City Limits Magazine, May 1984 Issue

DEJlABTMZII'I'S
Short Term Notes

Tenants Demand a Rent Freeze ................. 3
Starrett City Suit Settled ...................... 4
Lockout Law Needs Enforcement ............... 4
Ieople
Two Who Didn't Quit:
_ Martin Young and Ruth Sjogren . .. . ..... . ..... 20
Organize!
A Community-Labor Alliance Wages a
Corporate Challenge ........................ 22
Legislation
Albany Budget Victories and Some New Tasks . .. 24
City Views
Measuring Gentrification's Impact . .. ..... . . ... 26
Review
Unkept Promises ... . ... ... . . ... . ......... ... 28
Resources/Events .... ..... .. ..... . . .. ...... .... 30
Workshop ....... . ...... ... ... . . ..... .. . . ...... 31
ruTVUI
Open Season on Small Business Tenants ...... ... . 5
While shops and businesses are besieqed with huqe rent
hikes, a new coalition is mobilizinq to win requlation.
How to Get the. Landlord to Sell Out ...... . .... ... 8
A new proqram qets title transferred from landlord to tenants
and saves some hom the limbo of abandonment.
Taking ntle: Strlking a Dea11n Harlem ........ . .. 10
.' ... G BOU ... G II1JJUX "Gin'
Low Income Housins(a Growing Crlala .. ..... . . . .. 12
Because the production pipeline is still emptyinq out, we
haven't seen the worst of low income cuts yet.
Launching a New Battle for Low Income Housing .. 14
A policy statement from the National Low Income
Housinq Coalition.
By Burkett and Robbins
fl06e yet TRfJIE 7l'AlLES
All ihroug City)
ihe commercial lease.. pia
and btJ5 i nesses, 5
CITY LIMITS/May 1984
R ALE. S TA T - lCll.//Al,. Gone limorrdW"
2
:OTYLIMIlS)
Volume IX Number 4
City Limits is published ten times per year. monthly
except double issues in June/July and August/
September. by the City Limits Community Informa-
tion Service. Inc . a nonprofit organization devoted
to disseminating information concerning neighbor-
hood revitalization. The publication is sponsored by
three organizations. The sponsors are:
Association o/Neighborhood Housing
Inc . an association of over thiny community-based.
nonprofit housing development groups. developing
and advocating programs for low and moderate in-
come housing and neighborhood stabilization.
Ptall Institute Centu lor Community and Environ-
mental a technical assistance and ad-
vocacy office offering protessional planning and
architectural services to low and moderate income
community groups. The Cenler also analyzes and
monitors government policy and performance.
Urban Homesteading Assistance Boani. a technical
assistance organization providing assistance to low
income tenant cooperatives in management and sweat
equity rehabilitation.
Subscription rates are: for individuals and commu-
nity groups. $9/0ne Year. $l5rrwo Years; for Busi-
nesses. Foundations. Banks. Government Agencies
and Libraries. $2510ne Year. S40rrwo Years.
Reduced rates an: available for low income readers.
City Limits welcomes comments and article contri-
butions. Please include a stamped. self-addressed
envelope for return of manuscripts. Material in City
Limits does not necessarily reIlect the opinion of the
sponsoring organizations. Send correspondence to:
CITY LIMITS. 424 West 33rd Street . New York.
N.Y. 10001. Postmaster send change of address to:
City Limits. 424 W. 33rd St .. New York. N.Y. 10001.
Second-class postage paid
New York. N.Y. 10001
City Limits (ISSN 0I99"()330)
(212) 239-8440
Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . ... Tom Robbins
Marketing Director ...... . ....... Jim Mendell
Copyright 1984. All Rights Reserved.
No po"ion or po"ions of this journal may be
reprinted without the express permission of
the publishers.
Typesetting and Layout by Advance Graphic
Design by Connie Pierce
em .. , photo by Rick StarrordlTh .... Cau Photos
Tenants Demand
A RENT FREEZE
But Will the Mayor
Let Tenant Advocates
on the Rent Board?
T
ENANT ORGANIZATIONS are
demanding a rent freeze for New York
City's nearly om .. million rent stabilized
apartments which are up for annual price
adjustments next month. Cost increases for
apartment building owners have been lower
than ever before, say tenant advocates, and
the Rent Guidelines Board, a nine-member
mayoral-appointed body which must set
maximum rent hikes for one- and two-year
leases, should reflect that in their guidelines,
they say. Last year, Westchester County's
guidelines board set a one-year rent freeze
after costs failed to rise and tenants actively
organized to oppose any rent increases.
But as late as three weeks before lifew
York City's board was due to covene for
deliberations, tenants had no idea who
would be their representatives to the rent-
setting body. Carl Callender, a tenant
representative, has resigned, but no replace-
ment has been named. The other tenant
representative is Barbara Chocky, an East
Side Manhattan tenant leader who has
served since 1980 and is now an aide to City
Council President Carol Bellamy. Mayor Ed
Koch has let it be known that he would not
re-appoint Chocky who has voted against
large rent hikes each year. The New York
State Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition
has mounted a campaign to keep Chocky on
the board.
Currently, only one member, public
representative Philip Johnson, has an unex-
pired term. Terms for all other representa-
tives, with the exception of chairman
Marvin Markus, have run out.
A tentative schedule of hearings has been
scheduled and are listed below. Tenant turn-
out is needed at each meeting; dates are sub-
ject to change and updates can be obtained
from the rent board at 349-2262.0
MONDAY, JUNE 4
lOAM
PUBLIC HEARING
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6
4PM
MONDAY, JUNE 25
lOAM
3
Police Plaza Auditorium, Manhattan
PUBLIC HEARING
(location uncertain)
FINAL (VafING) MEETING of NYC Rent
Guidelines
Board, Police Plaza, Manhattan
Suit Against
Starrett City's
Quotas is
Settled
A
N AGREEMENT which ends a five-
year legal challenge by minority fami-
lies against the rental policies of Starrett
City, a 6,OOO-unit complex in the Spring
Creek section of Brooklyn, has been
reached. At City Limits ' deadline, the agree-
ment had yet to be signed but was said to
include consent by the development's
management company to set aside 175 addi-
tional apartments for minority families.
Also cited in the class action suit was the
New York State Division of Housing and
Community Renewal which is charged with
enforcing non-discrimination at the state-
aided project. The agreement is said to
include a pledge by the state housing divi-
sion to provide greater access for minority
apartment seekers at some 30 state-
administered developments involving
approximately 25,000 dwelling units where
whites make up 90 percent or more of the
residents. The state will seek to bring these
developments to a level of 20 percent
minority.
Starrett City's management has
acknowledged and defended a quota system
which keeps whites in a more than 60 per-
cent majority. The initial suit was brought
by the Open Housing Center, a nonprofit
advocacy group, on behalf of nine Black
persons who were rejected, they claimed,
because of the quota. The Center was joined
at the time by the Metropolitan Council of
the NAACP and the Columbia University
Law School Fair Housing Clinic. When the
suit was filed, the Open Housing Center had
a contract with the city for a fair housing
epforcement project. That contract was can-
celled immediate1y after the Center filed
suit.
The settlement, which was reached at the
end of national Fair Housing Month, will
leave Starrett's quotas in place. Later this
month, the Starrett City Community Rela-
tions Office is hosting a three-day National
Neighbors Conference, the theme of which
is "Integrated Neighborhoods."DT.R.
Lockout Law
Still Needs
Enforcement
L
AST YEAR the "Lockout Law" which
makes it a class A misdemeanor for
owners to force legal tenants from their
apartments was put on the books, but so far
the police department has yet to produce
much enforcement. Even though it is a rela-
tively new law, an internal memo to police
members has been distributed on how to
deal with unlawful evictions.
Still, according to legal services attor-
neys, a common police response is to refer
complaining tenants to Criminal Court, the
Violations Bureau or even Housing Court.
To get more rigorous enforcement, legal
services attorneys Andy Scherer and Marti
Copleman are collecting information on
cases where police have brushed off
demands that the law be enforced.
The ordinance makes it unlawful to try to
evict a tenant by threat or use of force, dis-
continuing essential services or removing
tenants' possessions. It covers any rented
apartment in a residential building ofthree
or more units. When any of those tactics are
being used against a legal resident, the
police are empowered to issue a summons
for criminal court even if the owner relents
and allows the tenant to re-enter the apart-
ment . If the offense persists, an arrest can
be made.
To get copies of the law and a police
memorandum regarding it, contact Com-
munity Action for Legal Services Legal Sup-
port Unit at (212) 431-7200.0
Correction
In the article Keeping the Prices Right on
TIL Apartments, in the April , 1984 issue,
we incorrectly stated the highest resale price
obtained for an apartment at a new Harlem
co-op. At the former TIL building at 302
4
Convent Avenue it was printed that an apart-
ment had been resold for $25,000. This was
a typographical error. $15,000 is the correct
figure . 0
Open Season on SDial1 Business Tenants
4lL RECORDS
ALL \.l.vd, -",. &",11tS
ALl PAPERBAC.',s ~ '
Hall Place &oks' last day, East 7th St., Lower East Side.
By Rachel Gorlin
~ T A RECENT MEETING for upper West Side merchants sponsored by the Public Develop-
.a.ment Corporation and the City Department of Economic Development, attorney Peter Mark
Stem dispensed advice on how to negotiate commercial leases: "Leases give very little and
landlords give very little. You can have Louis Nizer as your lawyer and if the landlord says
he just wants to offer you the standard form lease, you'll end up signing the standard form lease."
Though this meeting was part of the city's effort to demonstrate
its "concern" for the plight of small businesses facing huge rent
increases, Stern offered little hope to the forty merchants in the
audience that evening, "The only right a tenant is granted by
most commercial leases is the right to pay the rent."
And so it goes throughout the city, in neighborhoods gentri-
fied, gentrifying, and ungentrified. Without a system of rent regu-
lation or tenant protections, businesses throughout the five
boroughs have seen average commercial rents more than dou-
ble in the past five years, according to conservative estimates.
The consequences for the city are far reaching, affecting, among
other things, consumer prices, labor negotiations, and the avail-
ability' of vital neighborhood services - from supermarkets to
dry cleaners. A Manhattan baby bonnet manufacturer on Broad-
way in the 20s extracts an 18-month wage freeze from his wor-
kers in return for relocating rather than going out of business
when mced with a several hundred percent rent hike. An antique
business in the East 50s that has survived recessions and the
Second World War plans to close after the landlord, Goldman-
DiLorenzo, demands an increase of more than $2,000 a month.
5
In an article in the 1982 book Setting Municipal Priorities,
Matthew Drennan, associate professor of public administration
at N .Y.u. , notes that in 1976 premium midtown office space
rented for $12.50 a square foot and new office-tower space sold
for an average of $36 a square foot. In the first quarter of 1982,
the same midtown space rented for $35 a square foot and new
office space sold for more than $300 a square foot.
Some firms, especially large ones with very high profit mar-
gins for which location is all-important, have paid the increases
- and passed them on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Other businesses.have relocated to cheaper space - if they can
find it and if they can afford the moving costs. Many others,
including local retail establishments - dry cleaners, shoe repair
stores, the proverbial "mom and pop" businesses - which do
not deal in "elastic" goods and services, have gone out of busi-
ness at the end of their leases.
Mayor Koch's City Hall is absolutely opposed to commercial
rent regulation. Though the Office of Economic Development
seems to agree that high rents are a problem, several officials .
spoke off the record about the "unfairness" of rent regulation
to landlords.
At a February 28th hearing on a City Council commercial
rent regulation bill, before the Council Economic Development
Committee, Deputy Mayor Kenneth Lipper compared commer-
cial rent controls to depositing a nuclear bomb on city streets.
Commercial tenants pay an occupancy tax commensurate with
the level of their rents, and, of course, the higher a property's
rent roll the higher its assessment for tax purposes. Both these
taxes are money makers for the city, which may explain City
Hall's reaction to a commercial rent cap. Not so, says Larry
Kieves, commissioner of the City'S Office of Business Develop-
ment. He doesn't think the occupancy tax is "a major reason
because the revenues from small businesses simply aren't that
high."
Gail Brewer, an assistant to Councilwoman Ruth Messinger
(D-L, Upper West Side) says that she handles about 25 calls
a week from businesses faced with steep, possibly fatal , rent
increases. "I have to tell them that the Office of Economic
Development is the part of the city that is supposed to deal with
their problem. I understand that the city recommends that busi-
nesses leave Manhattan."
For some firms, that move across the river to Brooklyn or
Queens may be the answer: For local stores it surely is not.
"When 1 see Gracie Mansion in Hunts Point [the Bronx], I'll
move there too," laughs Jim McMullen, an Upper East Side
restaurateur.
'Were not talking about failing firms.
Increases are so Jarge that otherwise
healthy businesses are seeing their
profit margin wiped out. '
"There is only so much someone will pay for, say, milk or shoe
repair before he or she takes his or her patronage elsewhere:'
explains Susan Leelike of Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) ,
a neighborhood preservation organization that works with mer-
chants.
At a certain point, even the stores with high markups can't make
it. For the past 41 years, from well before the Third Avenue EI
. was torn down, the Glueckselig family has run an antique shop
at '916 Third Avenue near 56th Street. Until two years ago they
were part of a thriving block of such businesses. Now they are
one of two stores left (the other owns his building) and they will
be closing soon. "The others were all forced out by rent increases,
and now Mr. Sol Goldman, a billionaire from what 1 hear, wants
to just about double our rent, from nearly $3,000 a month to
$5,000," says Hedy Glueckse1ig. "We just can't pay that. The land-
lord says he has rented it at that price, but 1 don't believe it."
"People have to understand, we're not talking about a lot of fail-
ing firms on the verge of bankruptcy," emphasizes Herb Rothman
of the New York State Small Business Association, a group lob-
bying the state legislature for commercial rent regulation, the
Nadler-Padavan Small Business Protection Act. "The increases
are so large that otherwise healthy businesses are seeing their profit
margins wiped out by the whim of their landlords."
