Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Housing

Housing

  • The Other Civil Rights Revolution of 2020 That We Must Now See Through

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    Pride (NYC Mayor's Office)


    While millions of Americans marched for Black Lives and racial justice in our streets during a year of racial reckoning that was 2020, a quieter civil rights revolution was taking shape in our courtrooms, culminating in a Supreme Court decision last June that shifted the tectonic plates of the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights. With a new President who has been a leader in this fight and transgender students becoming the latest target in the GOP’s culture war, now is the time to ensure the full promise of this decision

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  • Homeownership Supply is the Affordable Housing Blind Spot in New York City

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    Housing (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Charged with leading post-covid New York to a more equitable future, our next mayor should increase opportunities for New Yorkers to build equity through affordable homeownership. 

    Historically a blind spot in our city’s, state’s, and country’s affordable housing discussions and budgets, which tend to focus on rentals, affordable homeownership is a way for low-income people to begin to build wealth and for us as a city to reduce racial and economic inequality. Homeowners are

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  • At Televised Debate, Democratic Mayoral Candidates Outline Housing, Homelessness Plans

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    (top: Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang, Ray McGuire; bottom: Eric Adams, Dianne Morales, Maya Wiley, Scott Stringer)


    Eight leading Democratic candidates in the race for mayor appeared in the first televised mayoral forum of the 2021 race to share their policy proposals for tackling housing and homelessness in New York City. The discussion had a particular focus on the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, which has added a new layer of concern regarding homelessness, evictions, rent and mortgage debt, housing segregation, affordable and

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  • Video Brief: Housing and the 2021 Election

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    Housing plans in motion (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


    In the latest video brief on key issues facing New York City and at the center of the 2021 city elections, hosts Ben Max and Jarrett Murphy discuss housing, including the them es of housing development, neighborhood rezonings, affordable housing, homelessness, and NYCHA public housing. Watch:

  • Democratic Mayoral Candidates Talk Tenants and Housing

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    Housing (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Nine leading candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to be New York City’s next mayor appeared at a recent virtual forum to offer their stances on issues critical to tenants. Two-thirds of New Yorkers are renters, which means the forum provided candidates a crucial opportunity to impress a large and important group of voters with their policy ideas to solve the city’s housing problems, especially amid a pandemic that has exacerbated existing inequities.

    At the February 27 forum

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  • Kathryn Garcia Continues Fleshing Out Mayoral Campaign Platform with Housing, Transit and Food Plans

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    Kathryn Garcia (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    In recent weeks and months, former New York City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia has further filled out her campaign platform as she runs for mayor, releasing plans for administering the COVID-19 vaccine and working with the federal government, building and maintaining housing, and improving the city’s transit and public spaces. Garcia, who has never run for elected office before but is a veteran of city government in several roles with major responsibilities, is running on her experience as a manager

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  • Every New Yorker Has a Right to a Roof, We Need an Integrated Housing Plan to Get There

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    New York City (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Well before the beginning of the pandemic that has turned life upside down, New Yorkers already faced a devastating affordable housing and homelessness crisis. Even without the dramatic wave of unemployment brought about by a global pandemic, low-income tenants and homeless people across the city faced a grave lack of truly affordable housing and the absence of an effective citywide plan to fix it. Now, of course, the crisis has deepened, with tenants who have long lived paycheck to paycheck

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  • Gowanus Rezoning Exemplifies Smart Housing Policy in New York; Let's Get It Passed

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    Housing (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)


    Reversing the many factors contributing to New York’s long-standing housing emergency will not be easy, but it is possible. In fact, the path toward a more equitable and affordable city is already emerging. 

