Mayoral Hopefuls Acknowledge Housing Crisis
by Kenny Schaeffer

In a two-hour forum in a Harlem church on Sept. 12, five men who hope to succeed Rudy Giuliani as mayor when he leaves City Hall next year presented their views on the causes and solutions of New York City’s housing crisis.

Moderator Brian Lehrer of WNYC public radio noted that it marked the beginning of the 2001 mayoral race, which, he hoped, would focus more on issues than personalities. While the candidates sounded many of the same themes, some important differences emerged.

Public Advocate Mark Green pointed out that the Giuliani administration has not even acknowledged that a housing crisis exists, adding "questions that never get asked do not get answered." Green, along with Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and City Council speaker Peter Vallone, defended rent and eviction protections as a necessary response to the housing crisis, and almost every speaker mentioned that one in four New Yorkers--more than 500,000 people--are forced to pay more than 50% of their income for rent, far above the federal hardship level of 30%. Green pointed out that two-thirds of low-income families pay two-thirds of their income for rent.

Former Councilmember and 1997 mayoral candidate Sal Albanese cited the city’s new campaign-finance laws--which match every dollar of grass-roots contributions with $4 in public funds--as offering a more level playing field than in previous years. He said that previous campaign-finance practices contributed to the housing crisis by giving real-estate interests an improper influence over public policy. Both the Council, in 1994, and the state Legislature, in 1993 and 1997, weakened rent and eviction protections after many members got substantial donations from landlord groups.

City Comptroller Alan Hevesi attributed the failure of city government to respond to the worsening housing crisis to a lack of central planning and to the absence of a "strong political constituency" for affordable housing to "make it clear" to elected officials that the housing crisis must be addressed and to "make it painful to those who don’t listen."

Vallone vowed to spend $1 billion in his first year of office to create 20,000 new affordable units, but Hevesi replied that this promise was unrealistic because it was impossible to predict whether the city will still enjoy a large budget surplus in two years or, as current figures project, might actually suffer a deficit. Vallone claimed that under his speakership, the Council had made housing a priority and claimed that it was prevented from doing more by the 1971 "Urstadt law," which prohibits New York City from enacting more restrictive rent regulations than the state has.

Vallone did not explain why he had actually weakened rent regulations in 1994 by opening the door for vacancy decontrol of apartments reaching $2,000 a month rent, or why he continues to block a vote on a resolution to demand repeal of the Urstadt law, most recently when the Council voted to renew the existing rent laws this past spring.

Ferrer declared that housing is a "legitimate investment" in a strong city and called for "new and bold thinking." Yet he cited the Koch administration as a model, as did Green and Hevesi. Ferrer claimed that 64,000 new units of housing had been created in the Bronx during his 11 years as borough president, but a question from the audience indicated that much of it did not have income or rent limits and was therefore not affordable for low-income families. Nor did Ferrer relate this to the fact that, citywide, the total number of apartments renting for under $500 a month has declined from over 400,000 to about 200,000 since 1993.

Green and Ferrer both expressed support for the city’s controversial divestment of tens of thousands of units which had come under city "in rem" ownership after being taken from delinquent landlords. These buildings house many of the lowest-income New Yorkers, yet, particularly under the Koch and Giuliani administrations, have been transferred to speculators with huge financial incentives to displace the existing tenants in order to raise rents, under programs such as the Private Owners Management Program and Neighborhood En- trepreneurs Program.

Albanese, who led the successful fight for a "living wage" requirement for city government contracts while in the Council in 1994, pointed to rising income inequality in the city as a major cause of the housing-affordability crisis. He and Hevesi both cited the need for higher paying jobs. Hevesi also called for investing pension funds in the creation of affordable housing, and announced that he is working with state Comptroller Carl McCall to expand this option, while Albanese called for creating 10,000 units of new affordable housing a year with an annual capital investments of $700 million. He recalled that when his family came to New York City as immigrants in 1959, his mother was able to find a $30 a month apartment in Park Slope and support a family of five as a garment worker.

Hevesi praised so-called "80/20" programs, which advocates have criticized because they allocate public land and scarce housing dollars to create projects where 80% of the units are market-rate luxury apartments and only 20% are reserved for middle, moderate or (occasionally) low-income tenants.

In the 11 months before the Democratic primary next Sept. 11, which will probably determine New York City’s next mayor, Met Council will work to ensure that housing remains at the forefront of the campaign, and that the candidates seeking our votes are confronted with the opportunity to address our shameful housing crisis and not repeat the failed policies of the past.