Page 24 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

The fight for Justice in housing Court: from the Bronx to a right to Counsel for All New York City Tenants
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susanna Blankley1
Introduction
We have a real housing crisis in New York City . Developers are clamoring to build luxury condos and international investors are buying up properties .2 Meanwhile more than half of New York City renters pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent, and many households pay more than 50 percent of their income .3 In February 2016, more than 60,000 individuals were in our city’s shelter system each night .4
In May of 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who ran on a campaign to end the housing and homelessness crisis, released his housing plan, laying out the goal to build and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years .5 Of the 200,000 units, the Mayor’s goal is to construct 80,000 new units of affordable housing . To build new housing in New York, you either need to build taller buildings in places where you are allowed to build housing, or find land where you aren’t currently allowed to build housing and get the laws that govern the use of that land changed . Either way, you need to go through a rezoning process . Upon releasing his plan, the Mayor also announced his plans to rezone 15 neighborhoods across New York City, with the explicit goal of changing the land use laws to facilitate the construction of new residential housing .
In New York City, the most lucrative form of real estate you can own is residential housing . Changing the use of land changes the value of land . Changing the value of land, changes landlords’ and developers’ behavior . Recognizing that the rezoning will increase land values and speculation as well as harassment of existing tenants, the de Blasio administration has dedicated tens of millions of dollars to increase the number of lawyers available to represent tenants in Housing Court in the neighborhoods being rezoned .6 In addition to this, recognizing that many evicted
1 Director, Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA).
2 See Louis Story & Stephanie Saul, Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate, n.y. Times, Feb. 7, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos. html?_r=0.
3 See 2014 New York City Affordable Rental Housing Landscape, NYu furman cenTer, Apr. 23, 2014, http:// furmancenter.org/NYCRentalLandscape; uniVersiTy neighborhood housing Program, nowhere To go: a crisis of affordabiliTy in The bronx 11-12 (2013), available at http://unhp.org/pdf/NowhereToGo.pdf.
4 See Basic Facts About Homelessness: NewYork City, coaliTion for The homeless, http://www.coalitionforthehomeless. org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/ (last visited April 7, 2016).
5 See ciTy of new york, housing new york: a fiVe-borough, Ten-year Plan (2014), available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/ housing/assets/downloads/pdf/housing_plan.pdf.
6 Press Release, Office of the Mayor, City of New York, De Blasio Administration to help Prevent homelessness by Adding Resources to Keep New Yorkers in Their homes (Sept. 28, 2015), http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the- mayor/news/653-15/de-blasio-administration-help-prevent-homelessness-adding-resources-keep-new-yorkers-in; Text of Mayor de Blasio’s State of the City Address, N.Y. Times, Feb. 3, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/ nyregion/new-york-mayor-bill-de-blasios-state-of-the-city-address.html.
Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice