taking the matter very, very seriously," said Stewart-Cousins.
(This article is adapted from Child Welfare Watch Vol. 16, "Home Away From Home: Foster Parents for a New Generation." Reporting by Ann Farmer, Kendra Hurley, and Barbara Solow.)
Sixteen-year-old Juan would not seem like a good prospect for placement with a foster family. He lived in five foster families before coming to Children's Village, a residential facility north of the city. Once there he ran away. "We do stupid things," Juan shrugs.
But on a March day, Juan, clutching his black poetry journal, was about to move to a permanent foster home in Parkchester. "It's awesome," he said.
Juan represents part of an effort by New York City's Administration for Children's Services to turn away from institutionalized care for foster children in favor of family-based care.
The biggest shift has been among young teens - those 12 and 13 years old, according to city and state data. But even 14 and 15-year-old boys and girls are more likely to be placed with families today than they were in the past. The change is far less marked among older teens as 16 and 17-year-olds entering foster care are just as likely to be placed in congregate care now as they were four years ago, according to city data.
While generally applauding the trend, some experts note that the shift away from group care is demanding a lot of the city's foster families and that they will require additional support and services to make these placements work. While finding suitable foster homes for children of any age poses difficulties, the challenge becomes particularly daunting with teenagers, especially those who have already spent most of their lives in group care facilities and have an array of problems.
Social work practitioners have long advanced the theory that teenagers in institutional foster care programs would stand a better chance of adjusting to society and achieving long-term success if they were in family care. A study released in 2003 by the Seattle-based foundation Casey Family Programs demonstrated that, with ample support, teens placed in stable foster family settings achieved a higher level of education than their peers in group care.
And while residential treatment centers and other institutional programs are supposed to provide children with services they might not receive in a family setting, said Julie Farber, director of policy for Children's Rights, a national legal action group, "there is very limited evidence of [their] effectiveness for a child's mental health."
"Life in society is best defined by the experience of the family," adds Jeremy Kohomban, president and chief executive officer of The Children's Village, a foster care agency once known primarily for its institutional care programs. "It's only in the family that you learn to be a father, brother and citizen."
With this in mind, men and women who work with teenagers in foster care are figuring out how to help create stable family homes for young people who once would have spent years in group homes and residential treatment centers. Officials are seeking funding streams and enacting policies to support this work.
As a result, a higher percentage of the city's foster children now live with foster families and relatives than just a few years ago. In June 2004, 3,908 New York City foster children lived in group care. That number dropped to 2,595 by March 2008 - a 34 percent reduction. Over the same period, the total number of children in foster care declined by 19 percent. Meanwhile, the city has been closing residential treatment centers and group homes and shifting resources to family foster homes. Recently, ACS announced its intention of eliminating 1,200 more group care beds.
Placing these children can be difficult. In 2005, the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, an association of the city's privately run foster care agencies, assessed the behavioral and emotional challenges of 213 adolescents at six agencies who were sent to live with foster families. They found that 44 percent of the teens had previously lived in foster care, 26 percent had mental health issues, 33 percent had problems with truancy and 16 percent had exhibited violent behavior.
Foster parents who open their homes to children with these issues report they need far more help than those who care for younger children. "It's a very, very stressful situation to be dealing with a child with behavior problems," said Valentina Staton of the Bronx, a veteran foster parent who is now the official foster parent advocate for Leake and Watts Services. "Sometimes you have to wait for [treatment] beds to open up and you have to keep a child that is acting out until there is a bed available. You have to keep an appointment book, you have to follow all their medications. It's a lot." She said that many of her agency's foster parents are dealing with these kinds of issues.
New York is still a very long way from ending institutional care. And many child welfare experts acknowledge that being with a family may not serve all children in foster care.
Take 19-year-old Cecil Lundy. According to caseworkers at Episcopal Social Services, he never adapted to foster homes. Instead, the tall, husky teenager, who has been in care since he was 8, spent most of his childhood in group homes and residential treatment centers. A few unsuccessful tries in family settings ended after he got into fights with foster parents or siblings.
Things got better for Lundy after he and a roommate moved into an apartment in the Bronx that is under the supervision of their foster care agency. Social workers check on them regularly to offer support and to enforce curfews and other program rules.
Many foster care agency leaders believe that some teens like Lundy benefit from the stability of group homes and residential treatment centers with a 24-hour staff can provide. "No one size fits all," said Jim Purcell, chief executive officer of the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies.
While acknowledging that, city child welfare officials say that many teens who are in group care can successfully find homes with families. "Too often, the child welfare system looks at a group facility as a permanent placement and efforts to find that child a family just stop," said Farber of Children's Rights.
