7/10/18: Why You Don’t Want These City Planners to be Your Doctor There’s an old medical maxim, “first do no harm,” or, make sure your response to a problem doesn’t in fact make it worse. It’s a tenet the City would be wise to heed, and one that unfortunately seems to be missing from too many of its current land use actions. The proposed Inwood rezoning is a case in point: a neighborhood where the City is using the wrong approach for a very real problem, and one that’s only likely to exacerbate it further.

7/9/18: Congratulations to the 2018 Center for Neighborhood Leadership Graduating Class! Congratulations to our 2017-2018 Center for Neighborhood Leadership (CNL) Apprenticeship and Academy Introductory Course graduates! The 16 community leaders pictured above did amazing community organizing work over the past 10-months, spending time in trainings and working with our non-profit partner organizations on issues such as educational equity, ending the school-to-prison pipeline, immigration, housing and land use justice. 

7/2/18: Making Sure Everyone Counts On July 3^rd, the U.S. Census will face one of the most important court decisions in its over 100-year history. After the Trump Administration’s proposal to add a citizenship question to the Census, the New York State Attorney General –is leading a multi-state lawsuit against the federal government, which the Trump administration is attempting to have dismissed. On July 3^rd, the day before Independence Day, it will be determined whether the court will move toward the arc of justice and dignity for immigrants by allowing the case to move forward, or whether it will rule in favor of the federal government, essentially guaranteeing the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

6/29/18: Black and Latino Borrowers Locked Out of Homeownership in New York City, New Data and Analysis Shows A new analysis by the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) of lending data released last month under the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) sheds light on the overall state of the home mortgage market in New York City.

6/28/18: New Law Will Help City Tackle the Expiring-Use Affordable Housing Crisis The New York City Council will take an important step towards addressing the crisis of expiring-use affordable housing with a new law poised to pass today. The bill – Intro 722A – will require NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to implement a first-ever tracking system for expiring affordable housing units in New York City and report that tracking to local decision makers.

6/26/18: Release The Data: Communities Rally for Airbnb Regulation The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) rallied with members and allies this morning in support of Intro 981, a bill that would require online rental platforms such as Airbnb to provide the City with data needed to enforce existing laws against illegal short-term rentals. For well over a decade, tenants and community organizations such as the West Side Neighborhood Alliance, St. Nicks Alliance, and Goddard Riverside Law Project, have been fighting against illegal hotels that disrupt communities, harass out long-term tenants, and exacerbate New York City’s affordability crisis. This bill would give community advocates and city officials the data they need to protect New York City’s housing and its residents.

6/25/18: Standing in Solidarity With Immigrants & Refugees at the End Family Separation March To the ANHD Community, We at the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) stand with our immigrant neighbors, friends, and family. As a member organization of 101 community groups across New York City serving to build equity, justice, and power for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized communities, we are horrified by the actions of this Administration to separate children from their families and detain families with children.

6/14/18: Amidst Increased Attention on the CRA, ANHD’s State of Bank Reinvestment in NYC Report Crucial Local Insight Every year, the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) produces the State of Bank Reinvestment in NYC, analyzing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activity of 25 local banks and banks citywide to help communities, banks, legislators, bank regulators, and allies understand the impact of the CRA at a local level.

6/13/18: Your Gift for the Summer Is Here: ANHD’s AMI Cheat Sheet Need something to read on your beach towel this summer? Now you can be the hero any affordable housing policy discussion with ANHD’s handy, wallet-sized AMI Cheat Sheet! Every year, the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) puts together what has become a vital tool for conversations on the development and preservation of affordable housing in New York City.

6/8/18: Congratulations to the 2017-2018 Class of Morgan Stanley Community Development Graduate Fellows! This past Wednesday, the 2017-2018 Class of Morgan Stanley Community Development Graduate Fellows (our 6th cohort year) graduated from our 10-month, intensive community development Fellowship. The nine Fellows (pictured above) did amazing work with several of our ANHD member organizations, while simultaneously attending school full time. We are thrilled to congratulate them on their accomplishments, and announce that nearly all of them are staying in the community development sector to continue that good work.

5/30/18: Furman Report Shows that Despite New Construction, the Affordability Crisis Continues Last week, the NYU Furman Center released their 2017 State of the City report and Focus on Changes in New York City’s Housing Stock. As always, it contains an array of valuable information about trends in our housing stock and population. One striking conclusion from all of the panelists at the Furman Center’s release event was that there remains a stark mismatch between the kinds of housing being created in New York City and the kinds of housing New York City’s existing households need.

5/21/18: Pinpointing the Eviction Machine with Local ANHD Monthly Data The New York Times published a remarkable series of articles this weekend investigating Behind New York City’s Housing Crisis . Most observers know that speculative investing and harassment of tenants is a growing crisis that is undermining the core supply of affordable rent-regulated housing in New York City.  Most New Yorkers look at affordable rent-regulated buildings and see decent homes and stable neighborhoods, but too many speculators look at those same buildings and see boundless profits – as long as they can remove the low- and moderate-rent paying tenants.

4/16/18: NYC Relaunches Innovative Industrial Developer Fund Over the course of the past several months, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) worked with stakeholders and agency counterparts to strengthen elements of the important and innovative Industrial Developer Fund (IDF). The result is a relaunched fund that seeks to streamline and expedite the awards’ process while also quantifying quality job creation and affordability benefits for the City of New York. With this important move, the City of New York smartly reaffirms its commitment to mission-driven industrial development as an important new strategy for equitable economic development. Today’s release of two Requests for Expressions of Interest (RFEIs) is based on lessons learned from the fund’s first award to Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center and year one stakeholder input.