The Orchidia Restaurant, a well-known East Village hangout ,
is a case in point . Located at the corner of Second Avenue and
9th Street in the heart of a commercial area one local merchant
calls "tomorrow's Columbus Avenue in more ways than one," the
moderate-sized Ukranian-ltalian Orchidiawas packed every night
of the week. Owned for the past 7J years by Maria Pidhorodecky,
a 58-year-old widow, the restaurant closed its doors permamently
last month. The landlord, Sidney Weisner, who owns other East
Village property including the building that houses the legendary
Second Avenue Deli, raised Pidhorodecky's rent from $950 to
$5,000 a month. Observes Valerio Orselli, director ofthe Cooper
Square Committee, "Even with increased prices, there would be
nothing left after paying the rent each month."
But the Orchidia may not have died in vain. Left in its wake is
a well-organized campaign in support of commercial rent regu-
lation. Led by the Lower East Side Business and Professional
Association, merchants and community residents have joined
together in an impressive lobbying effort. They organized a well-
attended demonstration in front of Weisner's Park Avenue home,
a speak-out on commercial rent increases, and a delegation of
court watchers who attended hearings on the Orchidia's future
before Civil Court Judge Ira Harkavy. According to the Lower
East Side Business and Professional Association, in the last six
months at least 17 small businesses - most of them retail or ser-
vice establishments - in the area have been closed or forced to
move because of soaring rents.
In the face of so much downbeat activity, it would seem difficult
not to lose heart . After all , commercial leases do not give a tenant
much ground to take on the landlord when he refuses to renew
or demands an increase the tenant considers exorbitant. Manhat-
tan's Washington Heights City Council member Stanley Michels
put the situation faced by most commercial tenants in court this
way: "When you don't have the law - and you usually don't in
these cases - you cite the facts. Often you don't have the facts,
either, and then you pound the table. The best you can do gener-
ally is to buy time for the tenant, perhaps giving them time to
relocate."
6
The City Council and state bills serve as rallying points,
however, and one community, Manhattan Valley, is exploring the
establishment of a merchants cooperative as an alternative to pri-
vately owned storefronts. Joe Center, Director of the Valley Resto-
ration Local Development Corporation, says that while rents have
not yet skyrocketed in Manhattan Valley the way they have on
nearby Broadway in the l00s, the cooperative is a hedge against
the real estate activity widely expected in the community as gen-
trification moves north on the West Side. Currently the group is
surveying merchants and attempting to get site control of city-
owned buildings along Columbus Avenue between 108th and 109th
Streets.
)
The constituency for a commercial rent regulation campaign
is potentially quite broad: printers, garment manufacturers, elec-
trical supply producers, doctors, dentists, and hairdressers sud-
denly fmd themselves with a common problem cutting across
class income and neighborhood lines. Those in Manhattan,
however, are likely to be hardest hit.
Why have commercial rents increased so much in the past
several years? "Demand for all kinds of commercial space is
really strong, which I guess you could say is good for the city,"
says Kieves. But restaurateur McMullen, chairman of the Third
Avenue Retailers Association and also a commercial landlord,
offers this: "I think in certain cases that we've passed the limit
of what can be explained by market forces and are dealing with
irresponsibility and greed on the part of some property owners.
We're at a stage now on Third Avenue [from 60th to 90th Street]
where stores are vacant, where the turnover is high for certain
spaces."
Sharp commercial rent increases became po.ular in 1975-76
when landlords sought to catch up on the inflation from which
commercial tenants had been protected by longtenn leases. Dur-
ing the late Seventies, residential conversions in the manufac-
turing sector snapped up available space and forced prices to
soar. Rent hikes soon outran inflation-pegged percentages; today
200 to 300 percem increases are common both for retail and
office renewals. In gentrifying areas, lease expirations have been
occasions for landlords to completely change the character of
their tenants.
In neighborhoods like Washington Heights and East Flatbush,
where there may not yet be a market for fancy ice cream stores
and boutiques, legitimate retail and service establishments have
to compete for space with head shops, numbers joints, and the
like. Such operations' higher incomes allow them to pay com-
mensurate rents, and they help to heat up the market in other-
wise stable areas. "Some landlords don't want the trouble" of
a head shop or illegal betting parlor; says Council member and
commercial rent regulation co-sponsor Stan Michels, "but a lot
of them will just take the higher rent and look the other way.
It's a problem in my district."
Since 1980 there have been proposals at the city and state levels
for some fonn of commercial rent regulation. In the early Seven-
ties City Councilwoman Carol Greitzer (D-L, Greenwich Vil-
lage, East Midtown) sponsored legislation to stabilize
commercial rents which were already skyrocketing in the Vil-
lage district. Councilwoman Messinger realized in 1980 that the
time was right to make a case for commercial rent regulation.
Most Manhattan neighborhoods had felt its effects, and she
believed that would provide a basis for organizing political sup-
port for her council bill.
Her bill is still bottled up in the Council Economic Develop-
ment Committee, which, presumably in line with Koch Adminis-
tration thinking, took several years even to hold hearings on it.
Organizing merchants and manufacturers proved harder than
anyone had expected. After several years of activity, the Small
Business Task Force that had evolved from Messinger's work
was underfunded and somewhat disorganized.
In the last legislative session, Messinger's Side colleague,
Assemblymember Jerry Nadler (D-L), and Assemblymember
Steve Sanders (D-L, East Midtown, East Village) introduced a
bill in the state senate co-sponsored by Republican Frank
Padavan, that has become the rallying point for statewide
support.
The state bill would apply to any city, town or village where
the local legislative body declares a commercial rent "emergency"
(similar to the post-World War II emergency declaration which
'Landlords rely on commercial tenants
to carry more than their share of
expenses.'
continued wartime residential rent controls) . Notes co-sponsor
Nadler, this means the city council could invoke the provisions,
even over the Mayor's opposition. The bill would cover busi-
nesses of up to 100 employees and would limit rent hikes to a
non-compounded annual ten percent or to the prime lending rate
plus three percent, whichever is less. In-place tenants get up
to seven years at that rate but the bill also has a vacancy "decon-
trol" clause which allows owners to boost rents as high as they
can for incoming tenant before they are again regulated. There's
also a hardship clause for owners and the imposition of treble
damages on those wilfully overcharging.
"If it passes in the Assembly this session - which it may well
do because it has the support of housing committee chair Pete
Grannis [Democrat-Liberal of Manhattan's Upper East Side who
saw that it was reported out of committee for the first time],
we think it will pass the upstate-oriented senate; says Herb
Rothman.
He may be optimistic, given the ironclad Iolpposition of the
organized real-estate industry. "Landlords rewy on commercial
tenants to carry more than their share of expenses, to be much
more profitable than residential space. A tenant may occupy only
one-fifth of a building, but in the lease it will require that the
tenant be responsible for paying half the building's real-estate
taxes; McMullen points out. Unoccupied space becomes a tax
write-off. And, of course, the higher the income from a piece
of property, the higher the selling price. "Commercial rent con-
trol could have a deleterious effect on the property values in a
like the East Side," he cautions.
"I think;these rent increases are helping to destroy neighbor-
hoods," says Susan Crowley, owner of The Laughing Giraffe toy
store on East 72nd Street. "The situation has brought about swift
changes that were certainly not evolutionary."
Late last year the well-heeled Recess Club, serving lunch to
businessmen at 60 Broad Street, out of business after 40 years
at that location. The rent was increasing so much that the exclu-
sive club couldn't afford to stay; many of its employees, just short
of retirement age, may have trouble finding other work.
"It was like watching a whole genteel era in New York become
history right before your eyes that closing week," observed a visi-
tor. "And for what? What can they possibly replace the club with
at the top of 60 Broad Street - a video arcade?"D
Rachel Gor/in is a freelance writer who lives in Manhattan.
7
HOW TO GET THE LANDLORD TO
SELL OUT
A new program gets title transferred from the landlord to low
income tenants. It oHers a way out for some from the limbo
of abandonment.
T
HERE IS A COMMON CITY di-
lemma: a landlord, after several 'years
of disinvestment in his property, finally
walks away, leaving tenants behind to cope. -
The residents may try to assert themselves,
through a court-appointed receiver or
through their .own management, but the
door remains wide open for "milkers" or
"finishers" to pick up the building through
purchase or by getting the (defaulted) mort-
gage from a lender. _ -
Even though taxes haven' t been paid in
several years, due to the city's purposeful
delays in seizing title to buildings in tax
arrears, vesting is still sometime off in the
distant future. Even the the best of intentions
and the strongest of associations, tenants are
in a highly vulnerable position; stories
abound of buildings which lost out against
those considerable odds.
Now, however, there's a new optiort avail-
able for those facing this sort of dilemma,
one that is being used effectively on tenants'
behalf and has already rescued six buildings
from the precariousness of abandonment
and limbo.
In the short space of one year, the Com-
munity Service Society's Ownership Trans-
fer Project has helped tenants in those six
buildings obtain both affordable purchase
prices from the owners and building repairs.
The project is currently working with 20
more buildings.
Once state approval is received, the build-
ings will become limited equity low income
tenant cooperatives, affordable even to the
very poor because maintenance and pur-
chase costs are kept within the maximum
amounts paid by welfare.
Moreover, because this intervention
occurs before severe building problems
develop, the deepest housing subsidy
needed in most is a low interest repair loan
from the city. Even with this loan, result-
ing rents have remained affordable.
Many Layers of Assistance
The transfer project's success in many
ways reflects the deepening capabilities of
the city's various public and private non-
profit technical assistance groups. The
project utilizes no less then five of them in
8
addition to the city housing department,
each contributing a necessary piece of the
package: the Community Development
Legal Assistance Center provides direct
legal help as well as assistance to local legal
aid offices; the Pratt Center provides
architectural and .engineering work; the
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
gives tenant management training. The
Urban Coalition provides window replace-
ment through its state contract. The Office
of Evaluation and Compliance of the .
Department of Housing Preservation and
Development kicks in with the keystone to
the whole Qperation in the way of a low
interest (three percent) loan of up to $5,000
per unit under its Article SA loan program.
This provides building-wide repairs which,
ifleft undone, could plunge the aborning co-
ops right down the hole as soon as they take
off.
"This is a working program with two bot-
tom lines: one is commitment from the
tenants, the other is affordability. If we've
got the commitment, then we can make the
numbers work," said project director Al
Drummond who joined CSS after spending
several years trying to salvage troubled
buildings in the north Bronx with the city
Human Rights Commission's Neighbor-
hood Stabilization Program.
The Community Service Society, one of
the city's oldest and most established social
service organizations, has had little trouble
finding those with both eager tenants and
owners willing to negotiate. Because the
project brings with it a full complement of
legal assistance, those purchase negotiations
can be carried out in a way to avoid renewed
tenant/landlord animosity.
Methods of Transfer
There are three methods of making the
transfer. The opening gambit is a suggestion
that the owner donate the building to a tax-
exempt organization (CSS) in return for a
large tax deduction. If a gift is out of the
question, then a bargain sale is proposed for
an amount well below the building's market
value. The owner then sells to the tax-
exempt group, taking a tax deduction for the
difference between the price and the mar-
ket value.
The project has also engineered straight-
out sales at an agreed upon price, however,
in those cases, outside financing has to be
arranged for the tenants.
There's a third option which remains a
theory, although the project has come close
to pull ing it off in one bUilding. That method
would be to buy a defaulted first mortgage
on the property at a disc<"mt
from the lender and then proceed to fore-
close. There's a certain grim satisfaction to
be gained once such a maneuver is success-
fully accomplished notes Howie Banker, a
transfer project staff member who, like
Drummond, wrestled with canny slumlords
in the Bronx for the Neighborhood Stabili-
zation Program. A common practice among
those owners is to pick up an apartment
building mortgage from a bank for as little
as ten cents on the dollar, and then milk the
property until it has nothing left to offer. The
prospect of turning the tables offers a kind
of poetic justice.
Each building transfer has been accom-
panied by a low interest city loan. Without
the major repairs this makes possible, sug-
gests Drummond, tenants would be buying
little more than a pig in a poke. Article SA
loans have been made to five buildings thus
far. Using a larger loan pool , a building in
the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, 2215
Newkirk Avenue, received $825,000 in city
funds loaned at one percent interest, mixed
with $725,000 of private financing from Citi-
bank at market rates. That building was also
the recipient of an innovative tax shelter syn-
dication plan hatched by Barry Mallin of the
Community Development Legal Assistance
Center. By selling the syndication to wealthy
investors, tenants managed to raise $250,000
which reduced their cash needs for the pur-
chase measurably.
City Waives Some Liens, Not All
Hl!fold Shultz is head of the city housing
department's Evaluation and Compliance
unit where Article SA loans originate. He
is a major booster of the ownership trans-
fer program. "From the city's point of view,"
he said recently, "it's really excellent. For
one, its more buildings we don't have to
manage." Shultz added that while the pot of
SA loans for the buildings was not inexhaust-
ible' "it would be difficult to see a situation
where the city wouldn't try to raise funds for
the building repairs."
The city played a role in helping to
originate the transfer program by respond-
ing to a call for proposals from the federal
Health and Human Services agency for
innovative proposals. Awarded the funds,
the $100,000 project was then subcontracted
to the Community Service Society.
To make the buildings more affordable,
the city agrees to waive repair liens it has
on the buildings due to the owner's non-
performance. One building recently pur-
chased by tenants had over $25,000 owed the
city under the Emergency Repair Program.
In another, on West 143rd Street in Harlem,
the repair liens were larger than the taxes
owed. The city wiped out both debts. What
ii refuses to do, however, is to utilize a little
kflown section of the law, Section 606,
which would cancel out the back taxes as
well . Under that law, the Board of Estimate,
upon recommendation of the housing com-
missioner, can waive unpaid property taxes.
Such a move would make more buildings
affordable to their prospective tenant-
owners.
