7 ms·

How Habitat for Humanity Went to Brooklyn and Poor Families Lost Their Homes

87 points by jeo1234 11y ago

djrogers 11y ago
tldr; In a neighborhood with no open space for new housing, existing housing must be torn down in order to build new housing.
- jhull 11y ago
  more like: dr; that is not at all what the article is about.
  - calbear81 11y ago
    TLDR; H4H, in an effort to grow their public profile, took a federal grant to develop affordable housing in an ill-suited neighborhood with low vacancy rates which in turn forced them to acquire properties from a shady landlord who may have illegally pressured tenants to vacate. Pressure to meet the grant requirements led to disregard of objections raised by concerned parties within the group.
  - chrome_x 11y ago
    Lol...so true ;)
  - TillE 11y ago
    That is the fundamental problem with Brooklyn, though. The vast majority of housing is hugely inefficient. Ugly little two-story apartment buildings where you could have a really nice 5-6 story building instead.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  The vacant lots on which new homes were built probably qualified as "open space". Even so, this is not a proud moment for Habitat.
tn13 11y ago
There is no sham bigger than affordable housing. While ordinary folks have certain notions about what is a "housing" and what is "affordable" in government world these are terms that a defined in ways we cant comprehend. Town admin demolished homeless shelter in Sunnyvale to build affordable housing. So many homeless people then had to find shelter in the parks. My friends who make north of 100K a year are in affordable housing units across the city. Staying in $700 p.m. for 2 bedroom apartments with utilities paid. The trick was to show "evidence of being" poor. In short more needy people on street while the better off people live even better.
- PantaloonFlames 11y ago
  This is the problem with government aid programs. The more money there is, the more distorted it gets. At least that's the way it seems. It seems that it's very difficult to effectively administer a large-scale aid program. They all end up corrupting the market - like this NYC story, or like your story. It erodes the confidence in government and results in people like Donald Trump getting broad support.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    Please don't try to take a short cut like this. The way to cut wasteful and harmful government spending is to cut wasteful and harmful government spending. Cutting government income or budget with the hope of it making a dent in wasteful spending is incredible stupid today as it was when Reagan proposed that we "starve the beast". There are no short cuts. We can't cut income and automatically assume bad spending will be the only thing that hurts. Indeed, we can't be sure if spending we consider bad will hurt at all. I think even Trump understand this idea.
    - tn13 11y ago
      Cutting government funding is the best way to make government agencies compete for resources. The gigantic debt is what keeping current government from single payer healthcare or free college or waging more needless wars. That is a good thing.
imglorp 11y ago
The central HFH model is sound and successful even if some affiliates are straying from it and getting into trouble. A common misconception is that HFH hands out houses to poor people. HUD does that and it doesn't really work. You end up with "the projects", a swath of bad hood, buildings stripped of copper before they're completed, and a bigger disaster. Instead, HFH involves the community, especially and centrally the prospective home owners, who are screened for having steady jobs, existing contributions to their community, and other indicators. Nobody could buy a house on one minimum wage income or even two, no matter their character, and that's the niche filled. The owners participate in the chapter via "sweat equity", where they might help with others' houses in addition to their own, alongside volunteers from the community. They buy the house from HFH with a low-interest mortgage; it's not a gift. Owners are also monitored and advised afterwards, and they often continue to hang around chapters helping the next batch. The result is pride in their home, bonds with the chapter, and an improved neighborhood. I have no clue what the NYC chapter was thinking but it doesn't meet the core values, but we should concede inner city chapters have different challenges than suburban or rural ones. Source: former chapter board member
- raverbashing 11y ago
  What's HUD?
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    Department of Housing and Urban Development.
- wmt 11y ago
  So the NYC HFH idea was indeed to use millions of federal money to kick out low-income families to the street in order to build houses for families who are better off than them? Damn, that's some ice cold ruthlessness.
  - anon4 11y ago
    Such is life in America.
stegosaurus 11y ago
Affordable housing is a misnomer. Definitionally: afford: 'To have the financial means for'. Affordable housing in London, UK. Does it cost 3.5x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a single person? ;-) Does it cost 6x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a couple? Not there yet. Instead it costs some percentage of market rate. Which generally ends up being 20x min wage or similar. Yes - as a person you'd need to become three, four, five times more useful before you can get this starter home. As far as I can tell it's just trolling. It genuinely feels like those with wealth laughing at the lower classes, there's no other explanation for such a ridiculous use of language. A Bentley does not become 'affordable' if I offer it to you for 50% off. Even minimum wage would be a high bar to set because it doesn't feel affordable to everyone. But at the moment we're saying 'the top 10% can afford it so that's fine'.
- fleitz 11y ago
  I see mostly colleagues who rack up big bar bills complaining about how unaffordable apartments are instead of saving their money.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    Saving all your money to buy a home instead of spending is losers' game. It deprives service economy of cash, bumps home prices even more and makes everybody unhappy. So no, it's not a sound societal advice. This is problem of supply versus demand, which can be solved by either more supply or redirected demand. And maybe by removing bad money from the economy.
    - beambot 11y ago
      Yeah! Get out there and drink more instead of saving and living within your means.
      - guard-of-terra 11y ago
        I did not say that. You did.
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
If I understood the article, Habitat for Humanity contacted some building owners and developers about acquiring several charming but rundown brownstones in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood, with the goal of renovating them and selling them to low income deserving families. The buildings were supposed to be unoccupied, but in fact seven families were evicted or paid to leave, and they ended up homeless or living in shelters. A developer was able to flip at least one building to HFH for 100% profit. While it does sound as if a few tenants were taken advantage of, and the charity probably over paid for the properties, the whole situation doesn't seem that out of line with what has been happening for 100 years in congested New York neighborhoods. In this case, it was a "charity", but in many other cases it was for-profit ventures attempting to capitalize on the very high demand for housing. At least the brownstones are earmarked for lower income owners who will stabilize the neighborhood and presumably not push up housing costs. That's probably a good outcome, if that's what comes to pass. Maybe HFH can help out those families somehow, perhaps offer them low cost rentals in one of the renovated properties. Unfortunately, this rosy outcome is not necessarily what will happen. The minute a neighborhood is perceived by developers and intrepid urban warriors as the next up and coming place that's affordable, edgy, and trendy, these powerful players will descend on the place like locusts. Current owners will receive high offers to sell out, and gentrification will set in. In my opinion, the only real solution to this kind of churning of property and displacement of low income families is to build more housing. New York can't really expand outward, but it can expand upward, and so they need to build some high rise apartments and condominiums. I'm not really sure why they're not meeting demand; perhaps New Yorkers just don't want any more congestion, and regulatory and tax structures make it prohibitive for all but the richest developers, who then are incentivized to sell or rent to the richest families, cutting the poor and moderate families out of the equation.
- rco8786 11y ago
  Your assertion that NYC is not building up is quite wrong. Just because every brownstone isn't being converted into a skyscraper doesn't mean there isn't a ton of new housing coming into the market.

