East Harlem Affordable Housing Under Threat

Across New York City, the availability of affordable housing is in jeopardy. Even with the ambitious efforts of the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to preserve or create thousands of affordable housing units, rent protections for much of the existing stock will expire in the coming decades. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood, where most residents live in some form of rent-regulated housing.

Regional Plan Association has a longstanding interest in enhancing the economic health of East Harlem, from its work in the late 1990s to help the community plan for the eventual building of the Second Avenue subway to its recent efforts with Community Board 11 to develop neighborhood housing strategies. East Harlem has been the home for successive generations of newcomers to New York City for more than a century. Italians, African-Americans and Puerto Ricans settled there before and after World War II and many still make their home there. More recent immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa make East Harlem one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City. Affordable housing has always been central to East Harlem’s identity and success. It has one of the highest concentrations of public housing in the city, and a long waiting list of families who want to live in one of the many complexes owned by the New York City Housing Authority. Other rent-regulated housing makes up much of the remainder of its housing stock. Due to the expiration of government subsidies, many of East Harlem’s residents are at risk of being priced out of their homes and neighborhood.

This report provides greatly needed information and policy strategies for the East Harlem community to preserve its stock of rent-regulated affordable housing. It represents a collaborative neighborhood revitalization effort between Regional Plan Association and Community Board 11 seeking to preserve and strengthen the community. This is the second report in a series that aims to advance policy strategies to preserve rent-regulated housing in the community through a broad-based coalition of influential local stakeholders. It can provide a model for other neighborhoods facing a similar loss of affordable housing.

By creating baseline data on the number and locations of rent-regulated housing, this report seeks to enable East Harlem residents to slow down the conversion of rent-regulated housing into market-rate units by providing the community with viable strategies to persuade decision makers to implement policies, zoning and other changes. Based on data collected from three sources, RPA estimates that there are approximately 40,500 rent-regulated housing units, as follows: 14,700 public housing units, 9,900 rent-stabilized units and 15,900 other rent-regulated units. Rent protections will expire in nearly one-third of the regulated housing units by 2040. Based on previous research and continued policy development, the preservation strategies that would be most appropriate for East Harlem’s different types of housing are as follows:

• Public housing: Promote residents’ stewardship and continued participation in development plans and initiatives. While no rent protections are scheduled to expire for these units, maintaining and upgrading the quality of public housing is an important component of an overall preservation strategy
• Rent-stabilized housing: Coordinate with other advocacy efforts to maintain supply of rent-stabilized housing and provide safety nets for tenant relocation, to make sure tenants continue to live in the community and have legal and financial resources to find new housing. Some deregulation of stabilized housing is inevitable under current New York State law, but the impact can be mitigated to insure that tenants have sufficient legal protection and assistance.
• Other-regulated housing: Work with building owners to promote continued participation in preservation programs or plan for tenant relocations. This calls for a concerted community effort to address potential deregulation by working directly with owners to keep these units regulated and affordable.
• Community Land Trusts: A longer-term strategy to preserve affordable housing is the creation of Community Land Trusts. CLTs typically are nonprofit corporations through which residents of a community gain and maintain control of real estate to protect long-term, sustained affordability. CLTs use a land lease, usually with a 99-year term, to establish affordability and to maintain it even through the transference of property.