New Yorkers ‘lose hope’ while applying again and again for city’s affordable housing lottery

WPIX, CW 11, NYC ^ | 03:02 PM, February 27, 2018 | Shirley Chan

[Olog-hai]

As any New Yorker knows, finding an apartment is not easy. The city’s affordable housing lottery was set up to assist residents, but applying for the lottery takes time and patience.

Brooklyn resident Maria Martinez told PIX11 she’s been applying faithfully for 20 years, since the inception of the lottery program. Speaking through a translator, she said the process is frustrating. “You keep applying. You hope you end up with a home, but it hasn’t happened for me yet,” Martinez said.

Martinez currently rents a one-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. She lives with her husband and two teenage children. “Sometimes I do lose hope, but I apply anyway and you just hope, keep applying and keep insisting,” Martinez said. “It’d be wonderful if they could tell you that you even lost it, but they don’t tell you. You just never get any notice back and then later on, you find out the building has been filled up.”

Martinez’s situation is like countless other New Yorkers’. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development is the agency that oversees the lottery. The statistics from HPD are stark. There are currently 1,144 affordable housing units available in 18 buildings. According to HPD, on average, there are 700 applicants per unit. They’ve set up the online Housing Connect portal, streamlining the online application process. There are 1.7 million registered users of the site. …

[a fool in paradise]

And two teenaged kids.

Can’t afford a roof but...

[a fool in paradise]

But Broadway, museums, finance, culture, Hipsterlandia,....

(things the locals don’t go to)

[umgud]

hOW MUCH IS HER RENT NOW AND HOW DOES SHE AFFORD IT?

[Wuli]

The problem begins with millions of apartments grandfathered in to the occupants of rent-controlled, rent-stabilized, and rent subsidized apartments, which takes them all off the market, which shrinks the supply of apartments at market rates, raises the asked-for rents at market rates and helps MANUFACTURE (in addition to the zoning laws) the demand for “affordable” housing.

There is plenty of “affordable housing” in NYC - IF you are already an occupant in one of the rent-controlled apartments. If you are a new resident, or you move within the city, you are chasing after a supply shrunk by the rent-controlled give-aways already occupied.

[Wallace T.]

There is no market based reason for a shortage of housing in New York City. Part of the issue is rent control, which was instituted as a wartime measure during World War II. Another factor is the effect of zoning laws, environmental regulations, historical preservation rules, NIMBY attitudes, etc., which make construction of new housing difficult and expensive. This is a problem throughout the country, but particularly in the Northeast and West Coast. In a densely concentrated city like New York, there is no good reason to preserve old residential or commercial buildings dating to the 19th and early 20th Centuries simply because of their age. If Washington slept there in 1778, preservation is justified. If Paddy O'Donnell or Heinz Kruger slept there in 1878 and Vito D’Angelo or Irving Cohen slept there in 1928, not so much. Additionally, liberal politicians, though anti-highway and pro-mass transit, get little of the latter constructed, and usually with huge cost overruns. These same politicians do poor jobs in updating water and sewer lines or ensuring that public schools are more than places to contain children between 5 and 17, and even then not safely.

[AppyPappy]

I didn’t think English was that hard to learn. But many Italians never learned English after moving to the US in the early part of the 20th century.

[AppyPappy]

Immigrating to the US legally is not that expensive. The flight to the US costs more than the processing fees here in the US. But if you are not a citizen, it can be very difficult.

[AppyPappy]

So the good news is that rent-controlled apartments are cheap. The bad news is that there are none available.
NYC is messed up.

[rlmorel]

Exactly!

Rent control (or any price control) only does one thing: decreases the supply and quality of ANYTHING it is applied to.

Meaning no housing, and what you can get...sucks. Nothing new being built.

[Wuli]

I know someone whose mom spends most of her time living out of the country, but her name is on the lease and her checking account pays the rent. I have suggested that all we need to do is just make sure the death notice never gets to the U.S. (and no the adult children’s names are not on the lease as joint lease-holders).

[ridesthemiles]

EXACTLY——NOT a person who wishes to ASSIMILATE...

No wonder we have problems.

Do I get to guess how much $$$ she contributes to this country in taxes on earned income???

[Kid Shelleen]

There are plenty of inexpensive places to live in big cities but no sane person wants to live there. The affordable housing programs are just bribes to developers to reserve a few places below market prices.

[ridesthemiles]

Our CA town requires developers to set aside “below market rate” units in every new project. Maybe 1 out of 1,000 win the lottery. “””

Keep in mind that the other purchasers of those new units pay for the difference in price for the break on the ‘below market rate’ units.

IF 10% are ‘low income’, the other 90% of the units MUST be priced higher to make up the difference for the developer.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Are you SURE about that? I heard the magical free housing fairy built those units at zero cost and nobody else was paying a higher price to subsidize those “life’s lottery” winners.

[Olog-hai]

I was inspired by the headline, to be honest.

[1Old Pro]

I still don’t understand the concept of rent control.

[Olog-hai]

Just read the first plank of communism (scroll to bottom of that page) and it will probably make sense after that, i.e. what the politicians intend.

[Buckeye McFrog]

You’d think that in 20 years she could have learned English.