The Drum Major Institute's Marketplace of Ideas event this morning featured Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and his reforms to turn vacant buildings into affordable housing. Menino, who is now serving his fourth mayoral term, has reformed Boston's housing market in some pretty amazing ways. During the past decade, abandoned residential properties declined 77% as abandoned buildings were turned into viable housing.

The panel discussion featured Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Pratt Community Development Center Director Brad Lander, and Executive Director of the Parodneck Foundation Carlton Collier. DMI Executive Director Andrea Batista Schlesinger moderated the panel.

Cross posted from the DMI blog.

In 1999, Boston had a housing crisis. The waiting list for public housing units had 15,000 people on it, and rent prices had gone up 47% in the past four years. More than 50,000 Bostonians were spending more than half of their income on housing, and the number of homeless people in Boston was at a record high.

But just four years later, the statistics told a different story. Almost 8,000 new housing units had been created, and 1,000 housing units were made accessible to the homeless. The new units represented about $2 billion in public and private housing investment. The number of abandoned buildings in Boston dropped by 66% -- from 1,044 in 1997 to only 350 in 2005, and by the end of 2003, 1,079 vacant public housing units had been renovated. Suddenly, housing in Boston was on its way to becoming available and affordable.

[Ed. Note]: Promoted.

Hi Betsy,

Wow! You sure have been a busy bee lately.

I just received a copy of the press release you sent yesterday announcing you were traipsing to Brooklyn to blast! Blast! BLAST! conditions (?!?!) at Bushwick Houses.

Let's forget the silly little detail that you scheduled this 'blasting' for ten o'clock in the morning. What I found most intriguing was this little bit of wisdom written by John Collins, your communications guy and I assume signed off by you : That you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore because senior citizens were left stranded until 2am waiting for the elevator to be fixed.

Now ... ahem ... let me get this straight Betsy ...

A 47 year-old Puerto Rican woman died on August 20th due to said broken down elevator --along with the multiple daily little violences she had to contend with living in that building-- but somehow that didn't catch your attention?

An African American woman, also in her 40s, was the sheroe who got Errol Louis and me into that building after being ignored numerous times by 311, NYCHA, your offices, and numerous media outlets around the city ... and yet now you find the time to "blast" about it?

If I were a public advocate, I would assume that one of my principal points of focus would be to help the poor of the city --anywhere, everywhere, regardless of gender, age, race or ethnicity.

Yet ... and yet ... Betsy, are you telling me that all it took was to tell you that some senior citizens were left out in the cold one night, for you to do something about it?

Please Betsy, don't tell me these senior citizens happen also to be white; because that would be the ultimate insult not only to the memory of Lillian Milán, but to her living and very real Puerto Rican husband who is still living in that building.

Seriously Betsy, tell your communications guy that what he is communicating is not just troublesome but unbelievably nasty.

Anyhow, I hope you had fun with the blasting.

Have a great day,
liza

Some of the more regressive possibilities of Mr. Spitzer’s governorship were made clear last week, when – at the behest of Mayor Bloomberg and some others – Mr. Spitzer vetoed a bill that would have directed Social Services agencies to train public assistance recipients for better than minimum wage jobs. Imagine, both houses of the NY State legislature agreed on how to focus job-training! But, shades of Pataki-past, the Governor vetoed the bill. (See, for example, this item from the Drum Major Institute’s Blog .) Well, this is all bitter water under the bridge, so why am I still hocking you about all this? Because it could happen again. UPDATE AFTER JUMP

Another bill would fund public housing authorities for assistance recipients at the same rate which goes to private landlords. In effect, it would increase the amount of cash going to NYCHA and other public housing entities.

The issue of affordable housing in NYC is so complex and fragmented that it's difficult to tease out. Some aspects of the problems confronting lower and middle income people were covered fairly well in a recent DMI post by Gregory Lobo Jost .

Tenants and affordable housing advocates are gathering energy and momentum to change 12 years of Pataki anti-tenant regulation and statute. Coordinated by Housing Here And Now a remarkable coalition of labor unions, community organizations and housing church groups and the Working Families Party have gathered around a six goals.

While large-scale meetings have been held in many party of NYC, the meeting for those living below 59th Street in Manhattan is Saturday, May 5, 2007 11 AM at Middle Collegiate Church 50 East 7th Street (Between 1st and 2nd Aves.) Refreshments will be provided, I'm told, so come hungry. The agenda is:

At St. Paul's Chapel (just south of City Hall Park on Broadway at Fulton), Thursday evening, considering joining the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing for a convocation and overnight vigil at City Hall for housing justice. The convocation, which runs from 6:30PM to 8:30PM, will honor and recognize the work such groups as Coalition for the Homeless, The Pratt Center for Community & Economic Development, The Supportive Housing Network and Picture The Homeless.

Following the convocation will be an overnight Vigil for Housing Justice in City Hall Park starting at 9PM and concluding at 7AM -- perhaps so they'll be gone as Deputy Mayors and their aides stagger into work. You can register for the vigil online here or just show up. (As Woody Allen reminds us, 90% of life is just showing up).