4/12/18: Community Power and the Jerome Avenue Rezoning The Jerome Avenue rezoning passed the City Council at the end of March, despite widespread community opposition to the very end. 92 blocks of Jerome Avenue and some cross streets have now been rezoned from primarily auto uses and manufacturing to high density residential districts. In addition, the de Blasio administration and City Council have shared a list of commitments secured for the neighborhood as part of the rezoning.

4/5/18: The CRA Modernization Recommendations by Treasury Department Are Good, Bad, and Yet-to-be-Seen On April 3^rd, the U.S. Department of Treasury released its long-awaited set of recommendations to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) believes that the Treasury Department document has the potential to lay the ground work for a meaningful dialogue to address some areas of commonly-held concern about the CRA, and we are cautiously optimistic that the recommendations can lead to a productive outcome. But, we have some concerns, and in all cases, the details truly matter.

4/2/18: Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census Is A Scare Tactic ANHD is disappointed and outraged by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision, at the request of the Trump administration, to add a question regarding citizenship status to the 2020 Census.

3/27/18: Help Us Welcome ANHD’s New Board of Directors and Executive Committee! As a membership organization for community-based affordable housing and equitable economic development groups throughout New York City, ANHD relies on our Board of Directors for direction and oversight to ensure that we are fulfilling our mission to support our local member-groups in their work to build equity and justice in their neighborhoods and citywide.

3/22/18: New York City Needs to Stop Negotiating Rezonings from an Uneven Playing Field At a City Council hearing last week, City Planning Director Marisa Lago explained that the Department of City Planning (DCP) only attempts a neighborhood rezoning when the community or a councilmember expresses “interest.” In that hearing, DCP came under fire from some councilmembers for concentrating their neighborhood rezoning efforts disproportionately in low-income communities of color, as Crain’s reported on Monday.

3/19/18: Six Lessons for Cultivating Leadership of Color in the Community Organizing Movement Non-profit organizing institutions have long struggled with the fact that their leadership is disproportionately white and middle class. We all know that our organizing will ultimately be more effective and more grounded in a true commitment to justice, if the primary actors are directly impacted people, those who come from the marginalized communities in which we work. Yet, for many reasons, groups in the Community Development movement too often fail to achieve this.

3/16/18: 10 Years After the Housing Crisis: Have We Learned Nothing? ANHD is extremely disappointed in the U.S. Senate for rolling back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly referred to as “Dodd Frank.” The Senate passed S.2155, which removes key financial safeguards and transparency regulations designed to prevent the kind of financial collapse and damage the U.S. experienced just a decade ago.

3/15/18: New Program Begins Shifting Power Back to Commercial Tenants Today, community groups, legal service providers, and the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) launched the Commercial Lease Assistance Program, a new effort to address the power imbalance between commercial tenants and the landlords who exploit them by providing small businesses with legal services on leasing. The new program serves as a crucial extension of the policy advanced by United for Small Business NYC (USBNYC), the Commercial Tenant Anti-Harassment Law. USBNYC members Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, Chhaya CDC, Cooper Square Committee, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC), Urban Justice Center, and Volunteers of Legal Servicewill work alongside African Communities Together and Pan-African Community Development Initiative to connect small business owners with legal service providers who can inform them of their rights.

3/7/18: Housing Vacancy Survey Shows New York City Is in The Midst of An Affordability Emergency The City released its initial findings for the 2017 Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS) this week, which is conducted every three years to comply with rent regulation laws. This rich data and research resource gives us the only comprehensive look at New York City’s housing market and building conditions. We already knew New York City was in the midst of an affordability emergency, but the initial 2017 HVS findings raise serious new concerns about the direction of our housing market and affordability trends.

3/1/18: Community Asks Who Benefits from Staten Island Rezoning Yesterday afternoon, members of Staten Island’s Housing Dignity Coalition (HDC) rallied on the steps of City Hall to demand deeper affordability for the proposed rezoning of Bay Street on the North Shore. Local residents and faith leaders explained why this rezoning will not serve the pressing needs of the community and called for a more inclusive plan that truly matches the incomes of families and households currently living in the area.

2/16/18: What do the HUD Cuts in the Trump Budget Mean for Communities? Earlier this week, Trump proposed a federal budget that would devastate low- and moderate-income communities across the country, including in New York State. Trump’s proposals for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) include both budget cuts and rule changes that would increase housing cost burdens on many of the poorest New Yorkers, while continuing disinvestment in public housing, reducing Section 8 voucher availability, and eviscerating basic Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) functions like code enforcement.

2/7/18: It’s Up to the City Council to Make the Jerome Avenue Rezoning Right Today the City Council held their public hearing on the Jerome Avenue rezoning, and despite the weather, community members came out in force to make their voices heard. The Bronx Coalition for a Community Vision held a press conference on the steps of City Hall to start the day, and coalition members and local residents gave testimony in the Council Chamber until late into the afternoon.

1/30/18: Gentrification Has Always Been About More Than Housing New York is experiencing growing pains. It’s quickly changing and neighborhoods with strong identities and histories are melding into the same glass-towered landscape that reigns throughout the City, rendering them unrecognizable. In last week’s New York Times Magazine, Willy Staley explores the impact of gentrification beyond the ongoing and pressing conversation about its impact on housing affordability.

