Lower East Side resident Elizabeth Romero stood to let her feelings be known at the rally.
By Chris Lombardi
When Sheree Sano moved to New York City 25 years ago, the singer-songwriter wondered if she’d be able to find a home. First, she lived in a Queens apartment, two buses trips and a subway ride away from all her auditions and rehearsals. Later, she and four roommates shared a space in Chelsea with masonry falling through the ceiling.
Then, in 1988, Sano got lucky: She was approved for an apartment in Manhattan Plaza, an affordable-housing complex on 10th Ave. in Hell’s Kitchen for residents in the performing arts. Once here, she knew she had found something special. “State government, city government, federal government and the unions got together and made a miracle on 43nd Street,” she said.
So when Sano heard about this week’s rally to protest cuts in Section 8, one of the most extensive of the government-supported affordable-housing programs created in the 1970s, she realized she had to be there.
“Do we believe that people who work for a living have the right to live in New York?” she asked Chelsea Now. “Or do we all have to go into a shelter?”
On Wednesday, Sano joined hundreds of other tenants and advocates who jammed into Judson Memorial Church in the Village along with three members of Congress, including Chelsea/Clinton representative Jerrold Nadler. The topic was the 30-year-old Section 8 Assistance program, which offers rental assistance to millions of tenants in the U.S. every year. Like similar programs, Section 8 has long been subject to federal budget battles; this year, it faces a $2.4 billion shortfall, leading to a lack of assistance for owners of Section 8 buildings.
“I wish everyone had a landlord as progressive as we have at Manhattan Plaza,” Sano said. Her building is owned by Steven Ross’ Related Corporation, which got its start in the 1970s developing affordable housing. “They know that they get this deal from the federal government that pays the difference between my rent [which is set at 30 percent of the tenant’s income] and market-rate. Who’d turn that down?”
Actor-singer Nico Boccio, a resident of Manhattan Plaza for the past five years, said “without Section 8, literally I would probably be out on the street.” The 72-year-old currently occupies a 2,000-square-foot apartment in the complex—paying just $171 a month for his space. “And I struggle to pay that,” said Boccio, who survives off an actor’s pension and Social Security payments. “I just manage, begging and borrowing.”
He admitted to having confidence in Related as his building’s backer, but still attended the rally in support of his fellow Section 8 tenants to “make a joyful sound unto the Lord.”
Still, all Section 8 buildings are at risk of cracking due to the shortall—especially in complexes like Manhattan Plaza, which this year have only offered contracts for two-thirds of the previous year’s funding.
In New York City, most Section 8 assistance is tenant-based, with residents being issued vouchers by the New York City Housing Authority that offer private building owners federal reimbursement.
Despite some bad press and owner complaints, more than 53,000 participated in the tenant-based program in 2007—and that number is growing, NYCHA’s Howard Marder told Chelsea Now. (Downtown Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, who attended Wednesday’s rally, put the current figure at 90,000.)
Only 79 buildings in New York are “project-based” Section 8 buildings, where HUD contracts with the landlord and the units remain affordable from vacancy to vacancy. Nationally, these buildings provide affordable housing to nearly 1.3 million low-income households, most of which contain someone who is elderly or has a disability. In Chelsea, the French Apartments at 330 West 30th Street maintains 175 such units, while Section 8 covers all of Manhattan Plaza’s 1,649 units.
While Manhattan Plaza has committed to remain in Section 8 until 2024, many other buildings with the program have not. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that of New York’s 79 buildings using project-based vouchers, 9,503 units are currently at high risk of loss due to owners’ decisions to quit the program. Unless the $2.4 billion gap is filled, funding for the project-based Section 8 program is expected to last only through September 30, 2008. Without continued funding, residents of many of these buildings could face drastic increases in rent.
“We’ve been trying to work with building owners to get them to agree to stay in the program for 20 more years,” said John Raskin, organizing director of Housing Conservation Coordinators, who attended Wednesday’s meeting. “But landlords are getting nervous.” At Hudson View I Apts. in Harlem, which houses 93 low-income families, owner representatives have said that insecure funding is forcing the owner’s hand to terminate participation in Section 8.
“We must take steps to address the current shortfalls in the project-based Section 8 funding,” said Rep. Nadler in statement. “This program is arguably this nation’s most successful, large-scale, public-private partnership to provide safe, decent and affordable housing for low-income and working Americans, seniors and the disabled. But for the last several years, this program has been greatly under-funded. The Bush Administration, instead of asking for the proper level of funding, has only guaranteed short-term payments to landlords, which may ultimately result in the permanent loss of these precious units of affordable housing. I reject that approach, and back efforts to provide support for important programs like project-based Section 8 funding.”
At the rally Wednesday, Nadler personally thanked the tenants for coming. “We shouldn’t have to be here,” he said. “We can fight in Congress, but if there isn’t an army behind our backs, we couldn’t much good.”
Downtown Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, who also attended the meeting, then offered a fiery admonishment of the Bush administration’s war spending—noting that the cost of one day in Iraq could cover the entire Section 8 shortfall.
“This is a fight for working families that we have to fight on every front,” she said. “You have to organize in every single development, in every single project.”
— with additional reporting by Patrick Hedlund
