Today, the Manhattan Assembly delegation issued a report, NYCHA Crisis: Finding Tenant Solutions, that details the living conditions of several NYCHA developments across Manhattan, and urges New York State to commit substantial and consistent funding for NYCHA’s most urgent capital needs.
“Written prior to the COVID-19 State of Emergency, the pandemic further highlights that, for over 400,000 NYCHA tenants in substandard housing, the public housing crisis is a public health crisis,” said Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried, the dean and Chair of the Manhattan Assembly Delegation. “New York State can act now with serious funding commitments and lead the way towards the restoration of NYCHA.”
Assembly Health
Committee Hearing on Youth Tackle Football
Should children 12 and
under be playing tackle football? On
October 29, the Assembly Health Committee, which I chair, held a hearing in
Lower Manhattan on the health impacts of that.
There is a bill in the Assembly (A. 2692) to outlaw organized team
tackle football for children 12 and under.
The bill is sponsored by Assembly Member Michael Benedetto of the Bronx,
and I am a co-sponsor.
Following many news media
reports of cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) disproportionately
affecting professional football players and former players, many families,
physicians and researchers have been raising concerns regarding the health
effects of tackle football on children. Repeated
concussions can cause serious lifelong brain damage. The damage is greatest when players start
when their young brains are developing, and even more when play continues for
years.
Working Group Formed
to Consider Plans for Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses
Like almost all New York City
Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments, Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses
urgently need extensive and expensive work.
Because of concerns about the City’s
proposal for responding to this need, all of Chelsea’s local elected officials,
including me, called on Mayor de Blasio’s administration to put a hold on its
plans and participate in a working group with the elected officials, tenant
representatives, Community Board 4, and other advocates. We want real input from the tenants and the
community. We also stated that we will
not allow any plan that does not protect and preserve the Fulton Houses
community, with no displacement of residents from Fulton Houses or any
reduction of tenant rights or affordability.
The City agreed to put a hold on its
plans and join the working group, which is now looking at all the options for
organizing and funding the needed work.
Earlier this year, the City was developing
a plan to generate badly needed revenue to repair these public housing
developments in Chelsea. At Fulton
Houses, the City is proposing new construction, replacing some buildings,
repairs, and installing new private-sector management, to raise the funds
necessary to renovate, repair, and improve conditions at Fulton Houses and at
the nearby Elliott-Chelsea Houses. NYCHA
estimates that meeting the combined capital needs of the two developments would
cost approximately $344 million.
NYCHA’s draft plan for Fulton
entails constructing three new buildings in the complex, with tenants in two
existing buildings then moving into the first of the new buildings. The City would then replace two older,
low-rise buildings with two big new buildings.
Those buildings would be a mix of market-rate and affordable
apartments. The new income generated
would be dedicated to repairs and renovation of Fulton Houses and
Elliott-Chelsea Houses.
Under the City’s proposal, Fulton
and Chelsea-Elliott Houses would then enter the federal “Rental Assistance
Demonstration” (RAD) program, which uses Section 8 vouchers instead of
traditional public housing subsidies, and management of the complex would be
turned over to a private sector entity.
The working group held its first two
meetings in October. There will be more
meetings and public forums. We expect
the Working Group to present its proposals by year’s end.
I have serious concerns about the
City’s proposal. I am always wary of
privatization.
To raise critically needed funds for
the MTA’s capital plan, NYCHA and other programs, I am co-sponsoring several
proposals in Albany. These include
re-instating the stock transfer tax and raising the state income tax rate on
tax brackets above $1 million a year. I
also support proposals to increase corporate income taxes and to enact a
surcharge tax on so-called “pied-a-terre” luxury apartments that are not the
owner’s primary residence.
Enforcing the New
Law Against Floating Billboards
This past legislative session,
Senator Brad Hoylman and I sponsored legislation in Albany to prohibit boats
with illuminated billboards from operating in the navigable waters of the State,
such as the Hudson River. Governor Cuomo
signed our bill into law in August.
Despite the fact that it took effect immediately, Ballyhoo Media
continued to operate its “floating billboards” in New York waterways
in flagrant violation of the new law.