1/23/18: “The Case for The Subway” Is Also a Case for Shared Public Benefit It’s been hard to ignore the state of New York City’s subway of late, both in the news and in our daily (painful) existence. Though the exact path to improvement varies there is an understanding that more public investment is needed to fix the problem – a case that was laid out persuasively in Jonathan Mahler’s recent New York Times Magazine article, “The Case for the Subway.” Since Governor Cuomo has rolled out his budget and Andy Byford has started his new job as President of NYC Transit, it’s worth taking a moment to revisit Mahler’s piece and to specifically highlight a vital point it makes: Public actions, like the subway, often help make some people very, very wealthy. And it is imperative that the public should benefit more directly from that wealth.

1/18/18: Community Demands Scope of Jerome Rezoning Be Reduced, As City Moves Proposal Forward On Wednesday morning the City Planning Commission (CPC) voted to approve the proposed rezoning of Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. As the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) has highlighted throughout this process, this rezoning continues to move forward despite consistent and clear demands from the community that the City reconsider and adjust. Yet with CPC approval of the rezoning, only a final vote by the City Council remains to determine its fate. The Bronx Coalition for a Community Vision is urging the Council to reduce the scale of the Jerome Avenue rezoning by half – from roughly 4,000 to 2,000 projected units. Coalition members were at the CPC vote on Wednesday to express their disapproval and make their voices heard. Here’s why they’re concerned and why they’re pushing for the rezoning to be reduced.

1/17/18: Manufacturing Matters: Urban Manufacturing Accelerator Fund Enhances NYC’s Position as Industrial Innovator In New York City, economic development is a crucial equity challenge, an important policy challenge, and an essential community development challenge. To address growing inequality, we need to think about economic development in a bold and fearless way—one that supports economic opportunity for all communities, emphasizing the quality of the jobs created and the needs of New York City residents.

1/12/18: Amid Racist Comments, Trump Rolls Back Key Fair Housing Rule Before MLK Weekend It has been widely reported that yesterday Trump made racist and disparaging comments about Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries. It is important we recognize that these appalling comments are accompanied by destructive policy changes that are devastating our communities.

1/11/18: ANHD Releases New District-Level Tenant Displacement Risk Tracking Tool The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) is excited to release the next phase of our Displacement Alert Project (DAP): DAP District Reports. DAP Reports provide monthly updates on harassment and displacement risk in rent stabilized buildings across New York City’s 59 community districts. The reports are a crucial new tool for grassroots groups, tenant organizers, community members, and elected officials.

2017

12/18/17: Advocates Celebrate Council’s Fulfillment of Key Industrial Action Plan Promises Today, the Industrial Jobs Coalition joined with City Council members to celebrate the upcoming passage of zoning protections for the City’s 21 Industrial Business Zones (IBZs). These protections, meant to clamp down on competing non-industrial uses and ensure space for good-paying jobs, create the foundation for broader zoning reforms. The Coalition, having advocated for this crucial protection as a part of the Mayor’s 2015 Industrial Action Plan, thanked members of the Council who led the charge through the land use review process.

12/14/17: Council Small Business Report Includes Key Provisions of USBNYC Platform The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) and United for Small Business NYC (USBNYC) applaud City Council on the release of their 2017 report, Planning for Retail Diversity: Supporting NYC’s Neighborhood Businesses. The report provides a timely and broad analysis of issues faced by independent retailers across the five boroughs and offers a robust template of policy solutions and recommendations to address these problems. It is the first time the Administration has provided a detailed platform to address the crisis of retail displacement in New York City, an ongoing issue that impacts small businesses and commercial corridors citywide.

12/11/17: This is What a Bad Loan Looks Like Tenants, community advocates and policy makers have been ringing the alarm bell about bad mortgage lending in mutlifamily buildings. Over the past few years, we have opened up an important dialogue with regulators and banks who understand that bad lending is a direct threat to our neighborhoods. Based on our research and analysis, we define “bad lending” as mortgages that may be speculative because they appear to be underwritten based on the assumption that rent-regulated tenants paying modest rents will leave at an unusually high rate. We also define “bad lending” as loans to developers with a documented history of harassment and displacement of tenants as a business model.

12/7/17: Cypress Hills LDC Gets at The Heart of The Community Reinvestment Act: Local Banks Must Reinvest Locally On December 1^st, the East Brooklyn Reinvestment Committee, a group of East New York activists and Board and Staff members of the Cypress Hills LDC (CHLDC) held their annual Bank Reinvestment Forum. This powerful forum really gets at the heart of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which requires banks to reinvest and lend equitably in the local areas where they do business – it doesn’t get any more local than this. This forum has historically focused on the five banks in the Cypress Hills / City Line area of Brooklyn: M&T, Chase, Citibank, Capital One, and City National of NJ (which has since closed). In recent years, it has expanded to include banks throughout Brooklyn Community District 5, which also includes Bank of America and HSBC.

12/5/17: Taking Care of Business: Understanding Commercial Displacement in New York City New York City’s small businesses are in the midst of a displacement crisis. As stores shutter and communities lose long-time institutions, the mechanisms and realities of this crisis are left under-examined. The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) analyzed the economic vitality of small businesses across the city, neighborhood-by-neighborhood.

11/30/17: What Would the Trump Tax Bill Mean for NYC Affordable Housing? Although Trump has broken more norms than we thought possible since his election, the tenets of affordable housing development in New York City have remained unscathed and stable for the past year, until now.