The staff at Children's Village agrees. Working closely with You Gotta Believe!, a Brooklyn-based organization that finds foster parents for older kids, the agency had been able to place 50 percent of teens they hoped to move to family homes-all whom had spent at least five years in institutional care-with foster families. Though it wanted to place more, said Kohomban, "Our position is 50 percent is better than zero."
The process of moving children like those at Children's Village from a residential facility into a permanent foster or pre-adoptive home is known among social workers as "stepping down." Teens are traditionally much harder to step down than younger children, especially those who have been referred to residential care after several failed foster family placements. Most teens at Children's Village, for instance, struggle with mental illness or severe emotional disturbances such as depression, fear and anger, for which they receive counseling, drug therapy and other services.
To help find foster homes for the young people at Children's Village, the staff attempted to match the teens with people they already knew and with whom they felt a special connection, such as an aunt, uncle or former foster parent. The matching process often took six to twelve months, but the Children's Village staff learned to not rush into any matches. This allowed the teenager and prospective parents ample opportunity to assess whether the match felt right.
Even then, some matches failed. "Some people have no clue what they're getting into," said Mona Swanson, Children's Village's chief operating officer. "We look for backbone, for people who are able to set limits and not take things personally, and know how it is to live with a teen."
Staff at Children's Village have found that providing sufficient family support and steady follow-up care are arguably the most important components to making matches stick, according to the agency's leadership. Almost every matched teen from Children's Village was immediately entered into the city's 2004-07-08 Therapeutic Foster Boarding Home Program, which provides extra support, including a larger stipend for foster parents. Each teen has a team with a social worker, a behavioral specialist, a psychologist and psychiatrist. The teens are supposed to receive weekly visits from their assigned social worker and behavioral specialist. The parents also can receive family counseling.
You Gotta Believe! provided extensive follow-up support in the form of shadow workers skilled at family intervention who made themselves available any time of the day or night to help resolve crises.
"I can tell you this, if it weren't for Stephen [a foster parent advocate] my foster son would have gone back a long time ago," said Karen Zimmerman, who took in a Children's Village teen and has Stephen McCall, a foster parent who serves as a consultant for Children's Village and other agencies, as her shadow worker. "His phone is open 24 hours."
Most teens and their foster families, however, do not receive such extensive support and nonprofit leaders say services that would be especially helpful to foster families, such as respite care and therapy programs geared to teens, are still scarce or nonexistent in many city neighborhoods. "What we really need are more community-based services, not just for foster families but for all families," said Lee Pardee, director of policy and practice implementation at SCO Family of Services. "After school, sports and church-based programs and more mentoring would help."
Children in foster homes especially need better access to mental health services, experts say. Many kids in foster care have been victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence-and such experiences can exact an extreme emotional toll. Researchers estimate that as many as 50 to 70 percent of all children in foster care have serious emotional problems. Yet a 2005 study by the Citizens' Committee for Children found that only about one-third of children living in the city's foster boarding homes received individual therapy.
And despite the system's greater reliance on foster homes, the stipend foster parents receive from the city has increased only slightly in recent years. It starts at $17.52 per day and can sometimes range as high as $57.60 depending on a child's age and level of need, though most children fall at the lower end of the spectrum. This money includes a child's allowance, as well as money to be spent on clothing, food and other necessities. For most foster parents it's simply not enough to cover the cost of looking after a child, said McCall. While press accounts focus on foster parents who abuse the system, most foster parents contribute their own money-to say nothing of enormous amounts of time-to care for young people who need homes.
The Administration for Children's Services has, however, invested some resources to help agencies better support their foster parents. In 2006, ACS slated $11.5 million for agencies to help recruit and support foster parents of children aged 10 and older. It renewed this funding in 2007. Some foster care agencies used the money to reduce caseloads so each foster family could receive more attention. One agency began offering optional training for all its foster parents on how to work with children with special needs-something that used to be available only to those families licensed as therapeutic foster homes.
Other agencies, including Little Flower Children's Services, Children's Village, Edwin Gould Services for Children and Families, and Forestdale, Inc., have used those funds to hire foster parent advocates who give foster families the support that caseworkers are often too busy to provide. The advocates also give foster parents a safe space to vent. "A lot of foster parents are afraid to tell [a caseworker] what's going on because they think the agency is going to look at them like they aren't a good parent," explained McCall.
Child welfare leaders are also hopeful that the state's new Bridges to Health program, which offers Medicaid-funded services to vulnerable children in foster care, will help ease the resource crunch. The program offers children diagnosed with emotional problems, developmental disabilities or fragile medical conditions services ranging from crisis management to school advocacy. Assistance is available not only to the kids in care but also to their parents, foster parents and siblings. State officials say the program, which is just getting off the ground, will serve at least 3,300 children over the next three years.
But for now, many foster parents say they struggle getting the help they need for them and the children in their homes.
