Affordable Housing in Harlem?

http://palanteharlem.org/
http://ridavio.com/
http://www.mnn.org/
On August 4, 2011, P.A.'L.A.N.T.E. held a roundtable discussion on affordable housing in upper Manhattan. This longer clip is excerpted from two 58-min shows that contain almost the entire evening.
Regarding the Rent Guidelines Board, Tim Collins makes an interesting point about actual operating costs that owners are paying vs. what the Rent Guidelines Board calculated (in 2008 actual costs went up .10% vs. projected 7.3%) and he asks city council member Robert Jackson, who attended, if the housing committee would investigate the discrepancy.
Even more interesting Elsia Vasquez invited the developer Ken Haron of Artemis Construction to participate. He made several good points related to his vision of a better Harlem through mixed income development, but it was too long to boil down here in a simple way. But his argument for a plan to address the problem was much more compelling that evening than the vague hot air the politicians had to offer.
He also had an interesting exchange with Tim about why no three bedroom units are being built in Manhattan, that is too long to include here.
Elsia also explains the TIL (Tenant Interim Lease and Community Management) Program of HPD and why it is failing. And the perception that one result of the program is that developers are then able to snap up properties on the cheap through another program called TPT (Third Party Transfer) Program.
From the audience there is also a big perception in Harlem that HPD employees are leaving the agency and then going into development, acquiring buildings that they know will be failing soon.
Near the end they address the growing and desperate issue of the homeless and what can be done to address the problem.
I came to have a great admiration for Elsia and the work her organization is doing. About a week after this program aired on MNN I received an e-mail about a viewer, an older woman who was recently homeless due to domestic violence, who saw this program on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, wrote a letter to Ken and he found her an affordable apartment - now that is media making a difference in lives!
Apologies for the sound issues on this transmission. I had a line feed, but their mics kept failing. There was a huge concert on the plaza outside that evening that made for a lot of noise on the shotgun mic, and they were doing simultaneous translation of the program in Spanish next to my camera set up that caused further noise bleed issues.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• affordable
• housing
• manhattan
• harlem
• rent
• regulation
• hpd
• nyc
• palante
• tenant
• association
• landlords
• developers
• artemis
• guideline
• board
• apartments
• stabilization
• New York City
• Apartment