"If we were to do that ," explained Shultz,
"owners would say to us, 'Look, if you had
waived the taxes for us, we could have made
it too.m
What the city does have is a preferential
payback arrangement where linuted eqUity
9
low income co-ops pay only ten percent o(
the back taxes down and the rest spread out
over up to 48 months. This adds on approx-
imately $2 per room in carrying costs for
the tenants.
Where these and other costs have brought
rents above welfare maximums, Section.8
rent certificates have been made available
for the tenants. .
Most expensive are those buildings where
a direct - non bargain - sale is made and out-
side financing is needed. In the case of2J7
Eldridge Street, a Lower East Side tene-
ment , a $75,000 purchase loan at market
rates was made by Citibank. The bank origi-
nally insisted that CSS stand as guarantor
of the loan. "We resisted that approach," said
Drummond. "We said that the building was
a good investment." At Eldridge Street, as
well as at a building on East Sixth Street,
the Consumer-Farmer Foundation made no-
interest loans to the tenants to help the
projects along.
An Anti-Displacement Tool
Already project organizers find them-
selves tangling with speculators who are
eyeing the value of buildings once higher
income tenants can be brought in. Linda
Cohen, an organizer for the transfer project
and longtime Lower East Side housing
activist, is trying currently to outwit a local
entrepreneur who has already made a mark
in real estate speculation in the area. He has
optioned a building which currently has a
7A court-appointed receiver, one which is
also seeking to become a low income co-op.
To counter his speculative appetite, Cohen
and the tenants association are offering some
purchase money and a hefty tax write-off.
They've also suggested that the building,
being well-organized, may prove to be an
indigestible morsel to an owner looking for
rapid tenant turnover.
"We're already running into difficulty in
gentrifying areas," said Cohen. "Tenants are
being forced to be competitive with specu-
lators for their buildings." If that ups the ante
in some cases, it also points out the transfer
program's value. Where owners provide few
services but guard their investment by pay-
ing their taxes, options such as the city's
Tenant Interim Lease program for tax-
foreclosed buildings won't arise. Mechan-
isms for private transfers thus become more
crucial to prevent displacement.
To expand its ability to reach bUildings,
CSS is putting together a $250,000 loan pool
out of its own funds to be lent at four to eight
percent and mixed with higher-priced funds.
This money can provide either purchase or
repair loans. "We're putting together the
pieces ," said Drummond. "One by
one."OT.R.
TAKING TITLE
Striking a Deal
in Harlem
~ R SEVERAL years in the late 1970s,
.I' tenants of 5fJ7 West l40th Street, a 15-
unit building on a sloping hill of Hamilton
Heights in upper Harlem just a stone's throw
from City College, came to expect few
repairs or other aid from their landlord. In
1980 they formed an association to deal with
him. They got little for their trouble.
"We didn't know what we were going to
do," said Lillian Young who had moved to
the building with her family in 1963. One
of the places they went for help was the
Community Law Office, a branch of the
Legal Aid Society. There, working closely
with paralegal Teresa Di!lmond, they
hatched strategies to get control of the build-
ing away from the negligent owner.
Then, in the spring of 1983, the landlord
washed his hands of the building. That was
fine with the tenants who were already effec-
tively managing the building themselves.
But his departure also left open the possi-
bility someone as bad or worse could buy
it and take over.
"Things couldn't have been going b.etter,"
recollected Doug Simmons, a lawyer with
the Community Law Office. "Everyone was
voluntarily paying rent. But we knew the
heating system was on its last legs. Mrs.
Young had kept it going with bubble gum
and a shoestring. The roof was leaking like
a sieve. How could they get the money for
those repairs? There was a real possibility
the whole thing could fall apart."
At one point, said Young, "We were think-
ing about moving. We thought about our lit-
tle children growing up and not being sure
they were safe."
. Since the tenant group seemed to be
organized and effective, thought Simmons
at the time, there ought to be some sort of
homeownership options for them.
When AI Drummond and Linda Cohen
of the Community Service Society's Owner-
T e ~ I S of 5U7 W. 140th SI.
ship Transfer Project came to the Commu-
nity Law Office to describe their work
getting building ownership into the hands of
low income tenants, 5fJ7 West l40th Street
seemed like a natural candidate.
Tenants had many questions about the
project which aimed to get them both con-
trol and a low interest loan. They wondered
what would happen if the owner carne back,
and would it be affordable. But, no matter
the risks, concluded Young, "It couldn't be
worse than it was before."
As an initial step, Cohen brought Bob
Santoriello, an architect from the Pratt Insti-
tute Center, which participates in the trans-
fer project, to do a scope of the needed
repair work. Then, working along with the
CLO, she did a budget with the tenant rents,
folding in the amortization costs of a $5,000
per apartment without a mortgage, meaning
for no substantial purchase price, rents
would range from $175 to $250. The tenants
agreed to try it.
The Owner Consents
Michael Levenson, an attorney with the
firm of Simpson Thacher and Bartlett,
provided pro bono legal help and set about
developing the needed documentation. A
conversation was held with the owner to test
the waters. It was suggested that in exchange
for a tax write-off, he sell the building to
CSS. It turned out a tax deduction wasn't
even needed; the owner was only too happy
to be done with the property and its back
taxes .
"We had to beg him not to run over to our
offices right away with the deed," said Sim-
mons. A $1,300 corporate tax lien was paid
by the owner and, for $100 and an agreement
to assume repayment of $6,200 in back real
estate taxes, the deal was struck.
10
With title and fire insurance and other
costs, the total acquisition cost came to
$11,000. Divided by rooms, it came to a $780
purchase price for the largest, 61h room
apartment, to $540 for 41h room units. This
fit in almost exactly with the $750 welfare
maximum for one-time home purchase.
Meanwhile, the city housing department
moved quickly to provide the building with
a $72,000 loan at three percent interest. This
would go for a new boiler and burner, elec-
trical wiring, the roof and necessary plumb-
ing. The Urban Coalition's state and
federally-funded weatherization program
provided 125 new thermal pane windows at
no cost to the tenants.
Each tenant's rent, under the agreement ,
went up substantially. LaBorda Thrner, who
moved into the building in 1959, saw hers
go from $88.96 to $253 a month. Lillian
Young's rent rose from $106 to $250, and
Juanita Young, no relation but also a 25-year
tenant, saw hers jump to $275 from $106.
"It was something I had to consider," said
LaBorda Thmer. "But I like the neigborhood
and was willing to make sacrifices."
"In some buildings down the hill ," said
Juanita Young, gesturing towards Broadway,
"people are paying $400 to $450 for places
where the ceilings are falling in."
Were the tenants and the project
organizers surprised at the owner's rush to
give them the building?
"What he did was a very lucky break for
us," suggested Doug Simmons. "But he's not
a philanthropist."
"It's his problem, our gain," said Lillian
Young with finality.
"I want to send him a thank you card ," said
LaBorda Thrner, "but I don't know how to put
it. No thanks for the years of bad manage-
ment, but for this, we're grateful."OT.R.
==
MAY 31 - ..JUNE 3,1984
INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOODS
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Corella Scott King. Roger Wilkins
Thursday. May 81
AFTERNOON
Registration
Guided Thurs of Starrett City
Welcome Re<!eptlon on Pool Club DI'Ck
by Starrett City LeaMrshlp ('.oalltlon
FrIday. June 1
MORNING
9:30 Opening Address:
Con'tlaScott King. Presld('ntofMartin Luthl'r King. Jr.
(',enter for Nonvloll'nt Social C:hangl'. Keynotl' Sp!'akl'r
10:U Marlon Morris. &'nator C:harles Mathias. Jr's,
Omce. Introdul-otlon and discussion of Fair Housing Bill.
10:30-12:40 Workshop.'I
Role of Munclpalltlcs
Gentrlncation: PositiVI' and Ncgatlvl' Impacts
Housing Issues of thl' Single Pan'nt
12:lW-2:20 Lun('hron
RoJxort ('. Rosenberg. Gl'nl'ral Managl'r. Slarrett C:lty.
Presentation of Starntt c:lty Story
Roger Wilkins. Institute for Policy Study. Kcynoll'
Speaker
2:30-3:30 PtuJel: Integration Maintenance
Oscar Newman, Institute (or Community Design
Analysis
Paul DavidofT. Queens College
MIchael Sussman. NAACP
James Shanon. Metropolitan Center for Open Com.
munltles
Martin Sloan. National Committee Agalnst DIs-
crimination In Housing
3:40-3:W Workshop6
Impact of Changing Community upon Senior
CItizens
Fair Housing
Public Education In an Integrated Environment
Corporate.Responslblllty
8:00 Dinner Dance at Viscount International Hotel
Keynote Address: Robert Caro
Speakers: Congressman Ed Thwns; Congressman
Charles Schumer; Slate Senator Howard Babbush
Salumay, June 2
MORNING
9:00-10:00 Opening Session: James Farmer. Cushing
Dolbeare Guest Speakers
10:00-12:10 Workshop6
Role ofRellgiousinstitutions In Integrated ('.ommu'
nitles
('.ommunlty Development
Integration: Perceptions and Misconceptions
12:13-1:43 Luncheon
Local talent, entertainment
1:30-2:00 Raul ZyagUlrre. Presldl'nt National ('.ouncll
of La Raza. Guest Speaker
2:00-3:00 PtuJel: Brown VB. Board of Education: Thirty
Years Later
Dr. Kenneth Clark. PrI'sldl'ntClark. Phipps, C:lark
& Harris. Inc.
WHlIam Taylor. Director of (',entl'r for National
Policy Review. Catholic University Law School
3:00-4:00 PtuJel: National Nl'lghbors
4:00-6:00 Starrett City Sports Exhibitions
7:00-9:00 Clrclc Linl' Thur and night In Manhattan
Sunday. June 8
10:00-11:00 Brunch and Closing Program
Dr. John Ryan. Chairperson. Recn'atlon Dl'partnll'nt.
Lehman ('.ollege. C:C:NY
11:00-12:00 National Neighbors Ml'mJxorshlp M('(tiuj(
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FORM
Please Makl' check payabll' to National Neighbors.
Mall to: National Neighbors. Inc . Sulll' 525A. 815-15th Stn'('t, NW. Washington. DC 20005
Enclosed Is my chl'Ck for .' ____ _
Before After
May 1 May 1
0 Members of National Nl'lghbors

85.00 .100.00
0 Nonmembers of National Neighbors 100.00 115.00
0 Individual Dally ('.onfereDl!c Rate 15.00 0 Friday
(Includes workshops. pancls and lunch) 0 Saturday
0 Nonpronl ('.orp. Rate 20.00 0 FrIday
0 Saturday
o Dinner Dance Tlckcts 25.00
For more Information call Slarrctt City ('.ommunlty Relations OMCI' 6422725.
Name ____________________________________________________________________ ___
Agency/Organlzatlon ____________________________ _
Address ____________________________________________________________________ __
Clly _____________________ Statc _____ Zlp _________ __
11 CITY LIMITS/May 1984
MAKING HOUSING A HUMAN RIGHT
LoW' Income Housing in America:
The Growing Crisis ... the Chance lor Change
By Cushing N. Dolbeare
"JjX)R HALF A CENTURY now, low
.I' income housing advocates and activists
have had federal housing programs to sup-
port - and to kick around. Often, we did
more kicking than supporting. For exam-
ple, I was working in Philadelphia at the
time of the Nixon housing moratorium. I
well remember having had few good words
to say for the programs he so suddenly tried
to kill. Only when they had disappeared did
many of us realize how much better than
nothing they had been.
The truth is that our low income hous-
ing programs have always left much to be
desired when measured either against the
enormity of housing need, or their respon-
siveness to the people they housed or the
neighborhoods served. Even so, because
many of us realized that they were the only
alternatives available, an impressive
amount of support for low income hous-
ing programs - from neighborhood groups
and others primarily concerned with the
public interest - has been generated in the
last decade: enough support to hold the
Reagan Administration to less than half the
cutbacks and program changes they
wanted.
But low income people and neighbor-
hoods deserve far better than the small
satisfaction of fighting over the ground we
lose, thus holding onto pieces of it. We
need a vision of where we should be head-
ing: not just where to go, but how to get
there. The membership of the National
Low Income Housing Coalition has, over
the past year, put a considerable amount
of its energy into developing that vision.
Dozens of meetings, involving hundreds of
people, have participated actively in our
effort to develop a "people's housing policy"
which can provide a center for organizing
and advocacy and put housing on the front
burner. The policy, now complete, is just
Since 1'177, for every dollar spenf
on +"e M; (if'l ry, the number Of.
pennies spenT on low income
hQS drofped Vorn a6 f to (f.
want it, but who can't get it because it isn't
there.
The National Low Income Housing Coa-
lition believes that sound, effective pro-
grams to meet the needs of these 7.5 million
households should have the highest priority
in allocating resources for housing. To deal
with their needs, we believe several major
changes in federal policy . must be
adopted. Primary among these are a hous-
ing allowance (or "voucher") program,
under which the groundrules for eligibil-
ity would be set and then vouchers made
available for all who qualified. Such a pro-
gram must be coupled with effective
approaches to provision of affordable hous-
ing, or the cost of the program could
become uncontrollable. We therefore pro-
pose that at least 750,000 units be added
to the permanent stock of affordable units
S? each year.
The rising cost of assisted housing pro-
grams is due in large measure to an inabil-
1'177 1980 ICf81 198J.. {q83
the first step. The second, which will cul-
minate in a national conference and Con-
gressional hearing in late June, is to
develop specific proposals for how to get
there and lay the groundwork for a national
advocacy and organizing effort .
First, however, we should take stock of
where we are.
Two years ago, President Reagan's Com-
mission on Housing stated that there were
over ten million very low income renter
households in this nation. One quarter lived
in subsidized housing. Almost all of the rest
were in substandard housing or paying
more than 25 percent of their income for
shelter, or both. In other words, after
almost half a century of providing housing
assistance for low income people, we are
still at least 7.5 million units short. For
every low income household actually liv-
ing in subsidized housing, there are still
three others who need it, who probably
12
ity to control housing costs. Over the
decade of the 1970s, a decade which saw
the largest increase in assisted housing units
ever, we lost a net of over one million low
rent units (rents below $125 monthly) from
the inventory each year, primarily (but not
exclusively) to rising rents and utility costs.