Though a foster parent for nearly 20 years, Gabriela (not her real name) wasn't prepared for the battle of wills she faced when she recently took in two teenagers: Anthony, 18, and Greg, 20. Both had been in the system a long time. Gabriela began having problems with Greg almost immediately: He left food out, steamed up the bathroom and left it a mess. When she challenged him, he said, "I can do what I want. I'm a man and I'm mature."
Things became worse when Greg took up with a 43-year-old woman he met on MySpace. "He used to go to church. He used to go to therapy," Gabriela said. "Now he's stopped and has been smoking weed. He lost his job at McDonald's because of her. He jumps hoops for this woman."
Then Gabriela began having trouble with Anthony. During an argument, he punched a hole in her dresser. After he threatened to hit her, she asked the caseworker to remove both him and Greg from her home. "I don't like getting rid of kids," said Gabriela, "But there's little things they do that I've been telling them not to since October."
When Greg learned he was being sent to a group home, he disappeared for several days, and Gabriela never heard what happened to him after that. Greg's leaving prompted Anthony to beg Gabriela for a second chance. "If I start over in a new house. I don't know what's going to happen," he told her.
Knowing how hard it is for children to bounce from one home to another, Gabriela decided to let him stay. "I really like the kid," she said. "But I let him know that if he messes up again, he's leaving. So we'll just have to see what happens."
Child Welfare Watch is a joint project of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School and the Center for an Urban Future. Edited by Andrew White.
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The New York City’s affordable housing crisis has brought housing advocates together to seek political solutions to what is commonly seen as an economic problem: There is not enough housing to meet the demand; consequently the price of housing – rent – has skyrocketed. But advocates in some other cities are finding more ammunition for their efforts: They are citing international treaties that oblige governments to respect a human right to adequate housing. Their efforts could lead to a national movement that would bring housing advocates – and other human rights advocates – together in a new and more powerful way, they assert.
The idea that housing is a human right is hardly new, but it is not nearly as developed as the concept of property rights. Property rights remain the basis for most law in the United States, continuing a long legal tradition that stretches back to ancient Rome.
Probably every school kid learns that in order to vote in the early colonies, a man (and only men) had to own property. In New York, the significance of property rights is obvious as soon as you look at the state’s laws: Between the city and the state, there are volumes of laws that apply to real estate, with power based on ownership. Much other law, too, derives from the premise that someone’s property has been damaged or stolen.
A human rights paradigm, on the other hand, centers on the idea that the simple fact of being alive qualifies a person for certain protections. While this idea has existed for thousands of years, it is not as inculcated in our laws as property rights are.
In this country, some rights, such freedom of speech, extend to everyone. “The way our history has unfolded in the U.S., there has been a very deliberate march toward what are called civil and political rights – the right to free assembly, most that are enshrined in the constitution – and less about rights that have to do with living a life that is free of poverty," said Ejim Dike, director of the Urban Justice Center’s human rights project.
As a result, the idea that housing is a human right to be protected and promoted draws a lot of confused expressions.
“It is a kind of startling concept for our society,” said Michael McKee, treasurer of Tenants PAC, which represents renters in the metropolitan area and works to elect pro-tenant candidates to office. “Housing is seen as a commodity to buy, sell and get rich off of.”
The closest the United States has come to a right to adequate housing may have been in the 1949 Housing Act, which called for “the realization as soon as feasible of a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family.”
Frustration at what they see as government inaction, particularly at the federal level, on the housing problem has led housing advocates to embrace the human rights approach.
“There’s really no excuse for homelessness or living in inadequate housing in this country,” said Bret Thiele, coordinator of the economic, social and cultural rights litigation program at the Centre on Human Rights and Evictions. “It’s political will, it’s political decisions that lead to people being homeless and poor.”
The right to adequate housing, according to Thiele, means that government must ensure people have housing that is habitable, affordable, located appropriately (not in polluted areas or too far from schools or other important services) and accessible for people with physical disabilities or other conditions. People should not be not subject to arbitrary eviction, harassment or other threats.
“All too often in the U.S., economic and social issues are seen as charity work,” Thiele said. “Human rights language says these are obligations the government has to make sure are respected. That really shifts the paradigm. It’s no longer the poor asking for something; it’s the poor demanding that the government meet its obligations.”
Dike echoed Thiele’s comments. “The government has an obligation to make sure that everyone has access to adequate housing,” Dike said. “Right now what we depend on is the political will or the charity of whoever is in power. We depend on the legislative process, which is good, but at the end of the day we cannot take a case to court to demand safe and affordable housing.”
Many believe that a right is virtually meaningless if no law exists to protect it. International treaties may oblige governments to respect the human right to adequate housing, but very few laws actually exist to insure that.