11/30/17: VICTORY: City Council to Pass Certificate of No Harassment Legislation The Coalition Against Tenant Harassment is thrilled that Certificate of No Harassment (CONH) legislation passed in City Council today. An expansion of CONH beyond the Clinton Special District has been a goal in numerous community campaigns for decades, and our coalition in particular has organized and advocated for the past several years to make this program a reality.

11/29/17: Community Perspective: Why Folks Are Saying No to the Jerome Avenue Rezoning The proposed rezoning of Jerome Avenue takes a step forward with the City Planning Commission hearing taking place today. This hearing comes as community residents continue to express serious concerns that their voices have not been truly heard in the rezoning process or their feedback meaningfully incorporated by the City.

11/28/17: Why Is a Private Developer Trying to Walk Away with This Affordable Building? A lawsuit currently being heard in State Supreme Court tells a troubling story for the tenants of a small affordable building in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx, and a troubling story for local housing policy.

11/22/17: Even On Small Business Saturday, the City is a Tough Place for Neighborhood Businesses It’s that time of year again, with late November bringing the start of the most lucrative time of year for many businesses of all sizes. In an effort to bring some of these economic windfalls to local communities and main streets, Small Business Saturday has become a national phenomenon. As New York’s small businesses face increased displacement pressures, it’s a good time to look at what small businesses mean for New York City’s economy and how this varies citywide.

11/2/17: City Steps Back from their Industrial Action Plan Almost two years to the day since Mayor de Blasio announced his historic Industrial Action Plan, the City seems to be stepping back from their plan. Yesterday, the City Planning Commission voted on a proposal to mix manufacturing and self-storage in core industrial areas. Rather than vote on the City’s own original proposal to limit self-storage, which was supported by the majority of community boards and industrial service providers, the Department of City Planning (DCP) put forward an amended proposal that will continue the self-storage industry’s as-of-right access to our core industrial areas. As the final stop in Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), the City Council has the power to make alterations and corrections to a proposal before the text is enacted.

11/1/17: HPD Takes Important Step Forward for “Permanent Affordability” New York City took an unannounced, but important step towards making the affordable housing it finances “permanently affordability.” In the most recent round of Request for Proposals (RFPs) issued by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the City created a new regulatory requirement that will allow HPD to ensure that all affordable housing built on city-owned land through a Request for Proposals process will keep the affordability benefit in perpetuity.

10/31/17: Cypress Hills Small Businesses Demand City Action Over Awning Fines Small businesses along the Fulton Street commercial corridor in Brooklyn came out in force last week to urge City attention at resolving challenges to running their businesses. The Cypress Hills Business Partners Merchant Association and local business owners highlighted the heavy fines associated with awning violations, which has led some shopkeepers to face fines of as much as $20,000. These fines, in addition to increasing rents and a lack of commercial protections, make it harder for businesses to afford their space and stay open. Most of the businesses that have been targeted are immigrant owned. Along with Councilmember Espinal and State Senator Martin Malavé Dilan, immigrant business owners urged the City to intervene and alleviate this pressure.

10/25/17: What Makes an Effective Philanthropic Collaborative? Change Capital Fund Turns 20-Years-Old Change Capital Fund, gearing up for its 20^th year, has proven to be an unusually effective philanthropic collaborative. The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) has long believed that philanthropy – both by banks and private foundations – should focus much of their giving at the local level to neighborhood-based organizations that are effectively addressing problems and building grassroots capacity for greater change. We also believe that sometimes philanthropy should have a strategic theory of how targeted funding can have a larger impact beyond any individual grant.

10/23/17: New ANHD White Paper: Why is Non-Bank Lending Highest in Communities of Color? New York is a city of renters, but nearly a third of New Yorkers own their own homes. The stock of 2-4 family homes provides an important source of affordable rental housing in many neighborhoods. Secure and affordable homeownership has long been recognized as an important way for people to build wealth and move into the middle class. Yet, lower-income people and people of color have consistently been locked out of the housing market or targeted with harmful lending products and practices. In the years since the 2007 economic crisis, low- and moderate-income (LMI) New Yorkers and people of color have faced significant barriers to homeownership in New York City.

10/17/17: New ANHD White Paper: The For-Profitization of Affordable Housing Development and the de Blasio Plan Non-profit affordable housing developers have played a key role in New York City housing plans since the beginning of the modern, city-backed affordable housing model. The role of for-profit developers has grown over the years, leaving community development practitioners to question whether affordable housing development has become overly reliant on for-profit developers and whether the level of public benefit created by these projects has diminished.

10/12/17: How are Seniors Served by the Mayor’s Housing Plan? Communities are paying close attention these days to exactly what kind of affordable housing is being promised to their neighborhood because they want to ensure that the housing is really meeting the greatest local and city need.  Over the last several weeks, ANHD has published analyses of the affordability levels of units created under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Housing New York plan and how they compare to the need of New York City residents.

9/28/17: Is the Mayor’s Housing Plan Serving the Greatest Need? By Borough Two weeks ago, ANHD put out an infographic comparing the affordable housing created and preserved under the de Blasio administration’s Housing New York Plan to the real needs of New York City’s residents. Below, we continue our analysis with a borough-by-borough breakdown comparing the share of each borough’s rent burdened population at each income level to the percentage of Housing New York units serving them.

9/13/17: Bodegas, Not Brodegas #StopBrodega The recently reported business idea for Bodega (hereafter referred to as Brodega), a glorified vending machine aiming to replace the venerable New York institution, is not a bodega at all; it’s an engine for displacing hardworking business owners.