Using the present 30 percent-of-income-
for-shelter standard of subsidized housing
programs, a household with an income of
$5,000 can "afford" $125 monthly for
shelter. The number of low rent units has
decreased far more rapidly than the num-
ber of low income households (see chart).
In other words, even if problems of qual-
ity, availability, and suitability, location and
accessability didn't exist, in 1980 there were
more than two households with incomes
below $5,000 for every affordable unit in
the inventory.
Even more appalling is the situation of
people at the very bottom of the income
scale. In 1970, there were 5.8 million renter
households with household income under In 1480 , f.or e>le 7 qfforJQ He
$3,000. The median rent paid by these t.I" if , were more
households, including utilities, was about t+-q".fwo house},o Ids with itlcOMeS
$85 a month, or 34 percent of a $3,000 .--_be_l_ow_....:5,..;. O_o_o_d_
o
,..,.'_' Q_rs_. _ _ ____ -,
income, leaving $165 for meeting all their Rtfordqble Hot.lSi nj Units
other needs. By 1980, the number of renter oCl. oCl.
households with incomes below $3,000 had I '170 00 IjW lXl [AI r:a:J WiJ L.cf I 'i. 9
dropped to 2.7 mij,lion - still 10 percent L:-
of all renters. But their median rent had 1980 !@J a 2.7
risen to $179 a month, or 71 percent of a Househords Under 45,000
$3,000 income, meaning that a household
at the top of the income bracket which paid 1'1 70 8.'t
the median rent would have only $71 t..ru li5K5 I!
remaining for all its other needs.
Moreover, in 1980, only 19 percent of Iq 80 \5J m J,(( (,.3
these renter households with incomes l(
below $3,000 lived in subsidized housing. r-_ _ _ _ __ ",c<"" "'-",_',-,8"", "' ,,;, '";;;' " _ __ 1
About half (49 percent) were single-person /<E Y
households, but 51 percent had two or more I"\i l liO" ,& _ J. Million
people and 5 percent were households of !W = H.-Si"j U"its -
five or more. Twenty-nine percent were -o-n-p-u"-b""'li-c-'d:-e:""bt-;-a-n--: d-ta-x-e-....J
s
black; 8 percent were Hispanic. Forty-six have been cut by $5.40 (measured in cons-
percent lived in central cities; 31 percent, tant 1984 dollars, comparing 1981 levels
i!l non-metropolitan areas. with the Administration's 1985 budget).
There is every reason to believe that the A recent Congressional Budget Office
housing plight of poor people has become study found that the combined impact of
far worse since 1980, although reliable tax and benefit changes since 1981 has
statistics on how much worse are not yet resulted in an average loss of $390 per year
available. for households with incomes below $10,000
A Widening Gap
Since 1980, the amount we have commit-
ted for additional subsidized housing for
low income people has dropped by 78 per-
cent, while housing expenditures through
the tax code (primarily homeowner deduc-
tions) have continued to rise unchecked
and, by some estimates, have more than
doubled.
At least three quarters of these tax expen-
ditures go to people in the top 15 percent
of the income distribution. Cutting their tax
subsidies in half would release enough to
pay for entitlement housing allowances and
substantial preservation, rehabilitation and
construction. The 1985 figure would be
more than $20 billion.
This pattern of inequity embedded within
federal housing expenditures must be
addressed. This is not a partisan issue: the
imbalance between tax and direct expen-
ditures for housing is not one that was
decided upon as a matter of national policy.
Instead, it just happened: the result of the
spread of home ownership, the broadening
of the tax base, and rising incomes.
Low income people have borne the brunt
of the reordering of national priorities. For
each dollar cut from low income outlays,
$4.15 has been added to military spending;
and an average gain of $8,Z70 per year for
households with incomes above $80,000. If
we had done nothing else, we could have
left low income program outlays
untouched, if we had been willing to forego
only 10 percent of the tax cuts made.
Moreover, we have not yet seen the
impact of the cuts of the last several years.
The Administration has been able to have
its cake and eat it too: the last three years
have seen the highest level of completions
of assisted housing units that we have ever
had since subsidized housing programs
began almost 50 years ago. The highest
level of reservations for additional assisted
housing came in the last year of the Ford
Administration; the highest levels of hous-
ing starts came under the Carter Adminis-
tration; and - because it takes so long to
move from reservation, to start, to finished
and occupied unit , the highest level of com-
pletions is coming now, under the Reagan
Administration. Neverthel'!ss, the hard
reality is that no Admimstration has ever
proposed programs commensurate with
low income needs.
Turning the Situation Around
I am utterly convinced that we can turn
this situation around over the next five
years if we start talking about the real issue:
how we provide decent , affordable hous-
13
ing for all and break out of the artificial
constraints we have imposed on ourselves
by confining so much of the discussion of
low income housing within our perception
or'what is immediately feasible politically.
The framework for this discussion must
be that housing is a basic human right and
federal government bears basic responsi-
bility for ensuring that every person has
opportunity to obtain decent , affordable,
accessible housing. Housing programs
should be responsive to consumer, tenant,
neighborhood and community needs and
preferences.
The elements of a program to make this
right a reality are:
e An adequately funded, income-based
housing assistance program to enable
low income people to obtain decent
housing at costs they can afford.
e An adequate and affordable supply of
housing to meet the needs of low
income people and maintain the qual-
ity and viability of neighborhoods.
e A major role for community-based,
nonprofit organizations and limited
equity coops, and for home owner-
ship. Tenant representation/control.
eOwnership of housing as a public trust:
responsibility to keep it in decent con-
dition and occupied. Retain and
improve present housing stock.
e End displacement.
eStrengthen fair housing and equal
opportunity requirements and
enforcement.
eTax reform (but don't end incentives
without alternatives) .
eFinancing: seed money, loans, grants,
etc. Central sources.
Taking this framework as a given, the
Coalition has set up eight working groups
to discuss and pursue specific program
approaches. Their proposals will be dis-
cussed for a full day at the Second National
Low Income Housing Conference in Wash-
ington, D.C. on Thesday, June 26, and the
results of these discussions will be pre-
sented to the Housing Subcommittee of the
U.S. House of Representatives at a special
hearing to consider our recommendations
and proposals on Thursday, June 28.
This approach will give us an agenda for
organizing and advocacy for the rest of the
decade. It will work if people take it seri-
ously and participate seriously in the
process - giving us your ideas and, if you
can, by corning to the conference. O
Cushing Dolbeare is the director of the
National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Launching a New Battle
lor Low Income Housing
This is an abridged version of the policy statement adopted by the
National Low Income Housing Coalition in March. 1984. after a
lengthy process of review and comment for Coalition members and
associates. Beginning with a draft version in August. 1983. over
50 groups around the country held special meetings to debate and
discuss the statement. Using the policy statement as a starting point.
the National Low Income Housing Coalition will hold a major con-
ference to establish strategies for winning a comprehensive and
progressive housing policy for the country. The conference will be
held June 24-28. 1984. at Howard University in Washington. D.C
Registration before June 1st is only $30. Contact: NUHC. 323
Eighth St . N.E.. Washington. D.C 20002. (202) 544-2544.
Thanks to Thorn Clark, editor of The Neighborhood Works in
Chicago, for editing and production of this version of the policy
statement.
For copies of the full policy statement from the National
Low Income Housing Coalition, send a self-addressed
envelope with 37C in stamps attached, to: Housing Policy
Statement, City Limits, 424 West 33rd St., New York, NY
10001
Continued from the cover
-
Mofeover, despite the accomplishments of federal houS-
ing programs, which now provide shelter to one renter
household in 10, there is a growing low income housing
crisis. Homelessness is increasing dramatically. Housing
quality, after decades of improvement, has begun to
decline.
Meanwhile, the federal government has all but aban-
doned its historic commitment to "a decent home and a
suitable living environment for every American family" as
low income housing programs have been slashed more
deeply than any other major federal activity. The number
of additional subsidized units provided under all HUD
and Farmers Home Administration programs has dropped
from 321,000 in 198/ to fewer than 154,000 in 1983.
It has long been recognized that there is simply no way
the private sector, unaided and on its own, can provide af-
fordable housing for very low income people. Nor do state
and local governments, without federal aid, have the
resources to meet the housing needs of their low income
residents. Therefore, the primary responsibility for assur-
ing adequate low income housing must rest with the
federal government. This responsibility should be carried
out in ways that are appropriate to the diversity of housing
needs and housing markets, and which elicit the involve-
ment and support of state and local government and a
broad ranKe of actors in the private sector.
In our view, the eight elements of this policy (set forth
below) are all essential. They are not alternatives, and none
can be omitted. We recognize that there are, in addition,
special housing needs which must be addressed: housing for
homeless people, for elderly people, for people with
disabilities, for special groups such as farm workers and In-
dians. We believe that specific approaches to assure that
those people's needs are met should be developed within the
framework of our policy.
14
a k (' : { () 1 n' 3 A S 1 S tan '- e
3n
An adequately funded entitlement, income-based housing
assistance program is essential to enable low income people to
obtain decent housing at costs they can afford. We propose
housing allowances recognizing that they must be coupled
both with increases in the housing supply and with changes in
housing ownership and management, which we address in
other portions of this statement.
No one should have to go hungry or do without other
essentials because their housing costs too much. No one
should have to live in a rural shack or rundown urban unit
because decent housing costs more than they can afford.
The federal government should provide housing assistance
to all households who cannot otherwise afford decent hous-
ing. The assistance should be available to both renters and
owners, in comparable amounts based on need.
The amount should be sufficient to cover the difference
between what the household can afford and the cost, in-
cluding utilities and other housing-related expenses, of decent
housing of the size they need in their chosen housing market
area. The program should be designed both to provide ade-
quate subsidies and to avoid windfalls to landlords. Occupied
housing must meet minimum quality standards.
Explanation. Housing allowances, in and of themselves,
have negligible impact on the supply of decent housing.
Therefore, a housing allowance program available to all
eligible households will heighten the need for low income
housing supply programs.
Nevertheless, housing allowances must be a major ele-
ment in any comprehensive approach to dealing with low
income housing needs. Where the problem in income
alone, as with households occupying standard units at
unaffordable rents, allowances are clearly the answer.
15
The basic problem of very low income households is
that they can't pay what decent housing costs. The vast
majority of households paying more than half their in-
comes for shelter can afford less than $125 per month!
Rough estimates of the cost of a housing allowance pro-
gram such as we propose range from $10 to $20 billion an-
nually. This is about half the cost of housing subsidies pro,.
vided to the wealthy through the tax code, primarily
through the deductibility of mortgage interest afTd proper-
ty taxes from federal income tax. (See Tax Reform,
below.)
? r ( ) 'J 1 1>' c.I ,1 A t [ () t j j b 1 e
) '..1 S 1 '..1 P ply
Federal housing programs should support the preServa-
tion, construction or rehabilitation of an adequate and affor-
dable supply of housing to meet the needs of low-income peo_
ple and to maintain the quality and viability of
neighborhoods. Until low income housing needs are met, at
least 750,000 additional units of assisted housing for low in-
come people should be added to the inventory each year.
Our housing stock must be adequate overall to meet the
growing and changing needs of our people. Housing for low
income people must be supplied in ways that minimize con-
struction, financing, and occupancy costs, while enhancing
neighborhood viability and enlarging housi!lg choice.
No one housing program or approach can adequately deal
with the range and diversity of our housing needs. Current
federal housing supply efforts-including public housing,
Section 8, Farmer's Home Administration rural programs
and the rental development grant program enacted in
1983-should be continued, improved and expanded, while
exploration continues for approaches that will be better
targeted, less costly and more responsive to neighborhood
and resident needs.
To minimize costs and create greater responsiveness,
federal incentives should be provided for reviews of local
construction, fire, housing, zoning and subdivision re-
quirements.
Explanation. Almost half a century of providing subsidiz-
ed housing has produced fewer than four million new or
rehabilitated units of housing restricted to lower income
occupancy under all urban and rural housing programs.
The long-run costs of low income housing can best be
kept down by providing an increasing stock of units under
public, nonprofit, or occupant ownership and thus
decreasing the adverse impact of speculation and inflation
on housing. Thus, low income housing supply programs
are an essential component of an overall policy.
The proposal that at least 750,000 affordable units be
provided each year for low income people sets a specific
goal that will enable low income people to catch up. This
would, over a lO-year period, provide housing for the 7.5
million very-low-income renter households for whom sub-
sidized housing is now unavailable.
Retain and Improve
Present Housing Stock
Our existing housing stock is a valuable national resource
that must not be allowed to deteriorate. The ownership of
housing should be regarded as a public trust, and all owners
should have the responsibility to keep their units occupied
and in decent condition. The federal government has a special
responsibility to see that units which it owns or assists are
maintained in viable condition and retained for low income
occupancy.
Preserving and making best use of our stock of existing
housing is key both to the provision of decent, affordable
housing for low income people and to viable neighborhoods.
The basic responsbility for keeping housing occupied and in
decent condition rests with its owners.
The responsibility to keep housing in decent condition is
already recognized in local housing codes and code enforce-
ment programs. We believe that there should be similar
responsibility to keep housing occupied, provided there are
those who are ready and willing to live in it. This should be a
basic goal of public policy at the federal, state and local
levels. Where these policies fail, we support organized,
responsible squatting efforts to rehabilitate vacant and aban-
doned properties and return them to use.
Explanation. Over the past several years, we have had a
steady loss of low rent units from the housing stock. Much
of this loss has been the direct or indirect result of federal
policies, including the provisions of the tax code that pro-
vide strong incentives for sale or conversion of rental
housing to higher income use. In addition to these private
sector units, we are threatened with the loss of thousands
of units from the subsidized stock through demolition,
sale, conversion or other disposition of projects. This must
be halted.
