Public Employee Press

Part 2 in a series on
Vanishing: Affordable housing in New York City

New Yorkers say: 'Housing Now!'

• Registration for April 2, Housing Conference
  

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

About 8,000 New Yorkers, including 1,000 DC 37 members, marched to City Hall Feb. 2 to demand more affordable housing.

“No Housing, No Vote,” echoed off Broadway’s canyon walls as a coalition of priced-out New Yorkers — members of unions and religious groups, students and activists — sent a loud message to the city’s mayoral candidates. They demanded that adequate and affordable housing take first place on the agenda of anyone who wanted their votes in November.

The afternoon rally was one of the largest demonstrations for housing in recent years. “The need for affordable housing is more urgent than ever,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “It’s time for this city to guarantee that its employees — who are mandated to live in the city — have decent and affordable places to live.”

Ms. Roberts outlined housing demands that included raising the share of affordable housing units that developers must include in new construction to 30 percent from the current 10 to 20 percent set-aside. She also called for repealing the Urstadt Law, which gives the state legal authority over city rent guidelines.

“Fight, fight, fight, fair housing is a right,” boomed the rally’s fiery speakers. “Current housing trends are destroying the fabric of life in the city.” Million-dollar apartments, low wages and inflation are pushing the Jane and John Does of the city out of their neighborhoods.

During the decade-long real estate boom, landlords have reaped the lion’s share of the gentrified housing pie as working families have been pushed out of their homes and neighborhoods. Working class neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Harlem, Bushwick and the Lower East Side are quickly being transformed as newcomers fork over thousands of dollars for rent each month. Higher prices and a shrunken housing stock pinch DC 37 members’ pockets and force many longtime residents with modest incomes farther from the Big Apple’s core.

The two-hour rally also exposed the $100 million annual revenue loss New York City incurred from 1990-1999 as Battery Park City Authority paid only 19% of the tax revenues the city deserved on the property. Ms. Roberts said, “As of 2000, BCPA funds had built or rehabilitated fewer than 16,000 units of low-income housing. Here is an example of your tax dollars working to deny you decent housing.”

She demanded that BPCA live up to its original public purpose of creating thousands of units of
affordable housing in a mix of low, moderate and middle-income apartments.

Housing hurdles
Under Ms. Roberts’s leadership, DC 37 has made affordable housing a high priority political issue for 2005. The union is exploring initiatives at all three levels of government and has scheduled a membership housing conference for April 2 (see box).

The city faces a huge challenge to house its working population, ballooning numbers of homeless, AIDS and HIV-positive individuals, and a constant influx of immigrants. While the mayor has launched one of the most aggressive affordable housing programs this city has seen in two decades, demonstrators asked whether this initiative is enough.

“DC 37 members — who do many of the jobs that make this city work — can’t live in this city without more affordable housing,” Ms. Roberts said. “We deserve no less!”