Michelle Cherian, Katherine Chiu, Allegra DePasquale, Heba Fakir
Group: Red Hook
Proposal for NYC
According to the statistics collection site Living Lots New York City one hundred seventy-one public sites totalling one hundred forty-eight acres of land in the city of New York are vacant. If we expand the data samples to include private land opportunities and non-public areas that are also underutilized, an added one hundred ninety-five sites totalling an extra one hundred fifty-nine acres of land are underused. This brings us to a grand total of three hundred forty-three underutilized acres of land. According to the presentation given by planning fellow John Douglass (from Hunter College of the City University of New York) at the February 2015 Community Board Six meeting, seventy-seven percent of the land in the Brooklyn Community Board Six zone is underutilized. This phenomenon was also observed by the members of the Red Hook team on our trips to Red Hook. The problem of under used land is one that is evidenced not only in specific towns like Red Hook, but also throughout the city, as evidenced by these statistics. The problem with having these empty lots is that they can contribute to ecological problems, social problems and political strife.
The lots take up space, but are not used to any significant public gain, and so they put to waste a lot of potential good. Instead of being used for public functions like affordable housing, public parks, business improvement districts, or other neighborhood improvements, these lots stay empty only to gather dust and litter.
Despite containing some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the U.S like Manhattan’s Upper East Side, New York City is facing a housing shortage, specifically an affordable housing shortage. More and more people of low-income status are being pushed into homelessness due to unreasonably high costs of living. In fact, 45% of the working class in New York pay more than one third of their income in rents. Yet, there are many apartment complexes, and even whole buildings, that are abandoned or awaiting repairs. The issue is that many of these affordable housing units can only be afforded by the wealthy. Often times, landlords who do offer their tenants low rents are encouraged by private corporations, interested in renovating the often dilapidated housing complexes, to increase rents driving out the current low-income occupants and selling those complexes to private corporations. Private corporations can then renovate those complexes and rent them out to higher income residents, thereby profiting while the low-income tenants are left to relocate. This often results in the gentrification of an area, as more buildings are purchased and renovated, the cost of living in the area also increases as a result of the influx of higher income families. Not only does a shortage in affordable housing begin, but gentrification also helps to drive out the low-income residents of the neighborhood. There are many bright sides to gentrification like lower crime rates and better housing, but this comes at a cost that is often too much for the poor. As the neighborhood improves, wealthier people move into the area, often driving out low-income residents. With the unequal global distribution of income, gentrification adds to the disparity in the income gap. In the United States, economic rewards are far more lopsided than in European countries. This inequality drives American poverty rates. At the same time, some low-income residents are able to remain due to rent control. The income gap is also widened due to mixed-income housing. Mixed-income housing developers often set aside about 80% of the apartments as market-rate and the other 20% for low & middle-income residents who pay below-market rates. Developers provide these affordable housing complexes for incentives like property tax reduction. Mayor Bill de Blasio intends on constructing and/or preserving 200,000 affordable housing complexes within the next 10 years through mandatory rather than voluntary inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning involves developers creating a certain number (usually 20%) of affordable housing units for low-income residents and the rest are offered at market-rate prices in return developers are allowed to build bigger. There are many critics of inclusionary zoning. Many argue that “inclusionary zoning, a celebrated policy solution that requires developers to set aside units for working and low-income families, has created a measly 2,800 affordable apartments in New York since 2005.[1]” Supporters of inclusionary zoning, on the other hand, argue that this is because inclusionary zoning at the time of Mayor Bloomberg was voluntary and many developers chose not to participate. Only time can tell if mandatory inclusionary zoning will come into effect and if it will have the effect that Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes for.
There are major groups that are focused on keeping the majority of these lots and buildings vacant, including landlords and the corporations that own these buildings. This is all just a game of profit. In the documentary, Uneven Growth NYC, Rachel Laforest, a social activist and executive director of Right to the City Alliance, states, “I live in the belly of the beast, New York City, where people are throwaways, but buildings and architecture and profits are prized possessions [2]”. This is essentially the problem with landlords that creates empty lots in the first place.
How do landlords rake up the biggest profit in this way? Well, when individuals aren’t living in a building, there is no need to upkeep the property and the money that landlords would use for that is kept in their pockets. When living spaces in a building aren’t being used, it is a high possibility that these spaces are being used as warehousing for the landlords speculative funds, which they have invested in purchasing the building. Then they will just sit on these spaces until the market price goes up and sell them for a profit [2]. Essentially, instead of using housing for its intended use value, it is just used as a commodity [3].
Landowners instead of trying to fill all the rooms in their building will also try to pack as many individuals into a single room as they can in order to increase their profit. So instead of spreading individuals out in say a twelve apartment complex, they will stuff four to eight men inside one room and make a larger profit than if they were only renting out to a single family.
In fact, sometimes after landlords buy out apartment buildings, they try to force the tenants that are lower than market value rent in order to try and replace them with tenants that can pay higher than market value rent. They will keep these rooms vacant until they can find the person or the time that they can make the largest profit. Landlords do this by trying to buy tenants out or harassing them into leaving by performing construction on the building, bringing up fraudulent or eviction cases and hoping that eventually these tenants will just give up and leave.