In September, Senator Hoylman and I
wrote to Mayor de Blasio asking that the City provide a detailed plan of how it
would enforce the law. Soon after, the
City announced that it had reached an agreement with Ballyhoo that bans it from
operating its floating billboards on any New York state waterway. The company agreed to pay $100,000 to the
City, and has since relocated its billboard boat to Florida. Now President Trump can enjoy them.
Tues., Nov. 12:
Upper Manhattan Town Hall on New York Health Act
At 6:30 p.m. on
Tuesday, November 12, I will be speaking at a Town Hall hosted by NYS Senators
Robert Jackson, on the New York Health Act, my bill that would provide
universal health care coverage in New York state by establishing an “improved
Medicare for all” single-payer health care program. The Town Hall follows up on last month’s
joint hearing on the NY Health Act, held in the Bronx by the Assembly and
Senate Health Committees.
NEW
YORK HEALTH ACT: I
co-chaired a joint hearing of the Assembly and Senate Health Committee on the
New York Health Act in the Bronx in October.
The Town Hall, which
is free and open to the public, will be at the YM/YWHA of Washington Heights
and Inwood at 54 Nagle Avenue (take the A train to 190th Street). Please RSVP by going online to
SenatorRJackson.eventbrite.com.
Wed., Nov. 20: NYCHA
Town Hall Meeting
On the evening of Wednesday,
November 20, the Manhattan delegation of the New York State Assembly is hosting
a Town Hall meeting on New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing. It is free and open to the public. People will have a chance to voice their
concerns about NYCHA developments, hear from NYCHA officials on maintenance and
re-pairs, and learn how to connect with tenant lawyers.
The Town Hall meeting will be at
6:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 20 at the Boys and Girls Republic at 888 East
6th Street between Avenue D and the FDR Drive service road.
Census Job
Opportunities
Every ten years the United States
Census Bureau takes a count of every person living in the United States. It’s required by the Constitution. Getting accurate Census data in New York is
vital for ensuring that we receive our fair share of $650 billion in federal
funds for public education, public housing, infrastructure, and more — as well
as the number of seats we have in the U.S. House of Representatives. It also determines how much representation
each community has in the State Legislature and the city council.
It’s critical that every New Yorker
be counted in the 2020 Census. In the
last Census in 2010, New York City’s self-response rate was less than 62%,
significantly lower than the national 76% response rate.
There
are many jobs now available for workers to conduct the 2020 Census. To inquire about Field Representative Testing
in New York, please send an email with your name, zip code, and phone number(s)
to new.york.recruit@census.gov, or call 212-584-3495. For other questions or inquiries about Census
opportunities outside New York City, please call the New York Regional Census
Center at 212-882-7100.
Deadline to Register
to Vote for Presidential Primary
Under a new law passed by the
Legislature, you can now change your party enrollment closer to next year’s New
York presidential primary. February 14 –
Valentine’s Day – is the deadline to re-register to change which political
party you are enrolled in, or to enroll with a party for the first time, in
time to vote in New York’s April 28 presidential primary. If you are already registered at your current
address and enrolled with the party of your choice, you do not need to do
anything.
To make a change, send a Voter
Registration Form with your new choice to the board of elections office for
your borough or county. You can learn
more about registering or changing your party affiliation by going online: https://www.elections.ny.gov/VotingRegister.html.
If you want to print out and mail
your voter registration form, the address for the New York County (Manhattan
& Roosevelt Island) Board of Elections is:
New York County Board of Elections
200 Varick Street – 10th Floor
New York, NY 10014
EPL/Environmental
Advocates Name Me an “Environmental Champion”
In October, EPL/Environmental
Advocates, the leading statewide organization that has advocated for stronger
environmental protections since 1969, released its 2019 Environmental
Scorecard, which grades all state legislators’ voting records on environmental
legislation.
I was proud to earn a 100% score
this year, and EPL/Environmental Advocates named me an “Environmental
Champion.” I am honored by this
recognition, and will continue working hard to earn the trust and support of
New Yorkers who believe that helping to protect and preserve our environment
remains one of government’s most critical functions.