9/13/17: How Does Housing New York Measure Up To New Yorkers’ Needs? In July, the de Blasio administration released its annual report on progress made towards the target numbers of affordable units created and preserved as laid out in the Housing New York Plan. Tomorrow, the City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings will hold an HPD oversight hearing which look at the tools the City uses to create and preserve affordable housing. But fundamentally, we need to ask: is the Housing New York Plan designed to meet the housing needs of New York City?

9/8/17: Better Small Business Lending Requires Better Data Stories and studies have long demonstrated disparities in small business lending, particularly for minority- and women-owned businesses, but we lack the data to quantify these disparities and hold lenders accountable. Small business data must be made public.

8/25/17: East Harlem Stakeholders Demand No Vote at CPC Rezoning Hearing On Wednesday afternoon, at a packed venue, the City Planning Commission (CPC) held their public hearing on the proposed East Harlem rezoning. The CPC hearing comes after both Community Board 11 and Gale Brewer, the Manhattan Borough President, voted no on the proposed rezoning, and the bulk of the testimony heard from the East Harlem community on Wednesday strongly encouraged the CPC to do the same. 

8/22/17: The City’s Decision to Begin Jerome Avenue Rezoning Public Review Process After Community Opposition March Highlights the Significant Work Ahead Yesterday afternoon the City Planning Commission kicked off the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) for the City’s proposed Jerome Avenue rezoning, beginning the seven-month public review process that will culminate in a binding vote by the City Council. Yet the decision to start ULURP came just days after the community marched in opposition, demanding that the City immediately stop the rezoning from moving forward until it has firm commitments in place to address displacement, deep affordability, and labor standard concerns. The fact that the City chose to start ULURP regardless highlights the significant work they have ahead to meet the neighborhood’s vision.

8/17/17: The Updated AMI Cheat Sheet is Better Than Ever! Our Area Median Income (AMI) Cheat Sheet was so helpful that the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) was contacted by nearly 10 jurisdictions outside of New York State who wanted to make their own local versions. Since the AMI Cheat Sheet has gone from a handy dandy desk guide to a tool being used in offices, trainings, and community meetings throughout the City – and across the country – we’ve made some updates to both the methodology and the layout.

8/15/17: How to Not End Up on the Public Advocate’s “The Money Behind the Worst Landlords” List Today, Public Advocate Letitia James released The Money Behind the Worst Landlords where she is calling on the banks loaning money to the landlords on her annual Worst Landlord List to commit to using their financial influence to hold landlords accountable, demand repairs to dangerous buildings, and stop lending to those who are forcing tenants out with underhanded or illegal tactics.

8/9/17: East New York Coalition Calls for Community Benefits or No Development As the first neighborhood rezoning under the de Blasio Administration, the Coalition for Community Advancement: Progress for East New York has presented communities with a first look at how to approach the City on issues of displacement, affordability, and development. Tomorrow, their efforts will focus on ensuring community benefits are intrinsically part of new neighborhood developments.

8/3/17: HPD Takes Important Step Towards Responsible Stewardship of Public Land With Announcement of CLT Funding Last week, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) announced that four New York City groups will receive $1.65 million in funding to assist in the development, expansion, and education of community land trusts. While a modest sum, the move demonstrates a step from the City to support creative approaches to strengthening community control of public land resources. Many of ANHD’s groups and community members will directly benefit from this endeavor and it demonstrates the City’s commitment to exploring new programs to ensure that public land continues to be used for public interest purposes in perpetuity.

7/21/17: Congratulations to the 2016-2017 Graduates of the Center for Neighborhood Leadership Apprenticeship Program! Recently, we celebrated the graduation of a phenomenal class of organizing apprentices with the Center for Neighborhood Leadership (CNL). We are very proud of the graduates and all they have accomplished in the past 10 months!

7/17/17: As More and More Small Businesses Are Forced To Close, New York City Loses Its Heart and Soul Another of New York’s beloved eating establishments has closed down. Cup and Saucer, a staple on the Lower East Side for thirty years, was forced to shutter its gates for the last time as a result of a massive $7,600 monthly increase in rent*.

7/14/17: Thousands of Tenants March on Washington to Protest HUD Budget Cuts “When they say cut back, we say fight back… Cut Back! Fight Back!” On Wednesday, July 12^th, thousands of tenants from across the U.S. gathered in Washington, D.C. for a day of action protesting the proposed $7.4 billion funding cut to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). With their “Carson’s Cuts Kill” signs, the crowd chanted, “Fight, fight, fight, housing is a right!” as they gathered for a Town Hall to start the day. U.S. Senate and House Representatives – including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York – spoke to the crowd, along with public housing residents, renters, and homeowners, who told stories of their own struggles against eviction.

7/6/17: WNYC Story on How Landlords Push Out Tenants for Profit Through Predatory Equity Tenant harassment and displacement as a business strategy threatens New York City’s rent-regulated housing stock, one of our most important sources of affordable housing. New York City has over one million rent-regulated units, nearly half of all rental units.

7/6/17: Tenants of the Bronx and UWS Stand Up For Their Rights and Call For a Certificate of No Harassment Last week, two different local protest actions once again highlighted the harassment tactics that are displacing low-income tenants in neighborhoods across the city.

6/29/17: New Map of Preferential Rents Shows the Displacement Risk for Rezoning Neighborhoods and Low Income Communities City-wide Last week, ProPublica launched a new tool mapping the number of rent stabilized apartments with preferential rents by zip code, throughout New York City. The results are eye-opening. Almost a third of all rent stabilized apartments in New York currently have preferential rents: over 250,000 units citywide.