Essentially, landlords and real estate speculators use any method possible to empty out their land while gathering the most profit. And since the real estate industry is the largest single donor to election campaigns, they have a lot of say about who sits in office and makes policies surrounding this issue [2].
As landlords, real estate speculators and corporations rake in their profits, there are individuals who are constantly suffering from this system, specifically the homeless and lower income individuals. When assessing twenty of the fifty-nine community boards, 6040 vacant buildings and lots were counted. This has the estimated potential to house 199, 981 people. Frank Morales, an Episcopal priest and a housing activist, claims that there is three times more vacant space in New York City than there are homeless people in the city. Then why is it that individuals in real estate claim that there isn’t enough supply for the demand? It is because the people in control of buildings and policies surrounding the housing crisis are looking for the biggest profit available.Rob Robinson, a housing activist and a member of Take Back the Land National Movement, states that along society has to change their views about the homeless in order to take action against the main cause of homelessness in New York City: not mental illness, not alcoholism, not chemical addiction, not a lack of education, but a lack of affordable housing available [2].
A lot of this vacant space could be used to build up affordable housing or assisted living, instead of creating policies that establish affordable housing that will end in a number of years. These vacant spaces could be developed into permanent affordable housing that would allow the homeless in New York City. Frank Morales brings up the solution of taking the money spent on shelters and move it into funds for renovating these vacant spaces on behalf of the homeless [2]. The report, “Banking on Vacancy: Homelessness and Real Estate Speculation” states, “Picture the homeless members decry the amount of money spent on shelter, especially as compared to the absence of money spent on housing development or rental assistance for the very poor [3]”. The report goes on further to say that in 2010, the city’s budget for Housing Preservation and Development, about $489 million, was only 63% of what they city spent on providing shelters to homeless individuals, $773 million. Yet the only true way to abolish homelessness, is to provide individuals who are homeless with the proper housing, which the vacant spaces so easily provide if renovated. These vacant lots could also be used to create manufacturing businesses which creates availability in the job market which will also help the homeless and lower income populations.
Essentially, society needs to hang up its enormous capitalist mentality that allows landowners and real estate speculators to develop huge profits by letting vacant spaces remain vacant and renovate these spaces to allow for individuals who are homeless or living doubled or tripled up in single apartment buildings, to live comfortably.
This issue affects Red Hook directly, because, as seen in the town, there were many unused lots. At the CB6 meeting, a BID and IBZ were proposed to solve this issue; however, there is the problem of deciding whether the lots would be better used as manufacturing plants, or housing complexes. Furthermore, the community is concerned about the coexistence of industrial and residential space. In 1996, Red Hook and Community Board 6 adopted a 197a plan, which is basically a plan for community-based growth and regeneration. The goal of this plan, among other things, was to create opportunities for improved housing, to avoid conflict between the industrial and the residential, and to expand the residential sector [5]. This plan has been slowly but surely implemented. As an example of a success due to this plan, the Sullivan Street Hotel was converted to public housing and reopened in 2000. Though, much more needs to be done housing-wise. Most of Red Hook’s population is poorly oriented socio-economically, so affordable housing is a must.The current largest affordable housing complex in New York, the Red Hook Houses, is not enough to sustain all of those that need it. Given this fact, why is land so underutilized in Red Hook, especially when the Community Board would like to expand the residential and when so many people need affordable housing? The original 197a plan, which to reiterate, is the basis for current neighborhood regeneration efforts, asserts that it stems from historical factors, such as the “actual and perceived isolation of Red Hook, the decline of the maritime industry, and the general lack of economic opportunities and services for low income residents [5]” Though this report was written almost 20 years ago, much remains the same in Red Hook; this is obvious from our neighborhood observations. Clearly, much must be done in terms of public policy in order to continue the pursuit of affordable housing and the efficient usage of land. However, it is not only in terms of housing that vacant land is a problem in Red Hook. Vacant lots in Red Hook are magnets for unsanitary garbage dumping, which not only detracts from the neighborhood aesthetic, but also negatively impacts the environment. Most of the garbage is not biodegradable, and thus the litter is dangerous for wildlife, plantlife, and the overall ecology of the neighborhood. Though dumping is illegal, enforcement of these environmental regulations is inadequate [5]. Something must be done with the vacant lots; having them sit there as virtual garbage dumps does nothing to promote economic and social growth in the neighborhood, which it desperately needs. Local government must continue the implementation of the 197a plan, which has had some success in attracting investment to Red Hook and combatting the perception of its isolation [6]. This is evident by the recent growth of small businesses in the area. This must continue, with the commercial, industrial, and residential working in harmony to encourage Red Hook’s growth. Through the channel of public policy this is certainly obtainable, as the neighborhood progresses and improves since the original 197a plan was passed in 1996.
Sources
[1] http://marketurbanism.com/2014/05/29/how-affordable-housing-policies-backfire/
[2] Uneven Growth NYC. Cohabitation Strategies, 2014. Online.
[3] Picture the Homeless. 2012. Banking on Vacancy: Homelessness and Real Estate Speculation.
[4] http://livinglotsnyc.org/#11/40.7300/-73.9900
[5] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/community_planning/bk6_red_hook_197a.pdf
