Monday, September 23, 2024

Tag Archives: president trump

Thousands of Tenants March on Washington to Protest HUD Budget Cuts

Thousands of Tenants March on Washington to Protest HUD Budget Cuts

ANHD Member Groups Fight Back Against Trump’s Proposed $7.4 Billion Cuts to HUD Funding

“When they say cut back, we say fight back… Cut Back! Fight Back!” On Wednesday, July 12th, 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.

Omar from Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (AACE) said, “We have to fight this collectively because we won’t win individually.” He continued, “We must make sure our stories are heard. Politicians may support us, but do they really know the struggle?”

“Public housing is also part of our infrastructure. It’s not just tunnels and bridges,” said Rep. Espaillat directly addressing the need for the funding, which if cut would eliminate housing vouchers for 250,000 households and increase rents for all federally assisted households from the current 30 percent of income to 35 percent, according to the research from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as reported by U.S. News.

“A safe, stable, affordable home is the foundation for almost everything else in our lives. Raising children, finding good work, building a real community…everyone deserves a decent place to call home,” said Sen. Warren.

Tenants then gathered outside of Fannie Mae where they sang, danced, and cheered before marching to the HUD building where they staged a “die in” to illustrate the effect the proposed cutbacks would have on communities. After that, tenants marched through the streets of D.C. passing cars honking in support to the home of a Blackstone lobbyist – Blackstone, the largest private equity fund in the world, has become America’s largest corporate landlord. Blackstone has recently developed a fund to target senior housing, including manufactured housing communities. Their CEO, Steven Schwatzman, chairs President Trump’s Business Advisory Council.

The event was organized and sponsored by several organizations including New York Communities for Change, Community Voices Heard, Center for Popular Democracy, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and others. ANHD and many of our member groups were there to participate and show our support including Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Community Action for Safe Apartments, and Make The Road New York.

Secretary of HUD Dr. Ben Carson supports the proposed budget cuts, which would mean necessary aid to the most vulnerable people across the country will be lost. This march is just the beginning. We will not stand by as people are priced out of their homes and put out on the streets. We believe housing is a fundamental right regardless of income level, and we will continue to fight with our member groups and the broader housing movement to not only push back against these devastating HUD cuts, but to fully fund our communities’ housing needs.

Photos Courtesy of Melanie Breault

 

Melanie Breault, ANHD’s Communications Associate
Follow us on Twitter! @ANHDNYC

Dump Trump’s unaffordable N.Y. real estate tax break, aka 421-a

Dump Trump’s unaffordable N.Y. real estate tax break, aka 421-a

By Latrice Walker and Kevin Parker, New York Daily News

Latrice Walker is a Brooklyn assemblywoman and Kevin Parker is a Brooklyn state senator. They authored this article, which originally published March 23, 2017 on the New York Daily News.

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.

Now, Albany is considering bringing back the 421-a tax exemption, which expired last year in a political impasse. And this time, proposals would make the program even more expensive.

New York is facing a human services crisis as President Trump slashes the federal budget. The cuts to housing programs alone will add up to hundreds of millions of dollars, which will become a fiscal crisis as local government confronts the impossible task of filling those budget holes.

In the face of Trump’s cuts, we must think twice before giving away our tax revenues in a massive tax exemption created by Developer Trump.

The original 421-a tax exemption was created in the 1970s when the city economy was in crisis, and was designed to encourage new development in locations that were vacant or underutilized.

But in 1980, Trump bought the iconic Bonwit Teller department store on Fifth Ave., with plans to knock it down and build Trump Tower. Then, as now, Trump did not want to pay his taxes.

Told by Mayor Ed Koch that the Bonwit site could not qualify for a 421-a tax break, Trump and his lawyer – the infamous Roy Cohn – sued the city. In the end, they won a tax exemption worth $50 million for the extravagant Trump Tower, packed with luxury condominiums.

More importantly, Trump’s lawsuit established that all new development, even luxury projects, would be automatically eligible for the 421-a exemption. Koch said then: “The Court of Appeals has found that some of the most expensive and luxurious accommodations, not only in the United States but in the world, are entitled to a tax break. Does that make sense? Not to me.”

And not to most New Yorkers, either.

We never fixed this costly mistake, and now all these years later, with New York City one of the hottest real estate markets in the world, restoration of the 421-a program would continue to offer an automatic tax exemption. Most luxury developers in our city have paid little to no property taxes for decades, with their profits effectively subsidized by the public.

Even as the city added requirements to include affordable housing in some buildings receiving 421-a, at its core it remained a subsidy for luxury developers. The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development found that of the 152,402 residential units built under the program, only 12,700 were affordable.

With 421-a suspended for the past year, evidence has mounted in the meantime that the program may not even accomplish the most basic presumed purpose of encouraging new development. The number of new apartment building construction permits across the city is back up to previous levels, suggesting not only that the tax break was not needed, but that it may have been hindering development by inflating land prices.

Now, the real estate industry wants to bring the expired 421-a program back, and expand the benefit to make it even more costly, adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the expected annual cost to the city.

Meanwhile, Trump is planning unprecedented federal budget cuts that target essential services for New Yorkers. To respond to these budget cuts, the city will need to rely on exactly the money that we are giving away to the luxury real estate industry for Developer Trump’s tax exemption.

New Yorkers have shown up at the polls and in the streets to reject Trump’s policies. And New York’s elected officials have shown leadership by saying that our state will be a sanctuary of good policy to protect our residents.

It’s time for us to say no to Trump. His real estate tax exemption shouldn’t be rammed through the Albany budget process, but instead should be negotiated separately and apart from the budget, which is due April 1. We must take the time to get the details right.

The problems with the 421-a exemption are too expensive to ignore. For every dollar the program spends, only 11 cents go toward affordable housing, with the rest subsidizing luxury development. No one would call that a well-designed program.

It didn’t start out that way, and we have Donald Trump to thank for the exemption’s bad turn.

Let’s look at it in the light of day. Let’s decide who should benefit, and what it should cost. Let’s get it right this time.

The First Attack on Public Housing

The First Attack on Public Housing

The Risk to the City’s Budget

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.

Public Housing is the backbone of New York City’s affordable housing stock, ensuring stable homes for over 400,000 New Yorkers – the workers, students, parents, and seniors that make our City run. As New York City continues to struggle with homelessness, as market rates continue to soar out of reach for most New Yorkers, as we continue to lose our affordable privately-owned housing at alarming rates, public housing is a model we need to run towards, not away from. If the future of New York City is to include the people who currently call our City home, it must include a fully funded NYCHA. Unfortunately, this is likely only the beginning of federal attacks on housing programs.

Unfortunately, this is likely only the beginning of federal attacks on housing programs.

This cut comes at exactly the moment when the Albany legislature is considering reviving and expanding the 421a Real Estate Tax Exemption. Today, the NYC Independent Budget Office released a report making the cost of the 421a tax exemption clear– it currently costs New York City taxpayers upwards of $1.4 billion a year, and an expansion to the program being proposed by the real estate lobby, REBNY, will add at least $1.2 billion over the next ten years. For a program that overwhelmingly acts as an incentive for luxury development and does little to produce affordable housing, this is not acceptable.

Now is the time for the Mayor and the Governor to set policies and budgets that make it clear that New York’s priorities are to defend our most vulnerable communities against Trump’s attacks. Part of that response should be to end the wasteful and unnecessary 421a tax exemption.

2016 © | ANHD.org
ANHD 50 Broad Street Suite 1402, New York, NY 10004-2699 | Phone: 212.747.1117 | Fax: 212.747.1114