6/14/17: Advocates Launch Small Business Anti-Displacement Platform Today, advocates launched the platform for United for Small Business NYC (USBnyc), a coalition of community organizations across New York City fighting to protect New York’s small businesses and non-residential tenants from the threat of displacement, with particular focus on owner-operated, low-income, minority-run businesses that serve low-income and minority communities. As part of their platform launch, USBnyc outlined recommendations to prevent small business displacement through a variety of policy and legislative solutions. In the coming months, the coalition will engage community organizations, commercial corridors, and elected officials to fight back against commercial displacement together.

6/14/17: A Step Forward to Slow the Double Dip of 421-a / Inclusionary Housing Benefits Yesterday’s The Real Deal article reported that the City is considering limitations on the how the 421-a developer’s tax break and the inclusionary housing program commingle. Currently, residential developers who receive the overly generous 421-a tax break in very high-density (R10) sites count can transfer air rights to other very high density developments nearby and also receive extra space for every square foot of affordable housing built.

6/6/17: One Year After Rezoning, East New York and Cypress Hills Residents Gather to Keep Up the Fight East New York and Cypress Hills residents came out this past Saturday for a Community Assembly hosted by the Coalition for Community Advancement, seeking to inform and engage community members one year out from a neighborhood-wide rezoning. The rezoning of East New York – approved in April, 2016 – was the first, and to date only, neighborhood rezoning to pass as part of the de Blasio administration’s Housing New York Plan. But as impassioned speakers and community leaders reminded the crowd throughout the day, the work of the local community in this process is far from done.

6/1/17: Industrial Jobs Coalition Fact Sheet: Why does the proposed self-storage special permit matter? City Supports Quality Jobs with New Land Use Action, but Self Storage Industry Fights Back – Here’s Why We Have To Win The City recently certified a land-use proposal to limit self-storage development in core industrial areas. This step forward is a significant victory for City Council members and community groups that care about a progressive industrial policy that promotes quality jobs and equitable economic development. But the self-storage industry association is pushing back, and we have to make sure that we keep the momentum to win this important step forward.

5/24/17: The “Bad Boy” Carveout What the Attorney General’s Court Filing Says About Signature Bank, Madison Realty Capital, and the Business of Tenant Harassment There has been a growing drumbeat of public criticism of tenant harassment in buildings with mortgage loans from Signature Bank, culminating last month in a tenant picket in front of Signature Banks’s Annual Investors Conference. Tenants have been telling the bank and the media that the harassment they are experiencing is both severe and intentional and that the bank should be aware of the damage their lending is enabling.

5/22/17: CASA’s New White Paper Gets to the Heart of The Displacement Debate Last week, Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) released a powerful new white paper, “Resisting Displacement in the Southwest Bronx.” Drawing on research, their own organizing experience and the experience of tenants in the neighborhood, the paper lays out the myriad displacement pressures Bronx residents face, the ways in which a rezoning would exacerbate those pressures and tangible solutions that must be put in place to alleviate them.

5/17/17: East Harlem Residents Push Back on City Rezoning Plan at Packed Community Board Hearing A crowd overflowed the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College last night for the Community Board 11 Land Use Committee’s public hearing on the proposed East Harlem neighborhood rezoning. This is the first public testimony of the seven-month public review process, the first chance for the community to respond publicly to the City’s plans and, most importantly, a chance for the City to show whether it is in fact adopting a community-based planning approach to rezonings.

5/4/17: Just in time for Spring! The AMI Cheat Sheet 2017 Edition A lot of people are talking about affordable housing policy these days. And you can’t have a conversation about affordable housing policy without talking about Area Median Income (AMI) levels. But what do those AMI levels actually mean? 30% of AMI, 60% of AMI, 120 of AMI%?  Throwing those numbers around doesn’t make things clear for most people, unless you can translate that number into the rents and incomes everyone understands.

4/20/17: Tenants Take Demands for Responsible Lending to Signature Bank Shareholders Meeting This morning, tenants from 10 community organizations and their allies, including Senator Brad Hoylman, Senator Gustavo Rivera, and a representative from Public Advocate Leticia James’s office filled the sidewalk with a picket line outside of Signature Bank’s annual shareholders meeting in Manhattan. At the rally, the tenants and elected officials tried to hand-deliver a letter to the board of directors to demand responsible lending practices to protect their rights and health, and preserve our stock of affordable rent-regulated housing.

4/8/17: Albany Agrees to Resurrect the 421-a Tax Exemption Albany has come to an agreement on that includes resurrecting the 421-a real estate tax exemption, with a vote on the full State budget expected today. There is no acceptable reason that everyone should be expected to pay their taxes, except for luxury real estate developers. Taxpayers and tenants should be outraged.

3/30/17: More Evidence That 421-a Can Wait The important debate around the 421-a tax exemption may come to a head in Albany by Friday, but an article in yesterday’s Crain’s New York makes clear that new development is moving ahead either way, a fact that should change the debate.

3/23/17: Dump Trump’s unaffordable N.Y. real estate tax break, aka 421-a If you want to know who really benefits from the real estate tax abatement known as 421-a, look no further than a lawsuit filed by then-developer Donald Trump 36 years ago, which to this day inflicts this unaffordable burden on New York City, costing $1.3 billion this year alone in foregone property taxes. A New York Daily News Piece by Brooklyn Assemblywoman Latrice Walker and Brooklyn State Senator Kevin Parker.