    In the proposed Gowanus rezoning, we can see the future right in front of us. The proposal is a model example of the sort of planning that, if replicated, will result in the city we aspire to create – one that overcomes rising housing costs and confronts our legacy of redlining and

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  • With Focus on Climate, Kathryn Garcia Offers Initial Mayoral Campaign Platform Also Touching on Housing, Transit, and Policing

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    Kathryn Garcia (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    Kathryn Garcia is running for mayor chiefly on her city government experience, but she’s also pitching voters on her ideas for the future, and where the two merge: the notion that she has the right plans and can execute them. The city sanitation commissioner for six years until she stepped down to run for mayor, Garcia has also been interim chair of the city’s public housing authority, NYCHA, the covid emergency “food czar,” and in other roles under Mayor Bill de Blasio, whom she has sharply criticized early on in her

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  • What's The [Data] Point? $4 Billion, Resetting the Development Debate in New York City

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    Where an Amazon HQ was to be (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


    What's The [Data] Point? Episode 100 -- $4 billion, The Development Discussion [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

    As we continue our series on land use, housing, and development in New York City, we were joined by Michelle de la Uz of Fifth Avenue Committee and the City Planning

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  • Democratic Mayoral Candidates Offer Ideas on Housing, Homelessness and NYCHA

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    (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Eight mayoral candidates participated in a recent forum focused on public and private housing, and homelessness. The December 5 event, which was part of the 15th annual West Side Tenants' Conference, featured Brooklyn City Council Member Carlos Menchaca, former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, entrepreneur Joycelyn Taylor, former city Sanitation

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  • Owning Our Homes, Owning Our Future: A Path to a Just Recovery

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    Housing on the line (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor’s Office)


    On the eve of the pandemic, I gathered with my neighbors outside their building in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx to sound an alarm. For those tenants, it wouldn’t be true to say that “crisis had hit home.” They had been steeped in crisis for some time.

    For three decades, the landlord of 2201-2205 Davidson Avenue had racked up a $12.6 million debt in unpaid property taxes

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  • WATCH: Democratic Mayoral Candidates Talk NYCHA, Housing, and Homelessness

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    Top (l-r): Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Carlos Menchaca
    Bottom (l-r): Dianne Morales, Scott Stringer, Joycelyn Taylor, Maya Wiley


    Eight Democratic candidates for New York City mayor running in the June 2021 primary appeared by Zoom on Saturday to discuss public housing, private housing, homelessness, and the issues and policies that connect them all. The candidates offered their thoughts on current policies, offered their ideas for the future, and discussed what they would do if they were mayor today. Participants were Carlos Menchaca, Eric Adams, Dianne Morales,

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  • Desperate Acts of Vandalism Won’t Help Homeless People or Stop Me from Representing My Clients

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    Vandalism at the home of Randy Mastro, the author


    It happened two weeks ago in the dead of night. More than a dozen people wearing hoods and masks arrived on bicycles outside my family's Manhattan residence and proceeded to vandalize it.

    In premeditated, coordinated fashion, the perpetrators spray-painted, in bright red and black using cut-out stencils, profanities and slogans, such as ""F**k You Randy," "Prick," "Randy Mastro You Can't Displace Us," "No Room For NIMBY's," "Shame," and "Housing Is A Human Right," on the

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  • What's The [Data] Point? 8,200 - The Gowanus Rezoning, with City Council Member Brad Lander

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    Council Member Brad Lander (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


    What's The [Data] Point? Episode 97: 8,200 - the Gowanus Rezoning with City Council Member Brad Lander [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

    City Council Member Brad Lander joined the show to discuss the Gowanus rezoning proposal that is entering final stages of negotiation and the

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  • Upper West Side Saga Exposes City’s Ongoing Failures on Housing and Homelessness

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    Mayor de Blasio addressing housing plans (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photography Office)


    New York City’s recent refusal to stand up to wealthy Upper West Siders is just another instance in an unending pattern of failures on housing and homelessness. 

