BY DENNIS LYNCH | Mayor Bill de Blasio announced earlier this month that the city plans to require housing developers to set aside half of all apartments originally reserved for low-income neighborhood residents (under the 421-a Affordable Housing Program) for homeless individuals instead.
Members of Community Board 4 (CB4), where developers have set aside 370 units for local preference, oppose the plan. The board recently said in a letter to the city that it does not factor in the long-term needs of the formerly homeless and takes away housing from those locals who need it to stay in their neighborhoods.
The 421-a program provides developers massive tax breaks to incorporate so-called affordable housing into their developments, and half of those must be set aside for people living within the surrounding community. Now 185 of those will be reserved for individuals and families from the community who are currently residing in emergency shelters, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).
Many locals eligible for community preference housing have waited years on lists to be considered for apartments in those buildings, and now they’ll be bumped down for homeless referrals, said CB4 Chair Delores Rubin.
“It can displace those who would have counted on having this housing. You also have to think of these managers — they have a process in place for determining how people who come in through the lottery can pay for this apartment, but there is no process in place to handle these individuals,” Rubin said.
Many people are already interviewing with developers for the available 421-a units in CB4, and the board believes it would be unfair to take any units away from those currently available. The plan seems “hasty,” and there was no community engagement in the development process, which has made it a hard pill to swallow for locals, Rubin added.
The board said in its letter that any units set aside for homeless families and individuals should not come from the community preference pool, and that social services for those individuals and subsidies for developers be integrated into future housing projects from the start.
Members of the board worried that the formerly homeless referred for housing won’t have access to the services they need, but HPD contends this won’t be an issue, because the city will pre-screen individuals to ensure they are not eligible for on-site supportive services and meet income requirements for the affordable units.
Additionally, those considered for the preferential housing would be employed, and former residents of the community who have recently lost their homes, HPD Commissioner Vicki Been told the New York Times earlier this month. Any homeless family or individual who currently lives in a shelter in the district is also eligible for the housing. In many cases the “working poor” prospective tenants are not much different than the locals who already qualify for 421-a housing under existing community preference guidelines, a spokesperson for the agency said.
Those people who qualify under the new rules will be eligible for a number of rental subsidy programs to help them get on their feet, including subsidies through Section 8, Living In Communities (LINC) 1-6, CITYFEPS, or the Special Exit and Prevention Supplement (SEPS) program, some of which are already accepted by landlords in 421-a buildings. Some of those subsidies expire — LINC for example lasts for five years — which the community board said was problematic.
“Providing homeless tenants with short-term subsidies limits the possibility for long-term success,” read the letter from the board to the city. Rubin added that there was concern among board members that these tenants would only be “hidden away” for a few years before they would again be put at risk of becoming homeless.
HPD said each program has different eligibility rules and there was no way to speculate on how long it would take for subsidies to expire.
The city committed to providing 15,000 new supportive housing units under Mayor de Blasio and so far have provided 4,500, according to HPD. The homeless population has grown from 51,000 to 60,000 so far during Mayor de Blasio’s time in office. That, coupled with the often fierce opposition among locals to the city’s strategy of renting out rooms in hotels to homeless individuals and converting some hotels into homeless shelters, have made him the target of fierce criticism. De Blasio, however, said in January that the homeless problem has been growing for years and criticized his predecessors for not paying it any attention.
