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:

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

Seriously.

I also had a WFT moment after I read Michael's post about the WFP. I coincidentally had just finished talking to Dan Garodnick who is also calling for a strategic voting under the WFP banner, but in this case the candidate is Eliot Spitzer.

As you all know, Dan is my NYC Councilman, neighbor and the man who has taken it upon himself to fight the uphill battle of maintaining the already existing affordable housing we have in New York City.

So I called Garodnick to confirm if he had indeed lent his name to a flyer I got under my door the other day. It seems like it was circulated by the Stuyvesant Town Tenants' Association and it's asking for people to vote for Eliot Spitzer under the banner of the Working Families Party, instead of the Democratic Party.

Echoing what is already on the flyer, this is what he had to say:

Tsk, tsk people!

Not one candidate has come knock-knock-knockin' on my door. Where's Sylvia Friedman? Where's Kavanagh?

Ok, ok. I did see Ms. Friedman once on 16th street. Brian Kavanagh was recently in front of my neighborhood supermarket pressing the flesh. Ok ... he's actually been everywhere. It seems like I see him all around the East Village campaigning.

So here's Brian in his own words ...

Jack Lester, counsel to the Stuyvesant Town Tenants Association.

Honestly, I think his opinion on the matter is one of the most dispassionately rational I have heard to date.