The 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, while not legally binding, calls for a right to adequate housing. The United States signed the declaration and has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While the covenant dos not explicitly set out a right to adequate housing, it does contain rights relevant to it. The United States has also signed – but not ratified – the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
“The United States has a poor record of ratifying and a poor track record of implementing” human rights treaties, Thiele said.
Housing advocates trying to use the human rights approach assert that the United States is sufficiently obliged, under international law, to respect the human right to adequate housing. What that actually means remains unclear – but is becoming clearer around the world, around the country and, gradually, in New York City.
In Scotland, France and South Africa, laws now assert that the people have a right to adequate housing. In 2003, Scottish lawmakers passed a homeless act creating an “immediate right” to adequate housing, and French lawmakers established a similar law in 2007. The right is even more explicitly codified in South Africa.
In Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and Minneapolis, to name a few cities, housing advocates are using human rights as a framework for their efforts. In their work with homeless people, activists are noting violations and, in their lobbying activities, they are pushing for local laws to establish a right to adequate housing.
Housing advocates in New York City are not widely using a human rights approach. Some are not aware of the approach; others see it as impractical – at least for now.
(Vincent Villano, who works for the organization I work for, has studied the human rights approach closely and has been advocating its use in a variety of ways. he provided me with a broad variety of materials on the issue.)
New York City and the state do have comprehensive human rights laws. With regard to housing, these measures generally get cited only when people discuss laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, citizenship status and the like. A human right to adequate housing goes beyond addressing such rampant discrimination.
According to Cathy Albisa of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative it would extend to security of tenure for renters and owners, affordability and the adequacy of the home, including its structure and location. “These concepts are not sufficiently present in our development of policy to mitigate the insecurity that the market can create for housing,” she wrote in an email.
New York State does have laws that promote or protect the right to adequate housing. Two laws stand out: the 1975 warranty of habitability, which requires that an apartment be free of hazardous conditions and generally livable before a landlord can collect rent, and rent regulation laws, which guarantee a tenant a variety of protections, including an automatic lease renewal. That particular provision protects tenants from arbitrary eviction and harassment – at least on paper. And in 1997 the New York City Aids Housing Network successfully lobbied City Council to pass legislation that establishes the right for people with HIV and AIDS.
Further applying a human rights approach to housing in New York City would reveal that the city and state governments are not fulfilling the right to adequate housing – and in some respects violate that right.
“Tenants have no rights in apartments that are not regulated,” said McKee. “This is a big problem. They have no right to tenure, for example. And that makes it very hard for them to complain about repair problems or service problems …. The landlord will simply not renew the lease if they complain.”
The city and state fall short in a number of areas:
• Affordability
• Housing that is not handicap or otherwise accessible
• The persistence of pollution in parts of the city that lead to high rates of asthma
• Repeated housing code violations and the failure to compel landlords to address such violations
• The loss of rent regulated apartments and the existence of other unregulated units, which leaves many tenants open to arbitrary evictions and harassment.
The state and city governments have attempted to address some of these issues. Last week, for example, the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced efforts to go after the city's worst landlords and get them to repair their properties. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched an effort to build more affordable homes in the city.
Such programs, though, remain subject to the vagaries of politics. Currently, there is no guarantee that the government will act to ensure that decisions on housing "ensure security and affordability,” Albisa said. Instead, she continued, "We have policies that are at odds with each other.”
Establishing a human right to decent housing would create a framework that would outlast the coming and goings of various mayors and governors and strengthen the push for programs to provide adequate housing.
Using a human rights approach, advocates working on these issues could assert at tenant meetings and in discussions with policy makers that the city’s failures to address them adequately are human rights violations. The language alone carries a force unknown in the current discussions of these problems.
For now, advocates are trying to learn what the human rights approach means and how it could be applied in their efforts.
“It’s a very interesting idea and suggests a number of possibilities,” McKee said. “But I don’t know what it’s going to take to get it to a level where people take it seriously. There’s an old chant that housing is a human right. But I don’t know if people really believe it in the sense that they think it’ll really fly.”
In conjunction with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions trains housing advocates to use a human rights approach in various aspects of their work, from organizing tenants to lobbying for legislation to filing lawsuits when the right to adequate housing is violated. A training workshop for New York City advocates is expected in 2008, Thiele said.
Advocates are seeing signs that the approach is gaining momentum, even if its full use is years off . “Developing and using new advocacy tools is always a difficult and challenging piece of work,” Albisa wrote. “But when our existing frameworks and standards are failing brutally to protect basic needs, it is imperative to look for new approaches that can move us socially in new directions….When one considers the seismic shifts in how we define equality at key points in the last few centuries, though, it is clear that the evolution of rights is not only possible, but necessary.”
Thiele said progress has been made since his organization began working on the issue in 2003. “What we’re trying to do is create a movement, much like the Civil Rights movement of the '40s, '50s and '60s," he said. "It’s not going to happen overnight.”
Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations. Â