Housing Conservation Coordinators

Last updated

Housing Conservation Coordinators (HCC) is a not-for-profit organization located at 777 Tenth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, USA, that provides legal representation, engages in tenant and community organizing, installs energy efficient systems through their Weatherization Program and offers technical training.

Contents

History

HCC was founded in 1972 at the time of New York City's financial crisis and assisted tenants of buildings abandoned by their landlords to buy their buildings — if the city had seized them for back taxes — under the Tenant Interim Lease Program. Such tenant-owned buildings were organized as low-income cooperatives called Housing Development Fund Corporations. When the city attempted to raise the purchase price they led the "$250 for Clinton and Chelsea Too" campaign [1] There are more than seventy low-income cooperatives in Hell's Kitchen, purchased from the city after tax foreclosure or directly from the landlords with HCC loans.

HCC has had contact with tenants in roughly 90% of the buildings in Hell's Kitchen.

Technical training

HCC training programs taught tenants how to operate and repair a boiler, enabling tenants of abandoned buildings to provide themselves their basic needs.

Income limits

HCC can only represent tenant households with total combined incomes below specific amounts.

SizeIncome limit
1$38,000
2$41,500
3$44,000
4$47,500
5$51,000

Footnotes

  1. Clinton is the municipal planning designation for the district known to its residents as Hell's Kitchen.

Related Research Articles

Hells Kitchen, Manhattan Neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City

Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be bordered by 34th Street to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the east, and the Hudson River to the west.

Public housing Residential properties owned by a government

Public housing, also known as social housing or subsidized housing, is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local.

Housing cooperative Type of housing development that emphasizes self-governance and quasi-communal living

A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distinctive form of home ownership that have many characteristics that differ from other residential arrangements such as single family home ownership, condominiums and renting.

Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937, often called Section 8, as repeatedly amended, authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households in the United States. Fort Lauderdale, Florida Housing Authority Director William H. Lindsey, upon the advice of Housing Authority attorney J. Richard Smith, initially developed 11(b) financing in the early 1970s to accommodate a local savings and loan interested in assisting with urban renewal projects Lindsey eventually brought to fruition. This was the initial impetus for the subsequent development of the now well known Section 8 Program. Of the 5.2 million American Households that received rental assistance in 2018, approximately 2.2 million of those households received a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher. 68% of total rental assistance in the United States goes to seniors, children, and those with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development manages Section 8 programs.

Subsidized housing is government sponsored economic assistance aimed towards alleviating housing costs and expenses for impoverished people with low to moderate incomes. In the United States, subsidized housing is often called "affordable housing." Forms of subsidies include direct housing subsidies, non-profit housing, public housing, rent supplements/vouchers, and some forms of co-operative and private sector housing. According to some sources, increasing access to housing may contribute to lower poverty rates.

State housing

State housing is a system of public housing in New Zealand, offering low-cost rental housing to residents on low to moderate incomes. Some 69,000 state houses are managed by Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, most of which are owned by the Crown. In excess of 31,000 former state houses exist, which are now privately owned after large-scale sell-offs during recent decades. Since 2014, state housing has been part of a wider social housing system, which also includes privately owned low-cost housing.

Manhattan Plaza Residential skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

Manhattan Plaza is a large federally subsidized residential complex of 46 floors and 428 feet (130 m) at 400 and 484 West 43rd Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Opened in 1977, it has 1,689 units and about 3,500 tenants. 70% of the tenants are from the performing arts, 15% are neighborhood residents, and 15% are elderly. It occupies the city block bounded north by 43rd Street, east by Ninth Avenue, south by 42nd Street, and west by Tenth Avenue. Developed by HRH Construction, since January 2004 it has been owned by The Related Companies. Manhattan Plaza is the subject of a documentary titled Miracle on 42nd Street, released in 2017.

Single room occupancy Low-cost housing format

Single room occupancy is a form of housing that is typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres. In the 2010s, some SRO units may have a small refrigerator, microwave and sink.

A slumlord is a slang term for a landlord, generally an absentee landlord with more than one property, who attempts to maximize profit by minimizing spending on property maintenance, often in deteriorating neighborhoods, and to tenants that they can intimidate. Severe housing shortages allow slumlords to charge higher rents, and when they can get away with it, to break rental laws.

Mitchell–Lama Housing Program Housing Program

The Mitchell–Lama Housing Program is a non-subsidy governmental housing guarantee in the state of New York. It was sponsored by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred Lama. It was signed into law in 1955 as The Limited-Profit Housing Companies Act.

Rent control in New York is a means of limiting the amount of rent charged on dwellings. Rent control and rent stabilization are two programs used in parts of New York state. In addition to controlling rent, the system also prescribes rights and obligations for tenants and landlords.

Subsidized housing in the United States Administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households

Subsidized housing in the United States is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were 1.0 million public housing units.

Public housing policies in Canada includes rent controls, as well as subsidized interest rates and grants. Early public housing policy in Canada consisted of public-private lending schemes which focused on expanding home ownership among the middle class. The first major housing initiative in Canada was the Dominion Housing Act of 1935, which increased the amount of credit available for mortgage loans.

The Coalition for Economic Survival, or CES is a grassroots, non-profit community organization. CES works in the greater Los Angeles area in working to influence policy makers to improve the lives of low and moderate income people.

Housing Development Fund Corporation or HDFC is a special type of limited equity housing cooperative in New York City which is incorporated under Article XI of the New York State Private Housing Finance Law (PHFL) and the Business Corporation Law (BCL). Under this law, the city of New York is able to sell buildings directly to tenant or community groups to provide low-income housing. Many HDFCs were created through a process of co-op conversion of a foreclosed, city-owned property. As of 2008, over 1,000 HDFC cooperatives have been developed in the city.

The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, or UHAB, is a non-profit organization in New York City that helps create and support self-help housing. UHAB works with residents to acquire, rehabilitate and manage their apartments. In the process the organization creates and helps sustain high-quality limited-equity housing cooperatives that are to remain affordable, in perpetuity, to people of low and middle-income.

Riverside Park Community Residential skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

The Riverside Park Community apartment complex is a group of five buildings ranging in height from 11 to 35 stories at 3333 Broadway between West 133rd and 135th Streets, in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, United States. Completed in 1976, it was the largest residential structure in the United States. Together, the five buildings include 1,200 apartment units and were designed to accommodate nearly 1,190 families. The complex also includes the KIPP Infinity Middle School. The present manager of the property is the Urban American Management Corporation.

Non-profit housing developers build affordable housing for individuals under-served by the private market. The non-profit housing sector is composed of community development corporations (CDC) and national and regional non-profit housing organizations whose mission is to provide for the needy, the elderly, working households, and others that the private housing market does not adequately serve. Of the total 4.6 million units in the social housing sector, non-profit developers have produced approximately 1.547 million units, or roughly one-third of the total stock. Since non-profit developers seldom have the financial resources or access to capital that for-profit entities do, they often use multiple layers of financing, usually from a variety of sources for both development and operation of these affordable housing units.

Arise for Social Justice is a grassroots organization focused on furthering the rights of low-income people formed in 1985 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founding members centered the early activism of the group around their shared identity as women on welfare.

Affordable housing by country

Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a median household income as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. The challenges of promoting affordable housing varies by location.