87 points by jeo1234 11y ago

tldr; In a neighborhood with no open space for new housing, existing housing must be torn down in order to build new housing.

jhull 11y ago
more like: dr; that is not at all what the article is about.
- calbear81 11y ago
  TLDR; H4H, in an effort to grow their public profile, took a federal grant to develop affordable housing in an ill-suited neighborhood with low vacancy rates which in turn forced them to acquire properties from a shady landlord who may have illegally pressured tenants to vacate. Pressure to meet the grant requirements led to disregard of objections raised by concerned parties within the group.
- chrome_x 11y ago
  Lol...so true ;)
- TillE 11y ago
  That is the fundamental problem with Brooklyn, though. The vast majority of housing is hugely inefficient. Ugly little two-story apartment buildings where you could have a really nice 5-6 story building instead.
jessaustin 11y ago
The vacant lots on which new homes were built probably qualified as "open space". Even so, this is not a proud moment for Habitat.

tn13 11y ago

There is no sham bigger than affordable housing. While ordinary folks have certain notions about what is a "housing" and what is "affordable" in government world these are terms that a defined in ways we cant comprehend. Town admin demolished homeless shelter in Sunnyvale to build affordable housing. So many homeless people then had to find shelter in the parks. My friends who make north of 100K a year are in affordable housing units across the city. Staying in $700 p.m. for 2 bedroom apartments with utilities paid. The trick was to show "evidence of being" poor. In short more needy people on street while the better off people live even better.

PantaloonFlames 11y ago
This is the problem with government aid programs. The more money there is, the more distorted it gets. At least that's the way it seems. It seems that it's very difficult to effectively administer a large-scale aid program. They all end up corrupting the market - like this NYC story, or like your story. It erodes the confidence in government and results in people like Donald Trump getting broad support.
- newjersey 11y ago
  Please don't try to take a short cut like this. The way to cut wasteful and harmful government spending is to cut wasteful and harmful government spending. Cutting government income or budget with the hope of it making a dent in wasteful spending is incredible stupid today as it was when Reagan proposed that we "starve the beast". There are no short cuts. We can't cut income and automatically assume bad spending will be the only thing that hurts. Indeed, we can't be sure if spending we consider bad will hurt at all. I think even Trump understand this idea.
  - tn13 11y ago
    Cutting government funding is the best way to make government agencies compete for resources. The gigantic debt is what keeping current government from single payer healthcare or free college or waging more needless wars. That is a good thing.

