MSCC’s Homeless & Housing Meeting July 7, 2026: Crafting A Real Housing Plan With Ron Shiffman

July 1, 2026 | Events

MSCC, John Mudd, Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2026, Time: 9:30 am-11:00 am, Location: We will meet via video conference using ZOOM.US

SUMMARY

This Week’s discussions include: How we may craft and finance a stabilizing housing plan with Professor Ron Shiffman, and the COPA, Communitiy Opportunity to Purchase Act with Jazmine Kerr from the New Economy.

WELCOME / INTRODUCTIONS

We appreciate all suggestions to help us run this meeting proficiently.

  • Housekeeping (Zoom protocols) copying chat, muting, etc.
    • Signing in: Please sign in with your name and organization
  • Please email subject and speaker suggestions by the 15th of each month
  • Items to Triage: To give time to pressing topics, please forward items at least 24 hours prior to meetings
  • Introductions, welcoming new and old members (keeping it short and sweet)
  • Need someone to summarize actions and followup

PURPOSE

The Homeless and Housing members, attendees, and speakers share knowledge, ideas, and resources to identify problems and find solutions to the homeless, housing, and health crisis.

5 min

POLICY MEETING UPDATES

The prior 8:30 Homeless and Housing Policy meeting wrap-up as presented by attending members.

0 min

COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS

Council’s progress report on actions and initiatives (see Addendum A for more).

2 min

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION(S) AND OR UPDATES: 

The below list of intros and updates should be brief; everyone is welcomed to present for a lengthier discussion at a planned date

  • Need Board and committee members (funding & Finance, Street Sheets) 
  • Elected officials/agencies—updates
  • Alex Yong, WSNA NYC, RTC, Member of the End Apartment Warehousing Coalition, MSCC
  • The Rob Robinson report
  • Public Housing: We are still fighting in the streets and in the courts. Follow the breadcrumbs and see our trajectory of the fight to save public housing (see ADDENDUM C) 
  • Stock Transfer Act Updates
  • Others & new attending members?

 5 min

COPA

COPA, Community Opportunity to Purchase Act is gaining ground through the hard efforts New Economy. Jazmine Kerr is with us today to summarize their efforts, and what it will mean to alleviate the housing crisis and put a little bit of wealth back into the hands of the public. COPA, Community Opportunity to Purchase Act is a Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, to giving qualified entities a first opportunity to purchase before the buildings are offered on the market. The bill — Int 0196-2022 — has strong support.

Speaker: Jazz Kerr, New Economy

ACHIEVABLE HOUSING PLAN

Professor Ron Shiffman is a city planner with over 50 years of experience providing architectural, planning, community economic development assistance to community-based groups in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Ron is with us to explore housing opportunities and funding plans.

Speaker: Ron Shiffman,  Professor Emeritus, Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment

MAYOR MAMDANI’S HOUSING PLANS

Our housing policies and development plans are never meant to solve the housing crisis, ease our cost burden lives, end homelessness, stabilize societies, or build communities; they are devised to funnel as much wealth to the ruling class class. We will discuss what the Mayor is hiding and what articles are not omitting.

2 min

MAMDANI’S PROPOSED PLAN FOR NYCHA

Public housing across our city and nation are under attack. Private developers (Related) want to take over the largest stock of affordable housing, end Section 9, and demolishing Chelsea campuses for huge gains. And Mamdani supports the developers efforts. Councilman Chris Banks, chair of the Public Housing Committee, has continually stood up for the tenants of Public Housing. Read CM Banks’ recent statement on Mamdani’s plan for NYCHA.

NYCHA/Related effort to remove seniors from their housing was cruel and unrelenting, until Attorney John Low-Beer secured a TRO, Temporary Restraining Order against NYCHA from pursuing any action furthering their demolition plan. For more on the legal matters see the recent WBAI Michael Haskins Living For The city interview with MSCC, John Low-Beer Wednesday, May 27, 2026 Segment

ECONOMIC SUPPORT FOR PUBLIC NEEDS — Held Over

James S. Henry, economist and advocate for the Stock Transfer Tax legislation. The legislation needs widespread support. The Stock Transfer Tax Bill (a1494a/s1237)

Speaker: James S. Henry, economist and advocate

2 min

PUBLIC CONCERNS

  • Immediate needs?

