Andrew Friedman

Speaker Candidates to speak out on housing issues

On Wednesday, November 30th, all seven candidates for Speaker of the New York City Council will gather with over 1000 low-income tenants and homeless New Yorkers at a forum that is being organized by a coalition of membership-based organizations from all five boroughs.

The event promises to elucidate the candidates' positions on a number of important housing issues. Now that Gifford Miller has failed to live up to his promise to pass the Healthy Homes Act in 2005, it will be particularly interesting to see how the candidates respond to the questions they will be asked about housing preservation.

According to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), tens of thousands of low-income New Yorkers are subjected to immediately hazardous housing conditions, such as mold, leaks, and lack of heat and hot water, because their landlords ignore the housing code and refuse to make the necessary repairs. The City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development routinely fails to enforce the housing code and to create accountability for negligent landlords. The Healthy Homes Act, a bill currently before the City Council, requires automatic re-inspections by HPD for all "immediately hazardous" violations to confirm that repairs have been made and mandates that HPD fix all "immediately hazardous" violations that slumlords fail to fix within 35 days.

In addition, through rent subsidies in the form of Housing Stability Plus (HSP) or HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) vouchers, the City of New York is rewarding landlords of these problem buildings and placing some of our most vulnerable community members in to hazardous conditions. A recent Housing Here and Now report documented that 25% of subsidy buildings are "unsatisfactory" according to the City's own standard, namely that a building has two B or C violations per unit in the past 3 years or three B or C violations in all years.

Candidates will be asked if they will guarantee that the Healthy Homes Act (Intro 486A) will be passed within the first 100 days of 2006. In addition, candidates will be asked if they will sponsor and pass legislation to ensure that City subsidies are ONLY used to place recipients into buildings that meet the City's standards for a "satisfactory building" and to ensure that re-inspections are mandated and take place prior to lease signing to ensure all repairs have been made?

If you are interested in hearing their answers, you should go to Washington Irving High School Auditorium at 40 Irving Pl., between 16th & 17th Sts in Manhattan this Wednesday at 6pm.

Andrew Friedman: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 9:32 AM, Nov 28, 2005 in Housing
Permalink | Email to Friend