In its “Scorecard,” which you can
find online at www.eplscorecard.org, EPL/Environmental Advocates rated
legislators on their votes on several critical bills that have now been signed
into law by Governor Cuomo. These
include the Climate Leadership and Protection Act; congestion pricing in
Manhattan; allocating $500 million for water infra-structure; a ban on
single-use plastic bags; and a bill to deny offshore drilling companies access
to state marine and coastal district lands.
Other
environmental legislation that has passed both houses of the Legislature and is
awaiting the Governor’s signature include bill to ban the dangerous pesticide
chlorpyrifos; bar the sale in New York of personal care products that contain
the toxic chemical 1,4-dioxane; and The Child Safe Products Act, which requires
manufacturers to list toxic chemicals that are present in their products, as
well as begin the process of phasing them out.
Testifying on behalf of tenants’ right to counsel before the NYC Human Resources Agency, November 15, 2018
Testimony by Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried Before the NYC Human Resources Administration’s Office of Civil Justice
Public Hearing on the Universal Access to Legal Services Program for Tenants Facing Eviction
Thursday, November 15, 2018
My name is Richard N. Gottfried. I represent the 75th Assembly District in Manhattan, which includes the neighborhoods of Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, and part of the Upper West Side and Murray Hill. Thank you for this opportunity to testify about the Right to Counsel program.
Right to Counsel (RTC) or Universal Access to Legal Counsel (UATC) in Housing Court became a New York City law in 2017. With this law, some, but not all, low-income tenants have the right to have a lawyer provided to them if they are sued in Housing Court by their landlord. Before Right to Counsel was enacted, landlords tried to evict over 230,000 tenants a year. Most of those tenants were low-income people, and predominantly people of color and immigrants.
The program has quickly made a real difference in the lives of many people. Since the implementation of Right to Counsel, evictions are down 24 percent from 2014; filings are down 10% from 2014; and shelter entries from evictions are down. The program contributes to preserving affordable housing and stable communities by keeping people out of court and out of homeless shelters. But there are too many people who cannot access the program because of the income level requirement. The next step is to expand and strengthen the successful Right to Counsel program.
City Council Members Mark Levine, Vanessa Gibson and Diana Ayala have introduced legislation, Intro 1104-2018, to increase the income threshold of 200% of the federal poverty level to 400% and to expand the types of cases covered by RTC to include administrative hearings such as those in HPD, and the NYS HCR (Homes and Community Renewal) agency, as well as for cases that are appealed and a portion that land in state Supreme Court. These would be important steps ahead.
More must be done to increase outreach and tenant awareness. The City needs to finance efforts by various community organizations to educate tenants about when they are entitled to legal representation.
It continues to be a challenge to get the word out to tenants that the right to counsel in Housing Court exists and how to find out if they are eligible and where to go. As part of the RTC implementation, New York City’s Tenant Support Unit knocks on doors to advise tenants at risk of eviction that they are entitled to a lawyer. More tenant outreach and education is needed and can best be provided by neighborhood-based groups with a history of tenant organizing, as well as the Tenant Support Unit. Increased funding to neighborhood-based groups already doing education and outreach would contribute to the effectiveness of the right to counsel program.
Several public awareness efforts, if funded by the City, would help tenants learn of the new right. Efforts such as subway ads, tele-town halls, mass mailings, email and social media, and a hotline are all possible ways to increase access to the program
After only a year, Right to Counsel has proven its effectiveness. It should be expanded and strengthened.
BY ALEX ELLEFSON | Plans to discuss the use of an infamous Flatiron hotel as a months-long refuge for homeless single men and women awaiting long-term housing stalled last week when a conference room was unable to accommodate scores of irate residents intent on voicing their objections.
Neighbors packed shoulder-to-shoulder — with a line of people out into the hall — to hear a presentation on the proposed shelter at the Community Board 5 (CB5) Budget, Education & City Services Committee meeting.
The sale of 404 W. 20th St. for $7.4 million set in motion the current dispute over proposed changes to the historic house. Photo by Sean Egan.
BY SEAN EGAN | Who can truly lay claim to pride of ownership, when it comes to what is widely regarded as the oldest house in Chelsea: those who say its structural and historical integrity must be preserved, or the person who bought it for $7.4 million and wants to make extensive renovations?
