On 25th September I went along to the 6th Annual West Side Tenants Conference.
The daylong Conference was attended by around 200 tenants living in the areas of Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen and the Upper West Side of Manhattan. When welcoming their first speaker of the day, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, I was surprised to hear the audience cheering, whooping and shouting “bravo”. Coming from a background of attending community meetings in Govanhill, this was new for me.
President Stringer talked of a major victory- community activists and politicians had campaigned and successfully passed state legislation to ban illegal hotels. He explained that there was a severe shortage of housing in New York. Currently tens of thousands of rent regulated apartments are being let to tourists for very short term stays, so the apartments are effectively being “stolen” from New Yorkers who needed somewhere to live.
He said “we tend to come to meetings and bemoan; it seems like the deck is always stacked against tenants”. He continued “tenants feel like they are on the edge of being thrown out of the great city they helped to build, but actually we are winning a lot of the fights.”
“Not having solution will not be acceptable”.
State Senator Liz Krueger also received a warm welcome. She said it had been “a better year than we’ve had for a long time for affordable housing and tenant led actions” but that more had to be done. She explained that she had been involved in the campaign to ban illegal hotels for the past five years, during which time the problem had gotten worse, spreading from Manhattan to Brooklyn then Queens.
She said that they knew the legislative solution would be technically complicated – they came up with numerous ideas and it was a process of elimination, but importantly they didn’t give up as “not having solution will not be acceptable”. Elected representatives had to be educated about the effect illegal hotels had on communities. She said that to get Major Bloomberg on board, they had to educate him and his people because some of them didn’t think a problem existed.
She went on to describe the opposition they faced passing the bill. Many pro-landlord lobbyists tried to persuade legislators not to pass the bill. She described how the landlords had organized “rapidly and aggressively”, giving one example of a press conference, where landlords had bussed people in from afar, the protesters screaming that that the bill would kill jobs. The campaigners had to explain that the bill would not affect legitimate hotels in the slightest. The bill will come into force in May 2011 and Senator Krueger urged tenants to start getting their complaints ready now.
She ended by saying that in her opinion, “the biggest problem we have is the LLC loophole”, where limited liability corporations are allowed to donate huge amounts of money to elected representatives. She said that one landlord LLC had donated $950,000 to 27 elected representatives (each!), showing the impact of money in the NY State Senate.
“What difference does it make? The landlord will get a couple of dollars fine and nothing will change”.
Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, co-sponsor of the bill, was the final speaker of the morning and described the legislation as “one of the most important bills for tenants for the past 20 years”. He said that it took elected representatives a while to figure out what the issue was all about. He said that voluntary organizations had carried out extraordinary research to document where illegal hotel units were located, proving it was a citywide problem. Through this research, the campaign uncovered evidence that illegal hotels were a big problem in the constituency of Vito Lopez, head of the Housing Committee. The campaigners then started organizing people in his area, getting residents to raise the issue with him. He said that tenants groups from all over the city had attended rallies, and raised issue with their own elected reps.
He said it took a year or two to figure out how to engage and get answers and this period was very frustrating. He said officials were passing concerns from department to department, and that several times he heard comments like “what difference does it make? The landlord will get a couple of dollars fine and nothing will change”.
Lessons to learn?
I found the speeches really inspiring, and saw lots of parallels with housing campaigns in Govanhill. The frustration in speaking to authorities also rang true- but in Glasgow the landlord doesn't even get a fine! In the illegal hotels campaign, they spent a lot of time educating and persuading elected officials and their staff, whilst at the same time galvanizing action from different areas of the city. It seemed like the campaigners found sympathetic elected representatives who were also willing to take the fight forward- how can we do this back home? I thought their tactical decision to use evidence to target the Head of the Housing Committee was pretty smart too. The residents here are winning some key successes- hopefully this will give inspiration to the good people of G42 in their battle against slum landlords.
From my time in New York, back in the mid 1990s I was inspired by the extent of the community activity that existed in New York. I think it would supprise most people and such a history from stonewall to sqautters, to the tompkins square park riots in the eighties.
ReplyDeleteIt is just a pity there will not be more severe sanctions against illegal hotels as when you think if someone can pay 27 local politicians £950,000 each, then clearly small fines will mean nothing.
From the little I have seen so far Alan, it seems that tenants are more willing to organise amongst themselves. I would like to find out whether housing is as mixed as it is back home, for example whether owner occupiers, housing association and private tenants living in the same tenement, because this could be a barrier to people getting together.
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