From Speculation to Social Housing: Building Power to Fight Displacement and House All New Yorkers
Community Service Society, LISC Institute for Community Power, New Economy Project, NYC Community Land Initiative, Stabilizing NYC, and the University Neighborhood Housing Program hosted a convening of tenant leaders, housing organizers, advocates, and researchers at the People's Forum in New York City to envision pathways from speculation to social housing, and opportunities to strengthen tenant protections, stabilize communities, and advance social housing solutions at the city and state level.
Overview
Over two years into the pandemic, 220,000 New Yorkers are facing eviction, and nearly 600,000 NYC households remain behind on rent. Meanwhile, asking rents for new apartment listings in the city have risen 35% since last year, and 20,000 rent stabilized apartments sit vacant as corporate landlords seek to weaken critical tenant protections in search of higher rents. Preventing a flood of evictions and a transfer of distressed homes to Wall Street investors requires both immediate actions to keep tenants housed, and strategies to combat the speculative ownership that fuels the housing crisis.
For decades, the New York City housing movement has been organizing to fight speculation and disinvestment and imagine a different future for land and housing, including through the pandemic. As we continue to work toward a just housing recovery, Community Service Society, LISC Institute for Community Power, New Economy Project, NYC Community Land Initiative, Stabilizing NYC, and the University Neighborhood Housing Program hosted a convening of tenant leaders, housing organizers, advocates, and researchers at the People's Forum in New York City to envision pathways from speculation to social housing, and opportunities to strengthen tenant protections, stabilize communities, and advance social housing solutions at the city and state level.
View recording
Moderator
- Sam Stein, Housing Policy Analyst, Community Service Society
Presenters
- Julia Duranti-Martínez, Program Officer for Community Research and Impact, LISC
- Jacob Udell, Director of Research, UNHP
- Jackie Del Valle, Stabilizing NYC Coordinator, TakeRoot Justice
- Emily Parent, Tenant Leader, Greenbrook Tenants Coalition
- Oksana Mironova, Housing Policy Analyst, Community Service Society
- Edward Garcia, Director of Community Development, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition
- Debra Ack and Niani Taylor, Board Secretaries, East New York Community Land Trust
Additional Reading
- Community Service Society, Social Housing in the U.S and How Social is that Housing?
- Community Service Society, Mutual Housing Association of New York, and UNHP, Corporate Windfalls or Social Housing Conversions? The looming mortgage crisis and the choices facing New York
- East New York CLT, Advancing Community-Led Planning and Collective Ownership
- Law and Political Economy Project, Social Housing and Housing Justice: Pathways to Housing Decommodification
- Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, Fighting Forward: Advancing Development Without Displacement through Community Land Trusts, Shared Governance, and Collective Ownership
- NYC Community Land Initiative 2022 Policy Priorities
- Stabilizing NYC, The Predatory Equity Story
Research from LISC and UNHP offers rigorous evidence that large landlords have reaped the greatest profits in communities of color, and that this speculation drives evictions and poor housing maintenance quality. But there’s good news too: affordable housing investments create better-maintained homes and remove buildings from the speculative market.