The least expensive way to provide decent, affordable
housing is to maintain our present housing stock in good
condition, and, where it is already subsidized, to retain it
for low income use. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to
skimp on needed subsidies or assistance for operations,
maintenance and modernization, or to permit low income
units to be demolished or converted to higher income use.
Provide Resident
Control of Housing
Housing is an essential part of the basic fabric of our com-
munities and neighborhoods. To a large degree, our housing
affects the nature of our family and community life. Control
of one's housing provides a stake and a sense of security that
can be provided in no other way. Therefore, federal housing
programs should foster a variety of approaches to resident
control over housing.
Community based, nonprofit organizations and limited
equity cooperatives should have a major role in the provision
of housing. Federal assistance should be provided to these
16
organizations to enabie them to meet the broad range of
housing needs at the neighborhood and community level.
Federal housing programs should be structured to directly
support and assist community-based nonprofit organizations
and limited equity cooperatives to become major housing
providers. This requires access to financing, including sub-
sidies where necessary, and technical assistance and outreach,
particularly to minority communities, and organizational
support and funding.
Tenant participation in decision-making on management
and operations should be required in all assisted housing pro-
grams. This includes funding for tenant organizations and
tenant-elected, voting representatives on boards of housing
authorities and other institutions owning or operating sub-
sidized housing.
Low income households should not be confined solely to
the rental housing stock. New home ownership programs, in
both rural and urban areas, are needed to provide this option.
Housing subsidies covering utilities, taxes, and maintenance,
as well as assistance in down payments, closing costs and low
interest or deferred payment mortgages, should be extended
to home owners. Adequate counseling services should be
available.
Low income families who now own or are buying their
homes should receive affirmative government assistance to
maintain themselves in their homes. Such assistance should
include bilingual information on programs and assistance
available from lenders and the government; emergency mort-
gage and foreclosure relief; property tax relief based in in-
come; assistance with utility costs, repairs, and maintenance;
weatherization and retrofitting.
Explanation. A major thrust of our policy is to create
more responsive institutions and to transform the produc-
tion and management of low Income housing, so that con-
trol is in the hands of residents. This cannot be done over-
night and is best approached by enabling Iimited-equity
cooperatives and nonprofit organizations to build their
capacity.
The recommendations on tenant participation are to
assure control and accountability. They are phrased to
give tenants themselves the choice of how deeply they wish
to be involved in day-to-day management decisions.
End Displacement
Displacement of low-income people by either public or
private action or inaction should be ended. Under no cir-
cumstances should people be forced to leave a neighborhood
where they wish to remain.
When displacement from a particular unit cannot be avoid-
ed, alternative housing should be provided nearby, in the
same block whenever possible. Until this objective is achiev-
ed, federal policies and programs should provide immediate
and adequate protection for people threatened by displace-
ment.
National policy should focus on the prevention of displace-
ment by private as well as public actions. Housing and com-
munity and economic development programs should be
designed and carried out so as to benefit low-income people
and their neighborhoods.
The antidisplacement efforts of neighborhood organiza-
tions, such as community development corporations, com-
munity credit unions, neighborhood planning, and
neighborhood counseling should be aggressively supported
by all levels of government and the private sector.
Condominium conversions should not be allowed to
displace tenants or reduce the stock of low- or moderate-
income housing. This will require the development of new
programs of housing assistance for continued rental or pur-
chase where tenants have limited means.
Low income conversion options, such as limited equity
cooperatives or subsidies for condominium ownership,
should be developed, and adequate technical assistance and
funds for low income purchase and rehabilitation provided.
Explanation. Displacement is a major threat to low in-
come people. Some displacement occurs through direct
public taking. More occurs because of private activity,
generally STImulated by public eJforts such as tax incen-
tives or publicly supported revitalization activities. In
17
other neighborhoods, displacement is caused by neglect
and government inaction, or the writing off of neighbor-
hoods as no longer viable and the withdrawal of services
from them.
It has been estimated that each year in this country,
displacement afflicts some 2.5 million people and 500,000
low rent units are lost.
and Snforce
Fa i r Hous in') Laws
To protect against discrimination in housing, the present
federal fair housing law must be enforced and
strengthened to provide for effective administrative enforce-
ment procedures, and expanded to protect persons with
disabilities and families with children. Housing choices for
low income families must be geographically expanded,
especially in relationship to job opportunities.
Explanation. Despite passage of the fair housing law
almost a generation ago, discrimination is still a fact of life
in housing markets. In large part this is because of the
absence of effective enforcement provisions in the federal
fair housing law. In addition, the law does not now cover
discrimination against families with children or persons
with disabilities. We therefore join in supporting a
stronger federal fair housing law, as proposed by the
Mathias-Kennedy bill.
Reform Federal
Tax Laws
The enormously costly and inefficient housing subsidies
that are now provided through the tax code should be chang-
ed to direct them where they are needed and productive.
Mortgage interest and property tax deductions should be
converted to tax credits, and the amount of these credits
should be capped at a level which will protect low and middle
income home owners while curtailing subsidies to people who
do not need them to obtain affordable housing. The addi-
tional revenue obtained by doing this should be used to meet
low and middle income housing needs.
As soon as adequate supply and financing programs are
put in place, the special tax subsidies and preferences
ed to investors through the tax code should be ended. Unt1l
then, they are needed to supplement the pitifu1iy low level of
federal, state and local housing assistance programs and to
make most of the programs viable. But they should be a
tightly targeted as possible, and the targeting provisions
should be rigorously enforced.
Cooperatives should be eligible for tax subsidies on the
same basis as rental housing. The tax subsidies that are now
provided for syndication of rental housing developments
should be made refundable (payable directly in cash where no
taxes are owed to offset the deductions), so that nonprofit
and community based housing groups can get the full amount
of the federal subsidy, without having to split it with in-
vestors who otherwise have no interest in the project.
Federal tax laws, which now force many investors. in rental
housing to sell or convert, should be amended to remove
these incentives and discourage displacement. Pending such
change, sales to tenants or tenant organizations should not be
subject to discriminatory, differential tax provisions. Where
housing will be S91d to tenants or non profits approved by
tenants, prenegotiated prices should be permitted.
Explanation. Each tax dollar that the federal government
does not receive because of deductions or preferences in
the tax code has just as much impact on the deficit as each
dollar of direct spending. Viewed in this context, most
federal housing expenditures are tax expenditures. Most
middle income home owners count on these subsidies. But
these owners receive less than one-third of the total sub-
sidies.
Meanwhile, low income owners and renters are excluded
from housing assistance, and the bulk of our tax expen-
ditures for housing goes to people at the top of the income
distribution. (The cost of these subsidies is more than four
times the amount appropriated for low income housing
for fIScal 1984.)
1984 housing-related tax expenditures aTe estimated by
the Congressional Budget Office at about $50 billion.
About 75 % of this amount goes to the top 15% of the in-
come distribution. Cutting in half the amount received by
the rich, and leaving the rest unChanged, would increase
federal revenues by enough to cover the cost of all our
other proposals.
There are clear indications that overhaul of federal tax
laws will be a major concern in coming years. Because of
this, and because of the great current importance of tax
provisions to the production and management of housing,
it is critical that housing advocates participate in the pro-
cess, and that tax reforms be adopted which protect the
needs of low and middle income people. while avoiding
windfalls and inefficient subsidies.
Provide the
Financing
Monetary and credit policies should be shaped to provide
reasonable financing costs for housing and limit credit-
related fluctuations which increase the costs, prices, and rents
of all housing. Affordable property insurance and affordable
financing for the purchase, renovation and improvement of
housing should be available in all neighborhoods, without
discrimination of any kind.
'Our nation's housing needs cannot be met if financing is
unavailable or unaffordable. The needed flow of credit into
housing must be maintained, as must institutions capable of
providing it at the community and neighborhood level. Hous-
ing should be protected, through national credit allocation or
other mechanisms, from the impact of federal monetary and
credit policies.
18
Credit institutions, such as savings and loan associations,
established primarily to provide financing for housing,
should not be permitted to abandon this special purpose. We
support the establishment of an explicit housing finance man-
date for thrift institutions to help assure the flow of housing
credit.
Federal policy should encourage a continued supply of
housing loans that do not expose homeowners to excessive in-
terest rate risk or refinancing uncertainty. Consumer
tions for borrowers who obtain adjustable rate mortgages
and continued availability of standard fixed rate mortgages
for those borrowers who desire them should be guaranteed by
legislation.
Federal oversight of the obligation of all depository institu-
tions (savings and loans, savings banks, and commercial
banks) to serve the housing credit needs of their entire com-
munity, including low and moderate income areas, older ur-
ban neighborhoods, rural areas, and minority and female-
headed households, should be strengthened, and the Com-
munity Reinvestment Act should be vigorously enforced.
Beyond these general approaches, aimed at creating a
climate for steady production of unsubsidized housing, a
variety of special mechanisms are needed to support the pro-
quction and rehabilitation of housing for low income people.
We believe new institutions are needed, such as housing trust
funds or a national housing bank, to provide community bas-
ed groups and limited equity cooperatives with financing for
low income housing.
Foreclosure relief should be provided to owners threatened
with loss of their homes for reasons beyond their control as
well as for tenants threatened with displacement because of
foreclosures on owners.
Explanation. Housing has long been particularly
vulnerable to monetary policy and fluctuations in the cost
of credit. The problem of obtaining adequate credit affects
much of the housing market, but is particularly critical to
efforts to provide low income housing.
Federal deregulation has undermined the role of savings
and loan institutions, long the major source of housing
credit, as a primary source of funds for housing. While
these institutions may need added asset flexibility because
of decontrol of interest rates on deposits, there is no
reason to permit them to abandon their role as housing
specialists. A federal housing mandate is required to
enable thrift institutions to resist pressures to expand into
commercial and other short term lendinl{.
Legislation is needed to assure a continuing supply of
fIXed-rate mortgages and to minimize the risks to the con-
sumer of adjustable rate or balloon mortgages. Continued
oversight is also needed to assure that the mandate to serve
community needs is followed in the face of pressures on
financial institutions to orient their services toward upper
income and large depositors.
Even where programs are in place, financing is often an
almost-impossible barrier, particularly to community-
based groups. For this reason, the Coalition is actively ex-
ploring new financing mechanisms, which can provide
needed funds on an affordable basis. 0
LAS., CHAliCE
.0 subscrillte .0 CII.y LII.II.s our curren.
10. r es.
We haven't increased our rates in three years, but now accumulated higher costs are
forcing us to raise them. But there is still time for both current subscribers to renew
(even if your sub is not due to expire soon), and new readers to sign up at our very
low rates. We're always going to be a bargain, but we urge you to send a check now
and save later.
If renewing, please send your check to City Limits with an address label from a copy of the
magazine, or please note the identification number (upper left hand corner of the label) on
your order form.
Individuals and Community Groups:
o $9Ione year (10 Issues) 0 $151two years
o $30 for 5 subsCriptions/one year
Businesses, Foundations, Banks, Government Agencies, & Ubrarlea:
o $25Ione year 0 $4Oitwo years
Inquire about special rates for low Income readers. o Payment enclosed 0 Bill me later
Name ____________________________________________________ _
Addres8 _________________________________________________ __
Make checks payable to City Limits
PAYING
TOO
MUCH
424 West 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001
LOW COST ACCOUNTING
Financial Management Center is pleased to
announce its Low Cost Accounting Program.
Each client will meet at our office with an ac-
countant with extensive non-profit experience.
The cost may be as low as $720 for the year,
billed at $60. per month.
FOR
ACCOUNTING?
Each client may choose from
any of the following services:
Unlimited phone calls to our accountants
For more information about Low Cost Accounting
contact Francie Meth at
,. ~ C FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ~
3f WEST .."h STREET NEW YOItK. NY '0IIJIf
19
to answer any questions.
Set up books.
Prepare quarterly tax filings.
Review I.edger quarterly.
Preparation of W2, W3 forms, 1099
forms.
Fiscal year and preparation of 990, 6750,
1120.
Prepare year end compilation.
m (212) 575-1816
I
I
~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Two New Yorken Who Didn't Quit
New York City lost two lifelong activists last month whose contributions spanned generations and issues. Ruth Sjogren and Martin
Young did not know each other, but both were shaped by the social struggles of the first half of this century, both organized in the trade
uni(Jn movement and both went on to focus their concerns and skills towards the housing needs of low income New lbrkers.
R
UTH SJOGREN,
an activist in her
building's tenant associa-
tion as well as within her
Crown Heights neighbor-
hood, died after a coronary
on April 23rd at the age
of73. Despite her diminu-
tive size of four feet, two
inches, and her ailing
health, Sjogren remained until her death a fierce defendant of
tenant rights and a formidable opponent to landlords who refused
to serve their tenants.
Her determination to keep her large, 124-unit apartment build-
ing at 150 Crown Street from being abandoned led eventually to
a low interest city loan for the building's renovation. It was a strug-
gle to which she rallied all she could, but one which she often
waged alone if no one would stand with her.
Born Ruth Zuckerman in 1911, she worked in sweat shops until
gaining a post as a clerical worker for a large nonprofit charita-
ble organization. Deciding that the open-ended hours the organi-
zation expected of its clerical staff were unfair, Sjogren organized
her fellow workers. Together they brought alarm clocks to work
and set them in their desks, sounding their own starting and finish-
ing bells for the working day. She went on to help build one of
the first office worker locals for the union, District 65.
In the early 1950s she and her husband, Kai Sjogren, moved
to Crown Heights where they remairyed as the neighborhood
underwent a vast racial transformation as landlords actively dis-
invested in their buildings. III with a heart condition and severe
scoliosis, a curvature of the spine developed as a child garment
worker, Sjogren took on the task of organizing their building,
forming the 150 Crown Street Tenants Association which was to
outlast several owners whose poor management left the building
more than half empty and heatless by late 1979.