Built in 1830 and purchased in 2015 by British banker Ajoy Veer Kapoor, the home at 404 W. 20th St. (btw. Ninth & 10th Aves.) sits within the Cushman Row of the Chelsea Historic District, making any attempts at alteration subject to review by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). The renovations, which would significantly increase the size of the house, would require most of the original house to be destroyed in the process, as the new owner attests that the house is structurally unsound.
BY SEAN EGAN | A set of residential buildings in the middle of W. 38th St. became an unassuming battle site in preserving the character of Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, as well as a telling example of how vigilance and activism can yield results.
The buildings — two of them standing four stories tall and one at three stories — were acquired by an entity controlled by Peter Poon, who bought out the tenants living in the building in order to demolish the complex. Poon hails from Peter F. Poon Architects, known for developing budget hotels — and applied to do just that. His Dec. 2014 application indicates that he planned a 22-floor hotel on the W. 38th St. site. Furthermore, another associated application to the Department of Buildings (DOB) indicated that the current W. 38th St. buildings were single room occupancies (SROs), which they have never been. The contractors (H&O Associates) also claimed that the proposed construction would not increase or decrease the number of residences, nor would it alter their layouts — clearly at odds with the proposed demolition.
BY EILEEN STUKANE | Four months ago, families were living normally, as they had for years, in their rent-regulated apartments at 264 and 266 W. 25th St. Today, the five-story, 17-apartment building at 264 has been transformed into a demolition and construction site, with 10 of those apartments gutted and under renovation. At 266, the five-story building next door, residents are also vacating.
The complaints to the city from 292 Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, read like dispatches from chaos.
“They have huge piles of dust and concrete, which is getting tenants sick,” one said.
“Caller’s apartment is vibrating, and he is afraid his ceiling will drop,” said another.
When New York property owners plan to do work on their buildings, they are required to tell the city if people are living there and, if so, to submit plans to protect them from dust, blocked exits and other perils. But at 292 Bedford and numerous other occupied work sites, the city allowed work to proceed even though owners or their agents asserted the buildings were empty, claims that could be easily disproved through public databases, or by simply pressing the buzzers outside the front doors.
City officials acknowledge they have no system to verify whether buildings undergoing construction are unoccupied, a blind spot that tenants and their advocates argue has helped promote a climate of lawlessness, particularly for rent-stabilized residents.
The city is is collecting proposals for a mixed-use development with 100 percent affordable housing on the site of a former slaughterhouse in Hell’s Kitchen.
The property is 24,687 square feet and was once home to New York Butcher’s Dressed Meat Company, which operated a slaughterhouse at the site. Currently the city is using it as a surface parking lot for the New York Police Department.
New York state and city elected officials are responding to the activism of the newly-created Community & Residents Protection Working Group (CRP), which this year has been alerting Chelsea residents to widespread building fraud that has previously gone unnoticed.
At meetings with representatives of city agencies and Community Board 4 (CB4), the CRP began to flush out owners, landlords and developers who received NYC Department of Buildings (DOB) permits for construction by routinely lying on their DOB Form PW1, section 26 applications, stating that occupied buildings were unoccupied — a statement which freed them from instituting required Tenant Protection Plans, and making conditions unlivable in order to pressure occupants to leave.
The CRP revealed that 80 occupied buildings in Chelsea were construction sites permitted through falsified applications. Seeing legal permits posted, residents of those buildings did not think they had any recourse. As research deepened, it also became apparent that this fraudulent situation is a citywide concern. The CRP’s findings ignited a call for action, which shows strong signs of being heard — especially by the DOB, which is receiving word from community leaders, and has its own reforms in the works. Although no specific corrective measures are in place, the drive for change has begun.
On June 30, 2015 five elected officials — Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, NYC Councilmember Corey Johnson, NY State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, NY State Senator Brad Hoylman and U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler — signed a letter addressed to DOB Commissioner Richard (Rick) Chandler, requesting a meeting with him and his appropriate staff to discuss the CRP’s findings and to “find a satisfactory way for the agencies to work together to stop the harassment and dangerous conditions facing many tenants today.”
I represent Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, and parts of Murray Hill and the Lincoln Center area in the State Assembly. I have been chair of the Assembly Health Committee since 1987. During off hours, I like to write Chinese calligraphy.