3/7/17: The First Attack on Public Housing The Trump budget cuts to New York City have begun, as the Wall Street Journal today announced a sudden $35 million cut to New York City Public Housing. This could be the first of far more severe cuts to come, as New York City’s budget and the needs of our most vulnerable residents are targeted.

2/21/17: Bad Landlord, Bad Lending Continued Signature Bank continues to finance known bad-actor landlord Ved Parkash

2/16/17: Focus on Economic Issues Is Necessary To Citywide Equity ANHD applauds Mayor de Blasio’s call for more good jobs in the City in this year’s State of the City address.

2/13/17: What Happened To Housing Development When 421a Was Suspended? An ANHD White Paper, February 2017 The real estate industry has long claimed that the 421a tax exemption is absolutely necessary to get new rental housing built in our City and that this justifies the enormous cost of the program. But new data and recent reports from policy experts show this is not true. In fact, the 421a exemption likely has been making new housing development more difficult all along by inflating land prices.

2/8/17: Understanding REBNY’s New 421-a Tax Exemption Proposal In January 2017, a revised 421-a Tax Exemption, rebranded and given the title “The Affordable New York Housing Program,” was introduced and inserted into the proposed FY18 New York State budget. This version of the 421-a Tax Exemption is essentially an expanded and amended version of the expired June 2015 exemption that passed the legislature but with modifications intended to resolve the conflict created from a trade union wage provision that was inserted at the last minute, which subsequently led to legal complications and suspension of the exemption.

2/2/17: USBNYC and ANHD Support Yemeni and Muslim Small Business Strike United for Small Business NYC (USBNYC), a coalition convened by ANHD, supports Muslim bodega and grocery owners striking today in response to the “Muslim ban” executive order. USBNYC includes community organizations from across New York City fighting to protect New York’s small businesses and non-residential tenants from the threat of displacement, with a particular focus on owner-operated, low-income, minority and immigrant-run businesses that serve low-income, immigrant, and minority communities.

1/19/17: ‘Fight’ Over Zoning Reform Should Be About Jobs, Not Industry Interests Tuesday’s Crain’s story on the expected fight between the self-storage industry and City Hall announces industry efforts to weaken City industrial policy. The article recognizes the delay on crucial land use reforms yet improperly frames the state of current industrial policy. The City’s focus on the industrial and manufacturing sector to advance economic equity is the result of extensive research and assessment on the subject. The Mayor’s 10-Point Industrial Action Plan aims to support the creation and sustainability of good paying industrial jobs by limiting non-industrial uses through zoning reform.

1/17/17: Welcoming the Mayor’s New Housing Economic Development Team Today, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced new commissioner appointments to lead his Housing and Economic Development team. The new commissioners will lead the critical task of shaping the direction of housing, land use, and job growth of NYC neighborhoods for the next phase of the de Blasio Administration.

1/11/17: ANHD Opposes the Nomination of Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of HUD Statement to Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten G. Gillibrand to reject Dr. Carson’s nomination. Dear Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand: The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development, Inc. urges you to reject the nomination of Dr. Benjamin Carson for the position of Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

2016

12/13/16: Bad Landlord, Bad Lending Last week, tenants living in a portfolio of 20 buildings in the Lower East Side owned by the notorious landlord Rafael Toledano took to the streets, accompanied by elected officials and a brass marching band, and marched from the headquarters of Madison Realty Capital to Signature Bank to call them out for financing Toledano.

12/13/16: In Memoriam: Yolanda Luz Coca 1956 – 2016, The Heart of Our Movement The ANHD family mourns the loss of Yolanda Luz Coca, who passed away last week after a battle with cancer. Yolanda was a dedicated tenant organizer and an extraordinary person. Profoundly committed to her Catholic faith, Yolanda was the heart and soul of the anti-displacement struggle of her parish at St. Joseph Patron in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

12/8/16: City Announces First Step to Expand Manufacturing Jobs With Innovative Not-For-Profit Industrial Development Fund Mayor de Blasio took an important step towards more equitable economic development policy last year with the creation of the innovative Not-for-Profit Industrial Developer Fund. Today, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) announced the selection of the first awardee under this model program, and the project demonstrates how the Mayor’s initiative can have an important impact on expanding quality manufacturing jobs.

11/22/16: #EqEDRisks16 Data Snapshot: Small Businesses The holiday season is upon us, which means the start of the most lucrative time of year for many businesses of all sizes. In an effort to bring some of these economic windfalls to local communities and main streets. Small Business Saturday has become a national phenomenon. As New Yorkers get ready to open their wallets for the holiday spending season, it’s a good time to look at what Small Businesses mean for NYC’s economy and how this varies by neighborhoods. As part of How is Economic Opportunity Threatened in Your Neighborhood?, ANHD analyzed the share of people employed by small businesses and the number of small business loans made available in 2015 across all of New York City’s neighborhoods.

11/16/16: ANHD releases updated 2016 Equitable Economic Development Indicators Risk Chart

11/10/16: Albany Gives Our Budget Away to REBNY as the City Faces Massive Loss of Federal Support The big real estate developers lobbying group, REBNY, announced a proposed new deal today to bring back the controversial 421a Developers Tax Exemption. As ANHD pointed out in a blog last week, the proposal is unconscionable on its face because it will give developers an additional 10-year exemption, on top of an already grossly excessive 25-year proposed exemption, creating a tax break that is unprecedented and unjustifiable on any fiscal or programmatic grounds – all at the expense of New York City taxpayers.