Sjogren managed to win a vote of confidence and a loan from
the city and a bank consortium. At the time of her death, the build-
ing was fully occupied and had a long waiting list.
Ruth Sjogren's resilience was still almost unimpeded despite
her own continuing health problems and those of her husband who
was almost totally disabled by a stroke and heavily dependent on
his wife for care.
For several years Sjogren served as treasurer of the Crown
Heights Progress Council, a neighborhood improvement group.
She remained a member and an ardent supporter ofthe New York
State Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition.OT.R.
M
ARTIN YOUNG,
who aided low
income cooperatives in
New York City, died at the
age of 80 at his home in the
South Bronx last month.
Young served as secretary
of the Consumer-Farmer
Foundation since its
founding in 1970 up until
his retirement in 1982. The foundation provides interest-free loans
to low income homesteaders trying to salvage abandoned build-
ings across the city. The organization is the successor to a milk
processing and delivery cooperative of the same name where
Young started in the early 1950s, before it was transformed by
President Meyer Parodneck into a loan-making foundation aimed
at housing revitalization in low income neighborhoods.
Born in Russia in 1904, Young emigrated to the U.S. in 1921.
He attended school for a period of time but his real orientation
was towards organizing people to improve the conditions of their
working lives. During the decades of the 1920s and 30s, Martin
Young was a roving organizer for the Young Worker's League
which later became the Young Communist League. He conducted
organizing drives at the Eagle Pencil Company in Jersey City, with
steelworkers in Pittsburgh, among farmers in Minnesota and with
the unemployed in Philadelphia.
In 1928 he married his wife, Fannie, an organizer with the Inter-
national Ladies Garment Workers Union. She became a school
teacher soon after their marriage.
Rejected for military service during World War II because of
his age at the time, 38, Young worked as an aide to New York City's
fiery Transport Workers Union leader, Mike Quill. But
government-sponsored anti-communist harassment during the
post-war era led Quill to purge the TWU of left wingers, and for
a period Young made his living as a salesman selling vacuum
cleaners and advertising to small merchants. He was offered a job
as salesman for Parodneck's milk cooperative, but in 1951, almost
before he could begin, he was arrested under the McCarran
Immigration Act and held for a year at Ellis Island for deportation.
Even while imprisoned he continued to organize those around
him. A cell mate was West Indian Black nationalist writer C.L.R.
James, whose own brand of Marxism was antithetical to Young's.
James wrote later that Young's perseverance on behalf of prisoners'
rights, the sick, the abused and the mentally ill at the facility so
confounded the authorities that the FBI eventually visited Young
and asked him to write a report on how conditions could be
improved.
20
Young's advocacy was so effective that the island's guards and
staff, even the devout anti-communists among them, came to rely
on him for guidance and advice. All respected him, wrote James,
"for the way he conducted himself and his uncompromising stand
on elementary human decency."
Young was eventually freed even though no country had offered
to take him. His release, the government wrote, would be "to their
mutual advantage."
Once free, Young returned to the milk cooperative where FBI
agents continued to harass his employers. But in 1970, when the
co-op's delivery system and processing plant were sold, Young
helped Parodneck create the Consumer-Farmer Foundation. The
organization has made over $1.25 million in loans to groups of
low income homesteaders no other lending institution would con-
sider. Over 3,000 families have received assistance through those
loans.
Martin Young's role at Consumer-Farmer was to visit the
groups, go to the evening meetings and size up not the credit
worthiness, but their determination to see their project through.
His considerable organizing skills served him well, resting on the
warmth and compassion he generated towards those he met.
"Martin was above all an organizer;' said Harry DiRienzo the
current secretary of the foundation. "He believed in people. He
saw a potential in everyone, and acted on it."OT.R.
Put the
community
housing
professionals
to 1Nork for you
21
... a quarterly iournal lor housing activists and community
organizers. The pages of SHEL TERFORCE contain information,
news and analysis that can' t be found in any other housing
publication.
ANALYSIS:
HOW TO:
REPORTING:
PLUS:
Rent Control, Condomania,
Displacement, Government
Program., Hou.ing Court .. .
Building a Tenant Union,
Negotiating with Landlord.,
Winning Rent Control, Pulling
a Rent Strike ...
New8 and Analysis of housing
.truggles around the country
and abroad
Book Review., From the
Gras.roots, Facts and Figure.,
Legal Developments, Film.,
Jobs ...
SUBSCRIPTION: $8.00 for 6 iaaues SAMPLE COPY: $1.50
name ________________ _
addressi ________________ _
city ________ state ____ zip __ _
5HEL TERFORCE, 3 8 0 ~ i n St., Eut Or.nge, N.J . 07018
Richards and Fenniman, Inc., speCialists in
insuring tenant and community groups all over
New York City, has some new and innovative
ways of helping you reach your housing goals.
For over 10 years we've been committed to
helping community housing groups like yours
evaluate their speCial needs and requirements
and get the best insurance financing available
at the best prices.
For more information about how our new
programs can help your group call:
Ingrid Kaminski, Account Executire
(212) 2678080
Richards and Fenniman, Inc.
156 William Street, New York, New York 10038
Your community housing insurance professionals
__ outside the
,<, Lincoln Savings Bank.
A CoauaaDiIy-Labor Alliance
Wages a Corporate Challenge
By Karen Wagner
W
OULD YOU BUY A C.D. or open
an IRA account at The Lincoln Sav-
ings Bank if you knew its Board of Trustees
made decisions hazardous to your commu-
nity's health? Would you deposit your
money at The Lincoln if you knew this
same disregard for community concerns
translates into anti-labor policies in the
workplace?
A far-fetched connection? Not if the
same corporate executives are behind the
irresponsible policies at both the bank and
a particular company. The labor dispute at
Harper & Row, Publishers, is a case in
point. The Assn. of Harper & Row
EmployeeslDistrict 65, UAW - 80 percent
of whom are women - has identified key
corporate links relevant to a Harper & Row
boardroom scheme three years ago which
transformed a local union dispute into a
symbol of a national problem affecting all
working people, especially women. The
union is fighting for the right to decent
,. -
. ,
wages, the right to exist, and its members'
right to a secure future.
In 1981, two Harper & Row Board mem-
bers - Lincoln Savings Bank trustee Dr.
Kenneth Clark, and Macy's Senior Vice
President Gertrude Michelson, serving as
a committee of "outside directors," recom-
mended the termination of the employees'
l8-year-old pension plan. The full board
then acted to convert pension assets into
stock to maintain control of the company.
As retaliation for District 65's lawsuit
challenging this power play, management
adopted a blatantly anti-union attitude. The
240 editorial, production and office
workers at Harper & Row have been forced
to work without a contract since May 1983.
Management demands in the contract talks
that began over a year ago include an "open
shop" clause - underscoring management's
intention to hire non-union workers at will
- starting salaries as low as $150 a week
and a "merit pot" dispensed at manage-
22
ment's whim instead of guaranteed pay
hikes for all. This spells disaster for all
workers in publishing, particularly in view
of the industry'S overwhelmingly female
workforce and its low salaries. Of course,
men who work in industries with high con-
centrations of women "enjoy" low wages
too.
On April 4, District 65 organizer Pat
Slesarchik and Harper & Row Steward
Beth Pearson presented their case before
Senator Howard Metzenbaum's Subcom-
mittee on Labor and Human Resources and
a standing-room-only crowd in Washing-
ton. The subcommittee is attempting to
draft legislation to curb the growing trend
among corporations to raid their employee
pension funds.
Here in New York City, the union is
employing the type of corporate strategy
successfully used against the textile giant ,
J.P. Stevens and Company by the Amalga-
mated Clothing and Textile Workers Union

..
from 1977 to 1980. With the assistance of vestment Unit of the New York City Com-
the Corporate Campaign, Inc., a consult- mission on Human Rights, District 65 has
ing firm, District 65 has now researched learned that Lincoln's Sunnyside, Queens,
and pinpointed corporate and financial branch has $196 million in community
links relevant to its struggle at Harper & deposits, but it returns only UlOOth of one
Row. The union is focusing on the dual role percent - (.01 percent) - of the total mort-
of Dr. Kenneth Clark both at Harper & gage dollar activity to the same commu-
Row, and at The Lincoln where anti- nity. Brooklyn's Bay Ridge branch has $406
neighborhood policies prevail in the form million in deposits, but neighborhood peo-
of investment practices resembling redlin- pIe get the same pitifully thin piece of the
ing. Under the leadership of Clark and his mortgage activity pie. The Flatbush com-
fellow trustees, The Lincoln has maintained munity, which gives Lincoln Savings Bank
an abysmal community reinvestment $100 million in deposits, also gets practi-
record. The bank's arrogance persists in cally nothing in return.
spite of the federal Community Reinvest- Union steward Beth Pearson is bringing
ment Act which says in part: "regulated the issue of Lincoln's investment practices
financial institutions have a continuing and back to her own community as a member
affirmative obligation to help meet the of the Queens branch of Met Council on
credit needs of the communities in which Housing. Other Harper & Row workers,
they are chartered." Campaign activities to who are neighborhood activists, will be
identify the corporate links of other Harper distributing thousands of leaflets at bank
& Row board members, and to protest their branches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
anti-labor stances included leafleting on Members of District 65 along with various
Presidents' Day at Macy's and petitioning community groups plan to examine Lin-
H&R board chair Winthrop Knowlton of coIn's Community Reinvestment Act files
Equitable Life. to determine why the bank is so out of
But let the facts tell the story. Using bank touch with our communities. Lincoln's
and mortgage activity data available for Community Reinvestment Act statement
community organizations through the Rein- should be made available at all branch loca-
tions, and access to these public files -
which indicate a bank's performance record
- is every consumer's right. This informa-
tion is provided by the bank itself, to pro-
vide an accurate picture of how well a bank
meets a community's credit needs. It would
be used by the Comptroller of the Currency
if, for example, The Lincoln applied for
approval of a planned merger. If you'd like
to help the union hold The Lincoln Sav-
ings Bank and the corporate power brokers
at Harper & Row accountable for their dis-
dain toward people where they live and
work, please call District 65 organizer Pat
Slesarchik at 673-5120.
If you would like to learn how to use
readily available public data on banking
investment practices for your own organiz-
ing strategies, call Phyllis Rosenbloom of
the Human Rights Commission at
566-6076.0
Karen J#zgner is a staff organizer for
Corporate Campaign, Inc . a pro-labor
consulting firm in Manhattan, formed by
Ray Rogers and Ed Allen who coordinated
The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile
corporate strategy against J.P.
Stevens.
Low Insurance"
LET US DO A FREE EVAWATION OF
YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
We been providing Iow-cost insurance programs and quality service for HDFC's,
TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT and other NONPROFIT organizations for the post
8 years.
Our Co.eroges Include:
FIRE. LIABILITY. BONDS. DIRECTORS' OFFICERS' LIABILITY
SPECIAL BUILDING PACKAGES
306 FIFTH AVE.
NEW YORK. N.Y. 10001
(212) 279-8300
Ask for: Jean Carbona';
23
ALBANY:
So .. e Badge' Victories
So .. e Tasks Ahead
By Rev. Donald A. Sakano
S
PRING IS THE TIME when we all
revel in the first signs of new life. Well ,
the Congress seems like an eternal winter
at this point. With a huge battle brewing
over tax reform and deficit cutting meas-
ures, even something simple (and popular)
items like the extension of the authority for
states to issue tax exempt bonds for first-
time homebuyers is having trouble getting
passed. The budget process reveals no sign
of thaw either - the only real heat this year
is being generated between the Reagan
Administration's push for the housing
voucher program and the resistance of the
Congress (basically the House Democrats)
in preserving the existing Section 8 Cer-
tificate program. Rub those two sticks
together and you hardly get smoke. Mean-
while, of course, the housing crisis gets
worse, and even the front-running
Presidential candidates have not discovered
the problem.
But, alas, is there some sign of life for
housing from that land of cold and snow
- Albany, New York! Can it be true that
the state legislature is becoming more
responsive to housing needs? While the
first flush of spring should not carry us
away, the newly enacted state budget for fis-
cal year 1984-85 does reveal that there can
be positive results for housing when advo-
cates mUlch, prune and water their elected
officials in the prescribed manner.
Advocacy groups really did their spade
work during the budget process. By the
time the budget was "put to rest" on April I,
a number of real victories were won. The
Neighborhood Preservation Companies
Program was funded at $10.6 million, a $3.1
million increase over the Governor's own
recommendation! The Homeless Housing
and Assistance Program was funded at $20
million only because advocates all over the
state pounded their fists in front of their
legislators, many of whom wanted an actual
cut from last year's $12.5 million.
The fruitfulness of the remainder of the .
legislative session (which will adjourn by
the July 4th weekend at the very latest) is
really directly related to the amount of the
mulching, pruning and watering we all do.
There are a number of issues that will be
coming up including a number of anti-
arson bills, measures to expand and
improve rent and eviction protections, and
legislation that will , at last , remove the
$300,000 funding cap and "self-sufficiency"
language from the Neighborhood Preser-
vation Companies Program.
An area that needs a lot of ground work
is the creation of programs that will
rehabilitate housing for low and moderate
income people. It is really shocking that
this state has not yet produced a viable tool
to assist in upgrading the existing housing
stock and helping neighborhoods turn
abandoned buildings into new housing
resources. With the federal programs in
disarray and poorly funded, an immediate
response to the state's housing needs should
24
be at the top of our state legislature's pri-
ority list.
Actually, there is some hope that a state
low-interest loan program and a housing
trust fund could be enacted this session.
The governor proposed the establishment
of a "housing trust fund" in his State of the
State Address last January. Its stated pur-
pose is to aid the development of low and
moderate income housing - "homestead
and housing rehabilitation projects" - with
funds that would be pulled together through
some dedicated source, that is, a special tax
or fee. The Governor's office anticipated
that $10 million dollars could be put into
the trust for the first year, half of which
would come from a $lOO-per-unit fee on
cooperative and condominium conversions.
