Markeshia Ricks Photos
Derthula Green testifies about friend’s move from 66 Norton.
A task force charged with crafting policy solutions to address the city’s affordable housing crisis got a look at just how big the problem is at its first public hearing Wednesday night.
The crowd at City Hall.
More than 100 people showed up to City Hall and more than 40 testified during a nearly three-hour public hearing. People shared their personal stories of homelessness and living at the margins of near homelessness while raising children, losing jobs, cobbling together multiple low-paying part-time jobs and living with disabilities. Meanwhile, policy, legal and housing experts illustrated the systemic plight of a small, dense city with low rental vacancies, a booming luxury apartment market, and an aging stock of affordable rentals.
New Haven Legal Assistance’s Liam Brennan and Amy Eppler-Epstein talk about how to increase affordable housing.
The task force grew out of the debate over the conversion of the Duncan Hotel from an unofficial downtown boarding house to a boutique hotel. It is tasked with coming up with policy recommendations over the next six to nine months that will help the city preserve and encourage the development of more single room occupancy (SRO) housing for low-income and homeless people. It also has been tasked with figuring out policies New Haven might adopt to stimulate the preservation and development of all kinds of affordable housing for the city’s poor and working families.
Task force facilitator Greenberg.
Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg, the task force’s non-voting facilitator, set the tone of the hearing by pointing out that according to the latest report from the Partnership for Strong Communities, 57 percent of renters and 40 percent of homeowners in New Haven spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Housing is considered affordable when people spend 30 percent or less of their annual income to keep a roof over their heads.
He further pointed out that the National Low Income Housing Coalition had determined that New Haven’s “housing wage,” or the hourly wage needed to afford a two-bedroom in the city is $25.48, or about $50,000 a year. The median household income is far short of that at $37,162.
“As the New Haven Legal Assistance Association points out in their memo to this task force, the disparity between what it takes to afford a two-bedroom unit in New Haven and what residents actually make means low-income families are forced to live in substandard homes because it is all they can afford, or it is because their poor credit prevents them from finding better homes,” he said. “The task force assembled here tonight will do significant work, research, and deliberation to address this crisis. This is the beginning of our work together as a task force and as a community.”
The Ghost Of Norton Street
Alder Evette Hamilton, whose ward includes 66 Norton St.
Allison Parks can’t forget Feb. 22, she told the task force. It was the day that she and her two children were given about 15 minutes to grab their things and vacate the apartment they’d lived in at 66 Norton St. for six years. She and her teen son and daughter lived in the Three Judges Motel on Whalley Avenue for about three months until they could find an apartment. (Read about the challenges that other former Norton Street residents faced here.)
They were told by the city that they needed a three-bedroom so that each of her children could have their own rooms. She couldn’t find one she could afford. And when she did find one she could afford, it didn’t pass the city’s required inspections before they could move in. The family is now living in a two-bedroom apartment. She shares a room with her teenage daughter.
“I lived at Norton Street for six years and every year there seemed to be an inspection in that property,” she told the task force. “But in one night, I was told that the building was condemned because it’s not livable. Who inspects these buildings around the city? I would like to know that.”
She said she also wants to know why an apartment that can’t pass inspection from the city is even for rent. Parks told the task force that she suspected it is because a few key landlords like Mendy Katz and Mandy Management control lots of apartments and “take over the city.”
“They put people in slum apartments,” she said. “They buy abandoned buildings and just rent it as is because if they fix it you can’t afford it.”
A friend of Parks, Derthula Green, said it wasn’t until her friend was forced to live in Three Judges that her eyes were opened to the housing crisis in the city.
“I knew New Haven had issues with housing but I had no idea just how awful it was until I saw this family,” she said. Both Green and Parks questioned the role of the Livable City Initiative, the city’s anti-blight agency. (LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo sits on the task force.)
“I just want to suggest also when dealing with folks in this kind of situation that those folks who are accountable and supposed to be helping them really do help them,” Green said. “I would like to know the full role of LCI in the city. My interactions with them on behalf of this family was disturbing. I was confused as to whether they were advocating for the citizens or the landlords and I’m bothered by that.”
Chaz Carmon, a New Haven native and president of the anti-gang violence organization Ice The Beef, said he is disturbed by how easy it is for low-income people to slip through the cracks when it comes to maintaining stable housing. He said he knew firsthand the value of low income and affordable housing: He grew up in every manner of such housing and managed to get two degrees and now works in the school system as a paraprofessional.
“We make very little money,” said Carmon, a single father of one child. “We all live check to check.”
He said there had been times where he and his child needed to go into a shelter but he couldn’t get into a shelter that took families because they only accepted women and their children. He and his child have housing now but because of his work in the community he often takes others in.
“I could have moved to Waterbury or Meriden where it’s cheaper,” he said. “But as a leader working against gang and gun violence, I must stay and struggle to better my city.”
“A Lot Of Work To Do”
Liberty Community Services Jim Pettinelli and Columbus House’s Alison Cunningham.
