Sam J Miller

Filling Up Vacant Property

An overwhelming number of apartments are being warehoused in empty buildings. What kind of new laws and policies would we need to see in order to stop that?

Ours is a country founded on slavery, so it's no surprise that property rights continue to come before human rights. Today, few problems better illustrate the struggle between the two than homelessness. While the housing movement in New York City has succeeded in changing the rules of the game to punish landlords who withhold vital services and fail to make repairs and raise rents arbitrarily, we still live in a city where it's considered acceptable for landlords to keep buildings empty and keep rent-controlled apartments off the market.

When Picture the Homeless worked with the Borough President to count Manhattan vacant buildings and lots in 2006 (check out this phenomenal map of our findings, and this report we issued), it wasn't just to make a statement. Nor were we saying "look at all these empty buildings, somebody needs to do something!" No, we knew what needed to change. Homeless people have developed a comprehensive legislative agenda detailing all the laws and policies that would need to change in order to stop landlords and the city from keeping buildings empty, and to turn them into housing for low-income New Yorkers. And now we're working with members of the City Council to develop and introduce anti-warehousing legislation that would open up empty property and fund rehabilitation. This legislation is based on our Homeless Housing & Jobs Platform, and marks a major testing-case of the ability of a human rights argument to directly challenge a property-rights-based status quo. Our argument is that the human rights of homeless people, and of entire communities impacted by gentrification, must be reckoned against the rights of landlords to keep large numbers of housing units off the market for speculatory purposes.

Key demands of the legislation:

1. Creation of a regular citywide census of vacant buildings and lots.

2. Empowerment of NYC Department of Buildings to expand the Building Code (Section [643a-13.0] 26-127) concerning "nuisance" buildings, to declare unoccupied buildings "nuisances" on the grounds that they are "detrimental to the life or health" of the community at large, including homeless people.

3. Empowerment of NYC HPD to levy an annually-increasing fine against non-compliant landlords in an amount equivalent to the current cost of bringing the building online.

4. Development of a mechanism by which DHS-funded shelter residents can "opt out" of shelter and into housing.

5. Creation of an independent "Homeless Housing Trust," including homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers as well as other stakeholders to oversee implementation and funding of this plan.

6. Amendment of NYC Rent Stabilization guidelines to ensure that when these properties are brought back online, previously-rent-stabilized units, which typically lose their stabilization as a result of their vacancy, will revert to stabilized status.

Dozens of cities throughout the nation have implemented new policies and new laws to reconstruct abandoned buildings and empty lots into usable housing. Every point outlined in our platform has had its effectiveness proven in one or more cities across the country... but combining these demands into legislation of this scope and scale has almost never been attempted in the United States. Our legislation has the potential to be the model for other municipalities throughout the country, and we need your help. Please write to sam@picturethehomeless.org to sign up for a Legislative Action Committee, to help move this ambitious agenda forward.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood that as a movement, we must not be afraid to challenge private property where it directly impinges upon human liberty. As the NYC housing movement gears up for a banner year, let's see how far we can push.

"I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Posted at 7:00 AM, May 29, 2007 in Housing
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