imglorp 11y ago

The central HFH model is sound and successful even if some affiliates are straying from it and getting into trouble. A common misconception is that HFH hands out houses to poor people. HUD does that and it doesn't really work. You end up with "the projects", a swath of bad hood, buildings stripped of copper before they're completed, and a bigger disaster. Instead, HFH involves the community, especially and centrally the prospective home owners, who are screened for having steady jobs, existing contributions to their community, and other indicators. Nobody could buy a house on one minimum wage income or even two, no matter their character, and that's the niche filled. The owners participate in the chapter via "sweat equity", where they might help with others' houses in addition to their own, alongside volunteers from the community. They buy the house from HFH with a low-interest mortgage; it's not a gift. Owners are also monitored and advised afterwards, and they often continue to hang around chapters helping the next batch. The result is pride in their home, bonds with the chapter, and an improved neighborhood. I have no clue what the NYC chapter was thinking but it doesn't meet the core values, but we should concede inner city chapters have different challenges than suburban or rural ones. Source: former chapter board member

raverbashing 11y ago
What's HUD?
- mindcrime 11y ago
  Department of Housing and Urban Development.
wmt 11y ago
So the NYC HFH idea was indeed to use millions of federal money to kick out low-income families to the street in order to build houses for families who are better off than them? Damn, that's some ice cold ruthlessness.
- anon4 11y ago
  Such is life in America.

stegosaurus 11y ago

Affordable housing is a misnomer. Definitionally: afford: 'To have the financial means for'. Affordable housing in London, UK. Does it cost 3.5x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a single person? ;-) Does it cost 6x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a couple? Not there yet. Instead it costs some percentage of market rate. Which generally ends up being 20x min wage or similar. Yes - as a person you'd need to become three, four, five times more useful before you can get this starter home. As far as I can tell it's just trolling. It genuinely feels like those with wealth laughing at the lower classes, there's no other explanation for such a ridiculous use of language. A Bentley does not become 'affordable' if I offer it to you for 50% off. Even minimum wage would be a high bar to set because it doesn't feel affordable to everyone. But at the moment we're saying 'the top 10% can afford it so that's fine'.

fleitz 11y ago
I see mostly colleagues who rack up big bar bills complaining about how unaffordable apartments are instead of saving their money.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Saving all your money to buy a home instead of spending is losers' game. It deprives service economy of cash, bumps home prices even more and makes everybody unhappy. So no, it's not a sound societal advice. This is problem of supply versus demand, which can be solved by either more supply or redirected demand. And maybe by removing bad money from the economy.
  - beambot 11y ago
    Yeah! Get out there and drink more instead of saving and living within your means.
    - guard-of-terra 11y ago
      I did not say that. You did.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

If I understood the article, Habitat for Humanity contacted some building owners and developers about acquiring several charming but rundown brownstones in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood, with the goal of renovating them and selling them to low income deserving families. The buildings were supposed to be unoccupied, but in fact seven families were evicted or paid to leave, and they ended up homeless or living in shelters. A developer was able to flip at least one building to HFH for 100% profit. While it does sound as if a few tenants were taken advantage of, and the charity probably over paid for the properties, the whole situation doesn't seem that out of line with what has been happening for 100 years in congested New York neighborhoods. In this case, it was a "charity", but in many other cases it was for-profit ventures attempting to capitalize on the very high demand for housing. At least the brownstones are earmarked for lower income owners who will stabilize the neighborhood and presumably not push up housing costs. That's probably a good outcome, if that's what comes to pass. Maybe HFH can help out those families somehow, perhaps offer them low cost rentals in one of the renovated properties. Unfortunately, this rosy outcome is not necessarily what will happen. The minute a neighborhood is perceived by developers and intrepid urban warriors as the next up and coming place that's affordable, edgy, and trendy, these powerful players will descend on the place like locusts. Current owners will receive high offers to sell out, and gentrification will set in. In my opinion, the only real solution to this kind of churning of property and displacement of low income families is to build more housing. New York can't really expand outward, but it can expand upward, and so they need to build some high rise apartments and condominiums. I'm not really sure why they're not meeting demand; perhaps New Yorkers just don't want any more congestion, and regulatory and tax structures make it prohibitive for all but the richest developers, who then are incentivized to sell or rent to the richest families, cutting the poor and moderate families out of the equation.

rco8786 11y ago
Your assertion that NYC is not building up is quite wrong. Just because every brownstone isn't being converted into a skyscraper doesn't mean there isn't a ton of new housing coming into the market.