The deeply personal testimony of people like Allison Parks and Chaz Carmon put a face on what people have been saying anecdotally about the state of affordable housing. Those who try to meet the legal and housing needs of no and low-income people provided the data and some additional solutions that the task force could consider as they wade into the many issues that impact one’s ability to maintain stable housing in the Elm City.
Alison Cunningham of Columbus House and Jim Pettinelli testified Wednesday on behalf of the Coordinated Action Network, which represents providers of services and housing for those who are homeless. Cunningham said that the number of homeless people in New Haven hasn’t gone down significantly from the last point-in-time survey taken January 2017. In January 2018’s survey, there were 529 people counted, which represented 378 single people, 54 people in families, and 97 children. (Read about this year’s survey here.)
“The issues are dire for people who live in poverty,” Cunningham said. “Poverty is the single most leading factor in people being homeless.”
“There is a lot of work to do, a lot for all of us to do,” Pettinelli said. Some of that work is in creating more “deeply affordable” housing through possible private development set-asides; through requirements for people earning between $10,000 and $30,000 a year; by examining zoning regulations to maximize all available options for deeply affordable housing especially for SROs; and through the conversion of city-owned properties and lands into affordable housing, he said. He also suggested that the task force looks at better interventions for people living outdoors including a recognition and response to the opioid crises because there are new people experiencing homelessness because of it.
Pettinelli suggested that the city should devise a better solution and understanding of those who gather on the Green and that “panhandling and homelessness are not necessarily the same thing.” Finally, the need to address transportation also could be part of the discussion of some of the ancillary issues that impact the ability to maintain stable housing, he said.
The affordable housing debate is taking place across the country in cities undergoing gentrification. (Read this story for an example.) Several different ideas have been bandied about for promoting more affordable housing: Negotiating with developers to include 20 to 30 percent subsidized units in market-rate projects, with the help of state housing grants; following the lead of cities like Washington, D.C., by having builders of new developments subsidize affordable units through higher rents on market-rate units; promoting more new market-rate, upscale developments with the thought that that would lower rents at existing apartment complexes; simply trying to build more public-housing projects; and enacting rent control.
Doug Losty: 11 percent tax increase will raise rents.
Yonatan Zamir, a staff attorney with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, told the task force that the city can’t rely on the private market to self-enforce housing code particularly as it relates to the city’s older housing stock which is riddled with lead paint. (Read here about a lawsuit Legal Assistance filed Wednesday against the city over its handling of lead poisoning cases here.)
“We don’t have a well-functioning market,” he said. “it’s not working. We don’t have robust enforcement.”
Neal-Sanjurjo.
He said specifically that three city agencies — LCI, the building department, and the health department — are not functioning in a way that will deliver safe and affordable housing. He pointed to Norton Street and Church Street South as prime examples of that dysfunction.
“There were outstanding orders for code compliance but nobody was penalized,” he said of Church Street South, which is now headed for demolition and redevelopment. “There were no prosecutions but most importantly children suffered.”
He said that is also what is happening in the lead cases that are being unearthed. Legal assistance has found at least five families who have children with lead poisoning in apartments it argues should have had better enforcement of lead paint laws.
“The health department is undermining the city by not effectively enforcing the rules it is supposed to be enforcing,” he said. “We’re finding that out through litigation and our experience and we are concerned that not a lot is being done.”
DuBois-Walton.
At the end of Wednesday’s hearing LCI’s Neal-Sanjurjo said that the housing issue is about more than a place to live but getting people to a place where they have an income that allows them to live in the city.
“As we move forward I hope that we will not only be looking at housing but how we can make recommendations that get people to a place where they have an income that would afford housing,” she said. “This has been a good meeting.”
Karen DuBois-Walton, executive director of the city’s housing authority, said she was happy to hear the problem of affordable housing defined beyond New Haven’s city limits.
“Until our neighbors get energized around this as well, the issue will not be solved to my satisfaction,” she said.
LCI's Neal-Sanjurjo said that the housing issue is about more than a place to live but getting people to a place where they have an income that allows them to live in the city."As we move forward I hope that we will not only be looking at housing but how we can make recommendations that get people to a place where they have an income that would afford housing," she said. "This has been a good meeting.
You thank the city for bringing in the gentrification vampires.You can use Inclusionary zoning a proven strategy to address the shortage of affordable housing .In fact NEWARK N J has stuck a steak into the Heart of the gentrification vampires.with there INCLUSIONARY ZONING law.
INCLUSIONARY ZONING WILL CREATE HOUSING THAT NEWARK FAMILIES CAN AFFORD
THE FACTS
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• The Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance is a proposed law that requires developers to make 20% of the housing in new large developments affordable to Newark's working families..
This law will apply to every neighborhood in every ward.
• Newark residents will have a preference for the new affordable housing.
• This will help insure that the recent increase in development and investment in Newark will benefit existing Newark residents.
• Inclusionary zoning will help Newark avoid the failures of places like Hoboken, Jersey City, Harlem, and Brooklyn where far too many long-term residents were displaced or priced out of their home communities.
A developer who is unable to include affordable housing units must contribute to a fund that will build affordable housing around the city.
https://www.newarknj.gov/news/inclusionaryzoning