The Governor's office has not been clear
as to where the other $5 million would
come from.
Assembly member Pete Grannis, Chair
of the Assembly Housing Committee, has
picked up the Governor's concept for a
housing trust and is fashioning a fascinat-
ing scenario that just might give the meas-
ure the political muscle it needs to win a
'majority of votes in the Assembly and
Senate. Grannis is proposing that this be
the year when the legislature addresses
housing production in a comprehensive
way by producing a "package" with three
essential elements :
1. HOMESTEADING ANI> HOUS-
ING TRUST FUND- Targeted to empty
and partially occupied in rem (municipally
owned) buildings, these funds would pro-
vide a direct grant subsidy to low and
moderate income people who would own
them through an Article XI limited-equity
co-op, or, would have tenant control
through something like a mutual housing
association. Unlike the troubled New York
City Urban Homesteading Program, the
grant would be enough to insure low
income participation but would encourage
groups to do leveraging and supplementary
financing from other sources.
2. HOUSING REVITALIZATION
FUND -This concept is commonly known
as the "state participation loan" program.
Grannis has been sponsoring a bill
(A.4179/S.5624) for the last three years that
would utilize the interest income on the
State of New York Mortgage Agency
(SONYMA) Insurance Fund to blend with
conventional loans to produce below-
market loans for upgrading moderate
income housing.
3. LOANS TO LENDERS carrying the weaker ones (Housing
PROGRAM-Popular with banks and Revitalization Fund and Housing Trust
developers (especially in upstate/suburban Fund).
communities), thi s use of the state's tax- The success of getting this "Trilogy"
exempt bonding authority permits the through Albany is really up to you. The
development of new multi-family housing only real hope of seeing the low and
units where 20 percent of the units are moderate income housing bills passed is a
reserved for households who are at 80 per- massive outpouring of support for the entire
cent of median income for the area. These package. The Loan to Lenders should be
projects, often referred to as "80120's", are opposed if it stands alone, and should only
essentially for middle income people and be supported if it is linked to the flower-
have the full support of the Governor and ing of the Housing Revitalization and
state legislature, especially since they are Housing Trust Funds. If it works, it may
of no real cost to the state. The Governor's mean Spring at last. 0
proposal to expand the bonding authority
of the Housing Finance , Agency
(A.9256/S.7336) for this program would
provide up to 20,000 new units of housing
to the state's stock.
Actually, the Loan to Lenders Program
may become the engine that drives the
other two lower income programs through
the state legislature. The name of the game
in Albany, as it is in Washington, is horse-
trading (remember the IMF/Housing Bill
scenario last November!) Assembly mem-
ber Grannis is putting before the legisla-
ture a set of measures that he expects to
be enacted as one package - the politically
stronger measure (Loans to Lenders) ,
Subscribe to the
Rev. Donald A. Sakano is director of the
Neighborhood Preservation Office of the
New York Archdiocese Catholic charities.
. He writes regularly on housing legislation
for City Limits.
Association of Neighborhood Housing
Developers'
a digest of late breaking information on: Legislative
Developments, Housing, Budget News, Neighborhood
issues, Economic Development and Fundraising.
Each weekly issue also carries a calendar listing
critical hearings, demonstrations, conferences and
workshops.
Please send me a subscriplion 10 The Weekly Reader.
Name
AddresslZip
o Individuals and community groups: $20/1 year.
o Citywide nonprofits, banks, foundations,
government agencies: $35/1 year.
Make check payable 10:
Associalion of Neighborhood Housing Developers.
Send to: Weekly Reader, ANHD, 424 W. 33 St.
New York, NY 10001.
25
MEASURING
GENTRIFICATION'S
IMPACT
The City Tells
Just Part of the
West Side s Story
By Peter Marcuse
F
ACfS ON GENTRIFICATION are
not easy to come by. A new study by
the New York City Planning Department
presents one of the most detailed views of
this phenomenon yet available: Unfortu-
nately, the conclusion the study presents is
hardly borne out by its data. The picture
it paints is almost idyllic: "reinvestment"
has been "a positive influence ... in many
ways," there has been "considerable hous-
ing improvement," it helped to "alleviate
problems of physical deterioration," "com-
mercial areas grew stronger," there is now
"a diverse mix of retail services above the
city average," residents "retained" their
"diverse age, income, and racial/ethnic
characteristics."
There are a few dark spots, however:
there has been "some displacement" but this
"would also have occurred in the absence
of reinvestment." And anyway, "the nega- '
tive consequences of displacement arise
from citywide shortages of low-cost hous-
ing." Everything seems to be going just
fine, and nothing in the gentrification
process itself needs fixing; above all, no
commercial rent control; that would have
"serious negative consequences."
The figures tell a different story. They
are carefully and intelligently assembled,
clearly presented, thoughtfully put into
context. Careful readers can draw their own
conclusions. Since the city has not spelled
out some of the lessons that can be drawn
from the figures, it may be useful to do so
here.
The study deals with two areas, Park
Slope in Brooklyn and the West Side of
Manhattan between 72nd Street and 86th
from Central Park to the Hudson River.
The comments here focus on the West Side
area, although the story is not significantly
different for Park Slope. What do the facts
show?
Who left the area, or c o u l d n ~ get in? The
figures show:
- The number of blacks in the area went
down 24.6 percent;
-The number of Hispanics went down
21.3 percent;
-The proportion of below-poverty-Ievel
families went down from 6.5 to 6.3 percent,
of "Unrelated Individuals" from 16.9 per-
cent to 16.4 percent, while in the city as a
whole and in the borough it went up
sharply.;
-The elderly population went down 19.9
percent;
-The number of SRO units went down
by 4,735 units;
-The number of units substantially
rehabilitated, using the city's J-51 tax break
program, was 13,780, or over 31 percent of
all units in the area. While no figures are
26
provided as to occupants before and after,
it is safe to assume that in most cases lower
income households moved out, rents were
increased, and higher income households
moved in.
Who stayed in the area, or came in? The
figures show:
-The number of those between 25 and
44 went up 31 percent;
-Median family income went up 14.5
percent (in Manhattan as a whole it went
down 9 percent);
- Median income of unrelated individuals
stayed about the same (all dollar figures
have been adjusted for inflation), but the
number of such individuals went up shar-
ply, and about one-third of them shared
apartments - the report does not give the
figure, but it can be estimated from figures
that are given - so that rent-paying abil-
ity of households there at the end of the
period was higher than that of households
there at the beginning of the period.
Who benefited from the change? The
figures show;
- For old law tenements sold in the four
years preceding 1982, the average price
increased by 2'lJ percent. That means the
price more than tripled in five years. These
were buildings where poorer people lived.
For large walk-ups, sales prices increased
by 177 percent.
-The annual turnover rate of residential
buildings in the area, was 17 percent . That
means that , on the average, each year, 17
percent of all buildings in the area were
bought and sold. This rate is much higher
than for Manhattan as a whole, where it
is already pretty substantial (13 percent) .
Increased Value Not Collected in Taxes
Does that mean that the city made
money, in higher taxes, from what was hap-
pening? The answer here includes one of
the most shocking of the statistics in the
Report.
-Assessed values went up 26.3 percent
over the nine-year period ending in 1982-3,
although real estate prices reflected in the
study's sales data show increases of 200 to
over 300 percent in a shorter time period.
In what must be the classic understatement
of the report, the authors comment:
"Changes in assesed value do not fully
reflect changes in market value."!
-The use of 1-51 very likely cost the city
more in tax abatements than it netted in
increased tax collections, even ignoring the
fact that changes in assessment did not cap-
ture changes in value. It is unfortunate,
although the study makes the claim that
reinvestment "increased the tax base" as an
argument for favoring it, that no real cost-
benefit analysis of the true costs to the city
was undertaken.
- Urban renewal above and below the
area was massive, and cost massive public
dollars. Although the report acknowledges
that the "private reinvestment" it finds was
substantially the consequences of public
investment , it draws no conclusions from
the fact.
- More striking, in the Park Slope area
1-51 was not available for most of the
rehabs, because the buildings were under
the size eligibility limit - yet rehab took
place without it. The question of whether
the city's tax abatement and exemptions
were ever necessary is not even asked in
the report.
Was there any city policy in effect that
protected the poor, the elderly, the minority
households?
-Co-op and condominium conversion
restrictions are mentioned as retarding dis-
placement.
-The study states: "The slower increase
in rents in the study area than in Manhat-
tan may be explained by the larger propor-
tion of regulated units on the Upper West
Side."
H gentrification does no better
than abandonment for the
poor, it is no answer to say it
does no wozse. What must be
recognized is that gentrification
is no cure for abandonment;
that cure (in fact) is as bad as
the disease.
Does the report draw the logical conclu-
sion about commercial rent control? No.
"[Commercial rent control] would create an
imbalance between residents' needs and the
services offered . . . It could lead to sub-
stantial deterioration and disinvestment . . .
reduce incentives for owners to improve
their commercial properties . .. hinder the
improvement of retail areas .... " But these
conclusions differ strikingly from the facts
reported, and raise questions about facts
not reported:
-The median commercial rent increase
reported, for the period between 1975 and
1983, was 150 percent. That means more
than half of all stores reporting showed that
their rents in 1983 were 2'h times what they
were eight years earlier! Yet the report says,
dead-pan, "no evidence has been found to
indicate commercial area problems
associated with reinvestment."
All in all, the report provides the data
for a fair and balanced view of what is hap-
pening, even if it does not itself give that
view. Clearly the Upper West Side is
"improving in appearance;" the housing
stock is in better condition; the stores cater
to more prosperous customers; the
property owners, landlords, and specula-
tors have made out very handsomely. But-
Many of the people who were living in
the area in 1970 did not do so well. Most
of them are probably not there any longer
(oddly, the report does not look at mobil-
ity figures) . Hispanics, blacks, the elderly,
the poor - if not for gentrification -
would be there in much more substantial
numbers. The stores no longer cater to
them - in fact, many of the new customers
don't even live on the West Side, as the
report notes in passing.
The single elderly have lost such housing
as the SRO's offered. The middle class (for
whom the report also does not provide fig-
ures) is facing higher and higher rents, and
increasing condominium and cooperative
conversions (3,367 units converted between
27
1973 and 1982). Along Riverside Drive and
West End Avenues, higher income families
are spreading out, taking up more space per
household and decreasing the number of
dwelling units; between Broadway and
Central Park, apartments are being cut up
into studios and one-bedroom units, and the
number of units is going up. The poor
benefit from neither trend.
Indeed, the poor, minorities, the elderly,
many large families, end up worse off than
before.
The report acknowledges the drastic
shortage of housing in the city, and tl)e
difficulty these groups, concededly the ~ i ' n
victims of displacement, will have in find-
ing accommodations elsewhere. But the
argument is lamely made at several points
that these same groups would have been
displaced by disinvestment too. Since they
have to go, so the argument apparently is,'
let them at least go in good cause: the
improvement of the housing and the profits
of their "betters."
But that is, of course, turning the answer
on its head. If gentrification does no bet-
ter than abandonment for the poor, it is no
answer to say it does no worse. Rather,
what must be recognized is that gentrifi-
cation is no cure for abandonment; the cure
is as bad as the disease. They both, in fact,
are part of the same disease: the increas-
ing polarization, segregation, division of
our city along income and ethnic lines (at
least). The Park Slope story, which
deserves a separate look all its own, shows
how the two processes can go on side by
side: to those in the Lower East Side or
East Harlem or several other areas of the
city, that is not news. A comprehensive
approach would seek to control both gen-
trification and abandonment, to the extent
they cause displacement, uproot neighbor-
hoods, destroy communities, divide the
city, waste resources.
Unfortunately, city policy seems to be
trying both to bury what is happening and
to praise it. The new City Planning Depart-
ment report at least unearths the figures;
those who want to go beyond its conclu-
sions can judge for themselves whether
gentrification is harmful or helpful, and to
whom. They will perhaps come to a differ-
ent conclusion as to what the city's role
should be.D
Peter Marc:use is Professor of Urban
Pkmning at Columbia University, was the
chaimum of Community Board Nine's
Housing Comminee in Manhatan and is an
active member of the Planner's Network.
UNKEn
PROMISES:
The Housing Crisis
and How to Meet It
By Tony Schuman
America's Housing Crisis: What is to be
Done? edited by Chester Hartman, Pub-
lished by Routledge & Kegan Paul for the
Institute for Policy Studies (Boston, Mass.,
1983) $9.95
E
VER SINCE THE HOUSING Act of
1949, this country has had an on-
record commitment to decent housing for
all. That pledge was reaffirmed in 1968
when a ten-year goal was set for housing
production. But in 1982, 14 years later and
still six million subsidized units short of
that goal, the Reagan Administration's
Commission on Housing concluded that
"Americans today are the best-housed peo-
ple in history." The commission's response
to the embarrassing inability to meet those
goals was to relieve the government of the
responsibility for setting any future mile-
stones.
Editor Chester Hartman's introduction to
this collection of seven essays by nine of
our foremost progressive housing analysts
1
I
I
I
begins by detailing the measures already
taken by the Reagan Administration to
remove the federal government from
providing housing assistance to those left
out in the cold by the market approach to
housing. These measures, including an end
to direct subsidies for rehabilitation and
new construction, a reduction in the stock
of existing subsidized units, and an increase
in rent payments by tenants in existing sub-
sidized housing, reflect both the Adminis-
tration'S rosy assessment of America's
present state of housing and its ideological
commitment to the magic of the private
market.
The essential aim of this volume of
essays is to document the failures of the
conservative approach to housing, primar-
ily in terms of affordable housing and secu-
rity of tenure, and to counterpose an
alternative approach which argues for
housing as a human right and matter of
basic social justice. While the book breaks
no new ground (indeed, several of these
essays have been previously published else-
where), the collection provides the service
of assembling in one volume a thoughtfui
28
and well-documented analysis of our
present housing needs.