11/10/16: The Work We Begin Tomorrow To The ANHD Community, Words failed many of us Wednesday morning when we woke up to the reality that a nativist, misogynist, racist demagogue had won the Presidency of the United States. I know that we will each be processing this shocking news as individuals, families, organizations, communities, and as a city.

11/3/16: Industrial Action Plan One Year Later: What Has Moved and What Hasn’t On the one-year anniversary of Mayor de Blasio’s unveiling of the Industrial Plan, various critical components of the 10-Point Vision remains unfulfilled. While aspects of the plan have moved forward, others have either seen little progress or gone a different direction than the original intent.

11/2/16: Let’s Lift the Caps on Permits for Street Vendors After 30 years of waiting, many of New York City’s street vendors may finally be able to operate legally. United for Small Business NYC (USBnyc), a working group convened by ANHD, supports lifting the caps on permits for street vendors the proposed Street Vendor Modernization Act.

11/1/16: Defending Access to Banking Means Defending the IDNYC  The New York City-issued identification program – “IDNYC” – is a powerful tool meant to bring all New York City residents into the service mainstream and is an important statement of our shared municipal citizenship. Unfortunately, few banks have taken the step of allowing the IDNYC to be used as a primary ID, which has only continued the unnecessary marginalization of many immigrant communities in our city.

10/21/16: Administration Misses Manufacturing Use Group Reform Deadline  Almost one year ago, the Administration and the City Council, with the support of many of us in the economic development community, announced the Industrial Action Plan, a ten-point roadmap for strengthening the industrial and manufacturing sector, a growing source of middle-class jobs and entrepreneurial opportunity for New Yorkers in all five boroughs. Unfortunately, the Administration’s public stated October 15th deadline has passed, and the promise of use group reform remains unfulfilled.

10/7/16: Wait, What Impact Does the 421a Developers’ Tax Exemption Actually Have?  The 421a Developers’ Tax Exemption is the most important and most expensive New York City tax incentive that most people have never heard of, and has been an underlying fact of real estate development for the past 40 years.

9/30/16: Community Members explained what “OurBronx” means at Jerome Avenue Rezoning Hearing  Last night, hundreds of tenants, workers, business owners, and other local community members packed the Department of City Planning (DCP) scoping hearing for the Jerome Avenue Rezoning. Speaker after speaker expressed concerns about how the proposed rezoning would impact existing community members, and voiced skepticism as to whether, a year and a half into the process, the City was taking seriously the community’s concerns.

9/27/16: Dear New York Times Real Estate Section  Your front-page article this weekend, with the headline “Finding Washington Heights” and gauzy illustration of a beatific white woman framed in a sea of darker faces, went too far.

9/26/16: City Enacts New Small Business Protections  Today commercial tenants experiencing harassment are able to take legal action for the first time, thanks to a new law authored by Councilmember Robert Cornegy. This legislation, supported by ANHD and the United for Small Businesses NYC coalition, is the first step in a long road to creating real, meaningful commercial tenant protections and just part of a much needed, broader toolkit of small business supports.

9/22/16: ANHD Releases Interactive On-Line Data Map That Pinpoints Displacement  The tenant displacement crisis is at the center of neighborhood concerns and City policy focus. We cannot allow market forces to price and push out our City’s diverse communities. ANHD today released the Displacement Alert Project Map (the DAP Map) that, for the first time, presents key information in an interactive, easy-to-use map that local activists, service providers and policy makers have long needed.

9/21/16: In Memoriam: David Pagan, a lion of the community development movement  The ANHD family mourns the loss of David Pagan, who passed away yesterday after a short illness.

9/7/16:  What’s Going On With the Recent Rezoning News?  August is usually a quiet time for City policy news, but this past month two zoning and affordable housing struggles made headlines. One was the decision by Upper Manhattan Councilmember Rodriguez to block a vote on the proposed Sherman Plaza housing development, the other was a decision by Queens Councilmember Van Bramer to block a vote on the proposed Barnett Avenue affordable housing development in Sunnyside. The votes made news because they were unexpected, and because affordable housing issues are urgent.

8/18/14: Next Steps for New York City’s Responsible Banking Act. The fate of the New York City Responsible Banking Act (RBA) is now in the hands of the courts. Tomorrow – Tuesday August 19th – is an important step when the judge will hear oral arguments on the RBA, one of the strongest banking ordinances in the country. Hearing is open to the public Tuesday, August 19, 2pm in the Federal Courthouse at 40 Foley Square. Click here for blog

7/31/14: Borough President Rejects Astoria Cove Rezoning: In a marked step forward for equitable development, Borough President Melinda Katz has weighed in on the proposed Astoria Cove development – and found it wanting. Click here for blog

7/22/14: Poor Door is a Poor Excuse: Developers are taking the subsidies for affordable housing and then treating the renters as second class. Click here for blog

7/17/14: Valley National Bank under Fire from Advocates: Weak CRA record + no public benefits plan should not equal permission to expand. Click here for blog

6/30/14: Council Boosts Support for Housing in City Budget. The New York City Council passed the 2914/15 City Budget, including a significant increase in funding for two programs championed by ANHD and our member groups, that support community-based work to preserve affordable housing: 1) Housing Preservation Initiative (HPI) was increased to $2 million to expand to include 15 more districts, totalling 40 council districts where affordable housing is most at risk; 2) Community Consultant Contract (CCC) was restored and expanded to $1 million, reversing a 50% cut from recent years that had undermined program effectiveness. Click here for blog