    The saga of the Lucerne is emblematic of the interplay between the powerful and the powerless in New York City. In an effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, the de Blasio administration (after fierce advocacy from the Homeless Can’t

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  • Affordable Housing is the Key to New York’s Recovery

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    Housing is essential to the city's recovery (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    As we begin yet another month of the pandemic, New Yorkers are alarmed at the acute rent crisis crippling our city. While statewide executive orders temporarily postponing evictions help for the moment, unemployed tenants are building up unpaid rent debt that they will struggle to pay even after they begin working again. And even before COVID-19, more than half of city renters were paying more than a third of their income in rent, and a third of city renters paid more than half

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  • A Simple Way New York Can Help Renters and Owners

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    A proposed housing reform (photo: Emil Cohen/City Council)


    In June 2019, state lawmakers significantly altered a provision of the rent stabilization laws called preferential rents. It was the ability for a housing provider to offer a rent that was lower than the legal limit, where such limits apply. Under the change in law, tens of thousands of tenants with preferential rents are locked in to rent increases that can never be more than what is

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  • Scott Stringer is Putting Affordable Housing at the Center of His Mayoral Pitch — What's His Vision?

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    Comptroller and mayoral candidate Scott Stringer (photo: @scottmstringer)


    When he officially launched his campaign for mayor earlier this month, Comptroller Scott Stringer took square aim at what he called “the gentrification industrial complex” that he says has flourished in New York City despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s years-long effort to stem the tide of housing unaffordability. Stringer, a two-term Democrat, has for years examined, audited, and criticized various aspects of the mayor’s housing program, arguing it is not aptly designed to help those most in need of affordable housing,

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  • New Yorkers Should Back NYCHA’s New Blueprint for Change

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    NYCHA Chair Greg Russ (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    With so much attention focused on the COVID-19 catastrophe and the 2020 elections, our leaders and the media have all but overlooked the importance of a plan to improve the lives of 300,000 low-income and working-class New Yorkers, many of them people of color. The plan merits support from all of New York’s elected officials.

    New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Chair Gregory Russ has produced an innovative ...

  • Max & Murphy Podcast: Controversy Over Homeless Shelters on the Upper West Side

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    Mayor de Blasio & Council Member Rosenthal at a town hall (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayor's Office)


    September 2, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Controversy Over Homeless Shelters on the Upper West Side

    City Council Member Helen Rosenthal and Melissa Sanchez of Upper West Side Open Hearts Initiative joined the show to discuss the controversy around new homeless shelters on the Upper West Side.

    Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter ...

  • Efforts to End Racism Must Include Dismantling Housing Discrimination

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    Housing discrimination must be addressed (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


    In January 2015, I was released from a federal prison in California with the clothes I came in with, a few personal possessions I’d collected over the six years I had been incarcerated, and a bus ticket back to New York City. After a six-day journey home, I found myself subletting a room from a family friend – and as long as the rent was paid on time, they did not ask questions. Living in this apartment allowed me to find employment, cultivate relationships with my family, and continue pursuing

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  • Housing is Health, We Must Support It As Such — Especially Now

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    Health and housing are inextricably linked (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    The nationwide protests over the past few months are a response to the tragic murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers -- and to the longstanding racial injustices plaguing our nation. Among these systemic crises is housing inequity and its impact on health.

    Millions of people nationwide lack stable housing due to extremely high rent, domestic issues such as living with an abuser, or various other causes. In New York specifically, hundreds

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  • A Housing Policy to Stimulate the New York Economy

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    New York City (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    After months of being on pause and the ravages of COVID-19, we need to be thinking of ways to jumpstart our New York economy. Just as one can take a seemingly dead battery and revive it with the right charge and a set of jumper cables, we too can help to restart our economy with a charge of the right stimulus: changing the condo conversion laws to make condo conversion easier again. 

    Condo conversion refers to when a developer changes a rental residential building, typically owned by one landlord, to a

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  • Removing NYPD from Homeless Outreach is a Long-Overdue Positive Step; Here’s What Must Come Next

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    Mayor de Blasio with homeless outreach (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    As the city gradually reopens, we’ve seen many homeless New Yorkers kicked off the subways without being offered a safe, private alternative place to sleep. In some recent cases, we have seen police officers use unacceptable violence to drag homeless New Yorkers off the train. Fortunately, after repeated calls from homeless New Yorkers and advocates,

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