From the editor's handy "housing crisis
in brief' survey to Michael Stone's elabo-
ration of his "shelter poverty" yardstick, a
statistical portrait emerges of the harassed
tenant and the threatened homeowner. The
principal focus is on the nation's 26.5 mil-
lion renter households, more than a third
of whom now pay over a third of their
income in rent. As Cushing Dolbeare's
essay demonstrates, housing availability
continues to be a problem for low income
renters. While the number of very low
income renter households dropped,
between 1970 and 1980, the number of units
they could afford dropped even more
sharply, from 5 million to 1.5 million. And
if the physical condition of housing
improved, in terms of traditional criteria
such as adequate plumbing facilities, there
was nevertheless an increasing concern
voiced over deteriorating neighborhood
conditions (crime, street repair, public
transportation, police services, etc.)
- Parallel 'to this deteriorating picture for
tenants is an ominous future for
homeowners, for whom the gild is off the
lily. Though median income for
homeowners doubled from 1970-1980,
home value tripled. Inflation in land and
construction costs plus soaring mortgage
interest rates have put new home owner-
ship beyond the reach of 90 percent of
American households.
The second aim of this book is to place
the housing question within the economic
structure of capitalism, with primary
emphasis on the commodity nature of
housing production, finance, and distribu-
tion, that is, the approach to housing based
on profit rather than need. Several of the
authors, notably Stone and John Atlas and
Peter Dreier, focus on the basic contradic-
tion between the housing market, with its
inherent pressures to increase the cost of
housing, and the labor market, where the
drive to hold down wages is increasingly
threatened by that rising cost. As Emily
Achtenberg and Peter Marcuse's essay
argues, government's housing role is to
mediate this conflict by aiding capital
accumulation while "legitimizing" the
process with just enough assistance to
preserve social peace and maintain the
dominant economic order.
One of the most valuable aspects of the
book is that it demythologizes some of our
sacred cows, such as the supposed society-
wide cultural preference for individual
home ownership. While the Reagan Admin-
istration attacks direct federal budget hous-
ing subsidies, data assembled by Cushing
Dolbeare and the National Low Income
Housing Coalition demonstrate that the
lion's share of housing subsidies has always
gone to homeowners through income tax
deductions for mortgage interest and
property taxes. Dolbeare states, "Benefits
from the federal housing programs are so
skewed that the total of all the assisted
housing payments ever made under all
HUD-assisted housing programs, from the
inception of public housing in 1937 through
1980, was less than the cost to the federal
government of housing-related tax expen-
ditures in 1980 alone (our emphasis)."
What's worse is that 60 percent of
homeowner deductions went to taxpayers
with incomes in the top 10 percent.
Perhaps most importantly, the book asks,
"what is to be done?" While there is no
"how-to" list of strategies for low income
housing, two articles - Atlas and Dreier's
and Florence Wagman Roisman's - offer
a helpful summary of significant victories
and accomplishments in court cases and
tenant organizing efforts. Also, "America's
Housing Crisis" provides the basis for a
progressive housing program which might
be used by a new national administration
(perhaps over-optimistically imagined in
the near future) committed to the eradica-
tion of poverty and the fulfillment of the
promises made in 1949.
The remedies offered range from Dol-
beare's specific proposals for replacing
homeowner tax deductions with a restricted
tax credit , Stone's macro-economic focus
on cutting the federal deficit and imposing
credit and price controls to Achtenberg and
Marcuse's formulation of "general princi-
ples" based on social ownership, social
production, public financing, neighbor-
hood control , and affirmative action. All
of the authors echo the same themes (in a
manner which produces both useful cross-
referencing of essays and a certain redun-
dancy of argument and statistics): the pro-
vision of housing as a right (an entitlement)
which is affordable, of decent quality,
secure in tenure, in a neighborhood of
choice, and which is responsive to the
needs of beleaguered groups like minori-
ties and female-headed households. The
call is for the de-commodification of hous-
ing by transferring responsibility from pri-
vate market production for profit to the
public sphere.
While many of the proposals may be
considered radical , several authors are
careful to note other capitalist nations,
notably in Western Europe, are far ahead
of us in their commitment to housing as a
matter of right. Although we are referred
to the forthcoming Planners Network
Housing Reader for a more extensive dis-
cussion of specific policies in these coun-
tries, a few statistics demonstrate how we
might progress even within the economic
framework of capitalism: national budget-
ing for housing is from two-to-five times
higher in Western European countries than
in the U.S; England and West Germany
both house over 30 percent of their popu-
lations in public housing, compared to less
than 2 percent here (a figure which jumps
to just over 5 percent if we include other
forms of federally subsidized units plus
farm housing).
If there is substantial agreement as to
what is to be done, the question of how to
do it is less clear. Because the focus of the
book is on housing policy more than hous-
ing organizing, this omission is perhaps
understandable, though disappointing
nonetheless. For this reason, Dolbeare's
brief historical review of the roots of the
present dilemma is welcome, however cur-
sory her remarks. Citing the collapse of the
labor, church, and civil rights coalition
which fought for housing reform in the thir-
ties and forties and the poor public image
of federal low income housing programs,
she looks toward bridging the inner city!
suburban and rural gaps on the basis of
common housing need. Both of these strat-
egies have built-in limitations, however.
The rural population, plus tenants, still
would represent a relatively small minority
voice in national politics ; suburban home-
owners, while facing an increasing finan-
cial crunch, are still resistant to opening
up their own communities to low-cost hous-
ing, as seen in Davidoffs discussion of
inclusionary zoning campaigns, suggesting
an implicit point of friction with potential
tenant allies.
The more compelling strategy, as put for-
ward by Atlas and Dreier among others,
emphasizes the necessity for a coalition
among the presently atomized activist
movements , including neighborhood
groups, consumer and environmental
organizations, welfare rights campaigns,
senior citizens' and women's movements,
the peace and disarmament campaigns,
and, importantly, a resurgent labor
movement .
29
Implicit in this coalition strategy is join-
ing housing organizations to a broader
national movement for democratic reform
in which housing is only one part. One of
the unfortunate aspects of present housing
activism has been the impatient and often
skeptical reception given to housing
analysts like Stone, Achtenberg, and Mar-
cuse by local housing groups. As one
neighborhood leader said to me a few years
back, "When it comes to housing, we're all
socialists. But I have to worry about mak-
ing repairs in twenty buildings for four
hundred families and I don't have time for
that stuff."
In this context, it is probably Atlas and
Dreier's essay on the tenants' movement and
American politics which is most useful for
neighborhood housing groups. Both Atlas
and Dreier have credibility in the day-to-
day battlefront through their work with
organizations such as Shelterforce, New
Jersey Tenants' Organization, and Mass.
Fair Share. They give full and complete
credit to the victories by tenant organiza-
tions around issues such as rent control,
condo conversions, code enforcement, and
arson prevention. But while recognizing
these primarily defensive battles as a neces-
sary starting point, they acknowledge the
limitations of tenant action in the context
of the structural economic and political ori-
gins of the housing crisis.
Although there are occasional lapses into
buzzwords of political rhetoric in the book,
it is remarkably free of technical jargon,
legalese, or agency alphabet soup. It is not
an encyclopedic investigation into the his-
tory of our housing policy but a consistent
and clarion call for change. Through it all
rings the conviction of an alternative vision
for America, based on social and economic
equality. Housing is an ideological and
political question, and until it is addressed
on this basis at the national level, we will
be forever fighting small local battles over
increasingly smaller low and moderate
income housing resources. This book tells
us to raise our sights. 0
Tony Schuman is an architect and plan-
ner and is active in New York Planners
Network.
CO-OP CONFERENCE: The annual con- NATIONAL TENAN1S UNION CON-
ference of the Consumer Cooperative Alli- FERENCE: "Urban Survival in the 80s," at
ance is called this year, "Bringing Co-ops Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Into the Real Wotld." It will be held at RaIna- is what tenant activists from around the
po College, New Jersey, August 14-18. For country will be investigating at the 4th
inforanition on costs, agenda, budget plans Annual National Tenants Union Confer-
and travel, phone (516) 674-4981, or write ence. Many workshops including winning
to Matthew Chachere, Institute Coordina- pro-tenant legislation, electoral strategies,
tor, 24 North Lane, Glen Cove, NY 11542.0 housing alternatives. Call NTU at (201)
CONEY ISLAND SENIORS FES-
TIVAL: June Jubilee
entertainment, films, exhibitions. Jointly
sponsored by the Dime Savings Bank of
New York and Brooklyn Union Gas Com-
pany, along with local Coney Island groups.
10A.M. t04P.M., June 26 at the New York
Aquarium, Boardwalk and West 12th St. 0
WHAT TO 00 ABOUT 'MEGAFIN-
CIALS': Who and what are they? To the
National and Information Center
of Chicago they're Sears Roebuck, Citicorp,
Shearson/American Express and other
major corporations now increasingly in-
volved in financial services with less and
less government regulation. Where will they
invest their dollars and what leverage do
communities have as the old regulations are
tossed aside? That's the subject of an impor-
tant two-day discussion led by the leading
activists in community reinvestment in the
country. June 6-8 in Chicago. Call NTIC
(312) 243-3035.0
>
678-6778.
ARI'ISTS AGAINST EVICfION: While
indoor galleries are sprouting faster than
spring daisies on the streets of the Lower
.East Side, and a steady flow of speculation-
bent landlords precede and follow, there's a
new kind of guerrilla art being practiced in
response by a growing group of artists.
These anti-gentrifiers are known as the
Political Art DocumentationlDistribution
and this month and next are placing their
work on display on street comers around the
neighborhood. The work is imaginative,
ART FOR THE EVICTED
30
playful, frequently satiric and occasional-
ly powerful , such as Michael Anderson's
contrast of a doomed Belted Kingfisher, poi-
soned as it fed along the Hudson, with the
Orchidia restaurant, the neighborhood
eatery which lost its lease last month. Catch
these works on the northeast comer of
Avenue A and 10th Street (dubbed "Down-
town Guggenheim"), or at the "Leona
Helmsley" on the outside of Cristadora
House at Ninth Street and Ave. B, as well
as elsewhere. For information, 673-6408. 0
~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
QUALITY CONTRACTORS interested in
performing heating system repairs, caulking!
weatherstripping, window/door replacement
insulation and other related energy-saving
repairs in multiple and single-family homes in
New York City. Please write:
COALITION MANAGEMENT
TRAINING CO., INC.
99 Hudson St., 12th Fir.
New York, NY 10013
Attn: Debra Beckham
(212) 921-3535
Minority Contractors Encouraged to Apply
Community Organizer
Organize residents and local institutions around
neighborhood concerns relating to overall crime
prevention and youth involvement in crime.
The target neighborhood is the University
Heights section of the Northwest Bronx.
Qualifications: Previous experience working
with grassroots organizing. College degree or
eqUivalent experience. Bi-lingual- Spanish &
English desirable.
Salary: Depends upon experience.
Send resumes to: Northwest Bronx Community
& Clergy Coalition
2721 Webster Avenue
Bronx, New York 10458
ATTN: University Heights
Juvenile Crime Project
31
Housing Litigation Attorneys
The Housing Litigation Bureau of the Department of
Housing Preservation and Development of the City of
New York is currently in the process of hiring staff attor-
neys. Applicants should be admitted to the New York
State Bar and must have at least one year of paid legal
experience subsequent to admission. Housing and/or liti-
gation experience is preferred. Responsibilities include
trial and motion practice in the Housing Part of the Civil
Court, a substantial caseload of housing code enforce-
ment and related actions, research, writing and the draft-
ing of legislation.
Salary: $27,000 plus
Send resumes to: Bruce Kramer, Esq.
125 Church Street
New York, NY 10007
Equal Opportunity Employer
ECONOMIC DEVElDPER
Project Director to continue Economic Revitalization
Program in Astoria, Queens. Self-motivated profes-
sional with B.A. and minimum of two years practical
experience in neighborhood economic development
or related field. Salary, $20,000 to $21,000 plus
benefits. Send resume promptly to:
ty
pe
S8
tt

In
g:
West Astoria CDC.
14-22 27th Avenue
Astoria, New York 11102
ADVANCE GRAPHIC
Great type produced by experienced
typographers on our digitized state-
of-the-art typesetter.
ADVANCE ONLINE
Telecommunications Services:
Send us your data over phone lines
using your word processor or
computer. We also accept IBM PC
compatible disks.
IBM and IBM PC ore registered trademarks 0'
International Business Mochlnes Corp
BROOKLYN
MANHATIAN
TELECOM CENTER
ADVANCE
5. THIRD AVENUE
IROOKLYN NY 11217
B52-7142
594-2636
643-3819
Specllal OHer 'or lIew Readers
Subscrjbe CO
Cjcy Ljmjcs and
rn wtoFjahc
js ne.
HOW TO
FIGHT IT
WITH ANEW
SUBSCRIPTION
TO CITY LIMITS
"Every neighborhood activist in the country
ought to read this book."
Gale Cincotta, Chairperson,
National Peoples Action
Displacement: How to Fight It was written by housing activists and experts Chester Hartman, Dennis Keat-
ing alJd Richard LeGates along with the Legal Services Anti-Displacement Project. Still the most thorough
exploration of the causes of displacement, the book contains a wealth of sources and details on how
tenants and homeowners across the country are resisting displacement pressures. Handsomely illustrated
and excellently written, it's a book you will find yourself returning to constantly for reference and resources.
We Cover The
Other
New
York.

Yes! Please enter my subscription to City Limits!
Individuals and Community Groups:
o $9Ione year (10 Issues) 0 $151two years
o $30 for 5 subscriptions/one year
Businesses, FoundatiOns, Banks, Government AgenCies, & Libraries:
o $25Ione year 0 S401two years
o Plus $3.50 for my copy of Displacement: HaN to Fight It
(Sorry, New Subscribers Only).
o Payment enclosed
Name __________________________________ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

City Limits Magazine, May 1984 Issue

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

City Limits Magazine, May 1984 Issue

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

DEJlABTMZII'I'S

Short Term Notes

Você também pode gostar