Mitchell lama
One way to do that is to have HPD and DHCR enforce reforms in the structures of the building management boards. If the city has the authority and willpower to take over land through eminent domain, there is no reason that that authority cannot be harnessed by taking a more active and meaningful role in managing Mitchell-Lama housing. The laissez-faire attitude by these agencies is not working – residents need accountability and oversight. Both DHCR and HPD must take a more hands-on approach to ensuring that resources are being allocated in the right places. We need a robust approach to both preserve the physical condition of Mitchell-Lama housing and ensure transparency in the system’s governance. This needs to change, for the sake of those living under these conditions, and to restore accountability and integrity in the system. Instead of safeguarding the integrity of the Mitchell-Lama program, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the state’s Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) have allowed these select boards to defy the rules regarding apartment allocation, contracting and financial reporting. Many of these units have been converted to market-rate apartments, while more than 1,000 have entered into programs providing vouchers.įor too long, the Mitchell-Lama portfolio has lacked funds for regular maintenance and oversight, and many of the boards overseeing these buildings have run amok, playing their own rules while ignoring the needs of residents who generally do not participate in the voting process. Since 2005, New York City has lost nearly 33,000 of its Mitchell-Lama rental stock and, since 1990, eight developments in Brooklyn alone, totaling almost 4,300 units of affordable housing, have left the program, according to Tenants & Neighbors. RELATED: Eric Adams makes pitch to Amazon These developments can also be found in Brownsville, a neighborhood with the highest concentration of public housing in the United States. Brooklyn is home to 35 such developments, with more than 18,000 housing units, ranging from Atlantic Terminal I and II in Fort Greene to Starrett City in East New York. New York City was built on a thriving middle class that, in the middle of the 20 th century, came home to a newly erected Mitchell-Lama community. This essential housing supply faces threats including conversion to market-rate housing and a lack of upkeep. We hear it every day in community meetings, on the streets across Brooklyn, and on social media and we see it in buy-outs, displacement and rising rents. Today, these developments are under attack from systematic neglect and deliberate sabotage by predatory developers looking to cash-in.Īs a pillar of the city’s most critical affordable housing stock, Mitchell-Lama is in crisis. Public housing was once the egalitarian dream of urban planners in post-war New York City, uniting people from all walks of life in a social experiment that prospered.