Although Adam Glantz, HUD’s local spokesperson, disputed the Partnership's tally of distressed HUD projects in the city, he said, “we have been successful in a number of instances of working with HPD and the city and hopefully that’s a path we’ll continue down.” Glantz had been unaware of the conference, and organizers said that no one from HUD was invited.
To make HPD’s demonstration project a reality, which current reports estimate will include about 30 HUD properties, Donovan and housing advocates agree that HUD’s regulations need to be changed along the lines that U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez proposes in new legislation.
Velazquez’s bill, H.R. 44, would restore “up-front grants” for rehabilitating distressed buildings, require HUD to account for rehabilitation costs when appraising buildings, and require HUD to make public all REAC scores used to determine the condition of all HUD buildings, among other stipulations. Advocates say that despite regulations calling for the scores to be posted in the lobby of buildings, few ever are. The bill has been referred to the House financial services committee.
With Velazquez’s HUD reform and HPD’s demonstration project, housing advocates believe that much of the city’s distressed affordable housing stock can be saved and rehabilitated. They also don’t see the transfer from HUD to HPD as simply passing a hot potato from one government bureaucracy to another.
Dina Levy, director of organizing and policy at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a main organizer of Friday’s panel (and City Limits' landlord), believes that local government will be more responsive than the Washington-based agency. She said that, despite the city’s faults in protecting healthy affordable housing, “it has proven to be a far more reasonable and flexible partner in preservation than HUD.”
Mildred Colon, for one, would welcome a more responsive partner to help rehabilitate Hunt’s Point I and keep it affordable. “Our buildings have failed over and over,” she said. “No one’s there to hear us or to work with us.”
A related report, Cause for Distress, was released by the Center for an Urban Future on Feb. 23.