The convocation and vigil presents a quandary, however for fans of Grey's Anatomy, like me -- a two-hour special of innuendo and sexual bantering -- is a do-not-miss event. Can I or you learn to program a VCR in time?

In all the discussions about developing the Vanderbilt Yards (commonly called "Atlantic Yards"), most of the media coverage portrays the controversy as being a choice between Ratner or no development. That is a false choice based on Ratner propaganda. Truth is, there are FOUR proposals for development of the area, including Ratner's low-bid, corrupt, no-business-plan proposal. Yes...FOUR plans. Many have never heard of the other plans, which is just how Ratner's three stooges, Pataki (now out of the picture), Bloomberg and Markowitz, wanted it. For those who want to learn about the other three plans, you can find an analysis of them on the Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn website (left hand side under "Community-Based Plans").

One of those Community-Based Plans, the Unity Plan, really was designed with full community input, led by Councilwoman Letisha James. This is an idea that really should be seen more: the community working out its OWN vision for development with government USING that vision as a guide for actual development. If you like the idea of COMMUNITY-based development, you can be a part of making the Unity Plan a reality. This comes from Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn:

Trying to prevent the mass eviction of tenants from their rent regulated apartments is important, in my view. Please consider coming to the demonstration on Saturday on East 3rd Street in Manhattan between 1 Ave. & 2nd Ave.

The tenants at 47 East 3rd Street are threatened with eviction and homelessness (where could they find affordable housing?). Their landlord, stating that the tenants apartments are needed for the personal use of the owners, has won an unprecedented victory in NY State Courts. Any building could be emptied on the basis of such a claim. Yours, mine. I spoke to a rent regulated tenant in Stuyvesant Town who could not imagine being vulnerable to eviction on such a basis. Welcome to 2007.

If you want to participate in the march which starts before the rally, meet me at 9th Street and Avenue B at Noon. After the demonstration, you can go to the Anarchist Book Fair at Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Square South)only a few block away. What is an anarchist book fair anyway -- disordered books? Books of or books by anarchists?

Because the subject of actually affordable housing is so complex, so intertwined with other intractable issues such as falling incomes of lower and middle class New Yorker, sub-prime mortgages, predatory lenders and exploding real estate prices, writing (and reading) about this issue is a real pain. But the time has come. At the Drum Major Institute meeting, April 2, there was some talk about how to build more affordable housing and we need more But..The biggest and most frightening question for most New Yorkers: How can we keep the affordable housing we have now?

Many New Yorkers pay below market rents because of a mixture of programs: Rent Control, Rent Stabilization, Mitchell-Lama, Section 8, Mutual Housing Associations. Since residential property owners can get steeply higher rents if they can get their units decontrolled, schemes by the dozen have evolved to allow landlords to shake themselves loose of low-paying renters. Phony demolition permits, curtailing services, terrorizing tenants. In one case, an appellate court overturned a lower court and OK’d mass evictions of a 15-unit building so the landlord-couple live there alone – 47 East 3rd Street.

BUT, in that case, tenants and their neighbors are fighting back. On Saturday April 14, 2007, housing activists, tenants and concerned citizens will rally to turn back the landlords’ feigned fantasy of a McMansion on East 3rd Street. Tenants in all housing see that attack as an attack on them and their housing. They propose legislation to close the odd loophole in housing law invented by the appellate court.

The Rally will start with marches from all over the lower east side (One starts at Ninth Street and Avenue B). We’ll end up at East 3rd Street between 1th and 2nd Avenues At 1 PM. Local electeds (Council Member Rosie Mendez, Assembly Members Deborah Glick & Brian Kavanaugh, State Senator Tom Duane and Martin Conner and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer) will join host community groups led by The Cooper Square Committee, GOLES, University Settlement, CODA and specialized tenant advocates. I hope for few speeches, much music, dancing in the streets and great food. Meet me there. Call GOLES at 212-533-2541 or Cooper Square Committee 212-226-8210 for more information. Check out also the tenants’ website . There's much more

Mario Cuomo opened the Drum Major Institute with what lipris at The Albany Project called a barnburner of a speech. Well, they must burns barns more quietly in Albany than I am used to. (lipris has some favorite video of Cuomo here)

Cuomo, who's been a fiery orator in times past, delivered a learned (quoting Aristotle on the Middle Class), somewhat rambling lecture which began to smoke only as he critiqued "supply-side" (Voodoo) economics and Bush tax relief for the wealthy.

At the first panel, moderator Doug Muzzio, Bauch Public Affairs Professor tried to focus panelists on the lack of affordable housing and told his tale of fleeing to New Jersey. While two of the panelists, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Finance Commissioner Martha Stark were essentially silent on the issue, one former Giuliani-Bloomberg official, Jerilyn Perine was just wonderful. Smart, funny, focused, she presented excellent and well-thought-out concrete proposals for increasing the amount of actually affordable housing. Perine, who had been nondescript as Commissioner of HPD in both Mayoral administrations, was a smart as a whip and twice as funny. Nothing I saw in her record at HPD would have led anyone to have expected her performance Monday. if you ever get a chance to hear her, freed apparently of many political constraints (she's in the consulting business), grab it.