(GATEWAY HOUSING) Ted Houghton, May 28, 2021

Every hotel owner, homeless advocate and mayoral candidate agrees it’s a smart idea. It repurposes hotels emptied out by the pandemic, addresses homelessness, and creates jobs to help fuel the city and the state’s economic recovery.

But we have to stop talking about hotel conversions and start doing them. For all the talk, New York has yet to turn even one underutilized hotel into housing. Meanwhile, California has already invested more than $800 million to help nonprofits acquire over 90 hotels that will be turned into more than 6,000 units of affordable permanent housing with on-site services for formerly homeless tenants, with more on the way.

Now, legislation introduced in Albany this week finally gives New York the chance to act.

The Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act, introduced in the state Legislature by Sen. Michael Gianaris and Assembly member Karines Reyes, sets the parameters for how $100 million in new state capital can be spent on hotel-to-affordable-housing conversions. It also provides the regulatory relief necessary to allow these conversions to be done quickly and cost-effectively. The legislation will ensure that the housing created is of high quality, permanently affordable, and owned and managed only by nonprofits.

The economic damage caused by the pandemic presents us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers out of the city’s now-vacant hotels. We’ve done it before: The 1987 real estate crash made dozens of old hotels available to nonprofit providers who converted them into permanent supportive housing. Thousands of poor and disabled New Yorkers battling homelessness became tenants in newly converted micro-apartments with services downstairs, saving the city hundreds of millions dollars in shelter, health care and other costs.

This is a proven model that can and should be replicated—and passing the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act into law gives New York a chance to do just that today.

New York City is now financing nonprofits to create more than 1,500 new supportive housing units a year. But even at that record rate, it is clear we are never going to be able to buildenough apartments to house everyone who needs a home. Quickly repurposing vacant hotels to produce thousands of new micro-apartments—in addition to current supportive housing production—gives us half a chance to catch up with the overwhelming need.

The housing legislation will help ensure the housing produced from hotel conversions will be of high quality. The bill mandates the new housing units have private bathrooms, kitchenettes and standards of privacy and comfort. At least half of the units in each residence produced under the legislation would be set aside for people experiencing homelessness; the other half would be designated for very low-income New Yorkers. Tenants would pay no more than 30% of their incomes in rent and their housing would be rent-stabilized, so all residents would have full permanent tenancy rights and protections.

The bill has broad support from an array of stakeholders, because it will rapidly provide high-quality housing to those in need while creating new construction, service and management jobs. It protects and preserves the unionized hotels so important to New York’s economy, and it prohibits hotels in job-creating industrial business zones from being turned into housing. The bill is a state override of local zoning rules, but it is a state override that empowers the city: The bill protects local control by giving the city housing agency the power to choose which hotels to turn into what type of housing and where.

There is no time to waste. The window to obtain distressed hotels is closing quickly as tourism slowly returns and hotel owners start to see a light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. We need to acquire hotels for permanent, affordable housing now–while they are empty andavailable. The bill gives the next mayor a new tool in the toolbox to solve homelessness.

This past year we’ve seen too many of New York’s hotels turned into shelters, practically overnight. But lack of funding and the city’s outdated building regulations mean converting those same hotels into housing can take years.

The funding and regulatory relief in the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act would allow us to quickly turn distressed hotels into deeply affordable, permanent housing instead. This win-win bill treats today’s homelessness like the emergency it is.

The Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act should be passed and signed before the end of this legislative session.

New York City Council votes to Increase the Value of Rent Vouchers
On Thursday, the New York City Council voted to increase the value of City FHEPS rental vouchers to match Fair Market Rents established by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The historic vote was the culmination of years of advocacy led by Win, Inc., Citizens’ Committee for Children, the Family Homelessness Coalition and many others. The 45 votes in favor of the bill are a testament to the unwavering leadership of General Welfare Committee Chair Stephen Levin, the primary sponsor of the bill, Intro 146B.  

Thousands of shelter residents approved for CityFHEPS (Family Homelessness and Eviction Protection Supplement) vouchers have been unable to leave shelter because they cannot find apartments that can be rented for the amount the vouchers currently pay. By some estimates, the approximately 40% increase in the vouchers’ value will make an additional 72,000 apartments available to homeless New Yorkers using the vouchers.

The increase to CityFHEPS will also increase the funding available to nonprofits attempting to develop new affordable permanent housing using HRA Master Lease contract financing. Advocates are now looking to Albany to increase rates of State FHEPS vouchers, where Senator Brian Kavanagh has introduced a Senate bill, S6573, to do just that. 

Gateway’s testimony from the City Council’s March hearing on CityFHEPS can be found on our website’s rotating homepage  here.