ACTIONS

  • Summary
  • Additional Requests

2 min

ANNOUNCEMENTS / EVENTS

  • Additional announcements from new attendees, committee members, elected officials, others 
  • Last words?

2 min

DEVELOPING INITIATIVES & PROGRAMS

  • Hurt Committee
  • Objectives/Mission/Vision: MSCC is busily restructuring to become more effective in accomplishing its goals and making plans for the coming new year to complete their:
    • Mission: Midtown South Community Council strives to dismantle the causes of homelessness by building an equitable, just, and sustainable social infrastructure to ensure dignity, health, and home for all. 
    • Vision: Midtown South Community Council envisions a city where homelessness and poverty are eradicated
  • Committees: Managing our overwhelming tasks together with our intersecting network. If anyone wants to be involved with building committees to serve programs and projects of mutual interests (Housing, Urban Farming, Education & Awareness, healthcare, incarceration, workshops, health access, Home Improvement, communications/social media messaging, Midtown Street Sheets…), please let us know
  • Street Sheets

2min

AOB

  • Topic & Speaker Suggests:
      • S9650 / A 659 Original sponsor was Brad Hoylman-Sigal. Liz Krueger is the new sponsor. The bill doesn’t *end* the affordability doomsdays — it penalizes landlords who lie about rent expirations
      • Marquis Jenkins discusses public housing with members from Riis Houses, Ladan from Glendale Housing in Minneapolis — This discussion was on May 6, 2025. Further discussion is needed. 
      • Discussion with Andre P, about his Post Feb 4, 2025 Homeless and Housing Meeting Comments
      • Illusion of Choice: How Source of Income Discrimination and Voucher Policies Perpetuate Housing Inequality, UnlockNYC — Done!
      • Department of Building’s Office of Tenant Advocate (OTA) advocates for tenant against obtrusive or illegal construction within multi unit residential buildings. Speaker(s): Rakell Washington & Ana Pluchinatta
      • Charisma White (MSCC), what does deeply affordable housing mean
      • Network marketing and communications committee (suggestion)
      • Prison to shelter and back again
      • Policing the problem away; 50% of the Riker’s Island jail population are mentally ill
  • Speaker Suggestions: All suggestions are welcomed
  • New Members: Thank you for joining, feel free to tell us your needs, schedule a presentation, and connect with anyone within this network
  • NEXT Meeting Homeless and Housing Meeting: 9:30 AM Tuesday, August 4, 2026
      • Always the 1st Tuesday of every month

2 min

Contact hello@midtownsouthcc.org or john.mudd@usa.net for more information and Zoom invitations.

ADDENDUM A: PRESS HIGHLIGHTS

ADDENDUM B: BIOGRAPHIES

Jazz Kerr New Economy Project, was born and raised in the Bronx by Caribbean educator parents who instilled in them a love of learning and justice. Jazz studied Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at DePauw University, focusing on the intersections of environmental, racial, gender, and economic justice.

After graduation, Jazz worked with the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, where they taught on the topic of environmental racism and supported Bronx youth in honing their leadership and activism skills. Inspired by that work, Jazz joined Farm School NYC, where they managed communications and uplifted stories of land, food, and community resilience. In 2023, Jazz was selected as a Seeding Power Fellow with Community Food Funders, a funding collaborative of the North Star Fund, working to expand food justice, movement building, and resource mobilization.

Jazz finds grounding in swimming, singing, snacking, and building community wherever life takes them.

James S. Henry is an economist, attorney, and investigative journalist who has become a leading authority on complex global justice issues. In the private sector, Mr. Henry has served as Director of Economic Research (chief economist), McKinsey & Co.; VP Strategy, IBM/Lotus Development; Business Development Manager, Chairman’s Office (Jack Welch), GE; and Senior Consultant, Monitor Company. He is the founder and Managing Director of Sag Harbor Group, a competitive strategy firm that has served such leading international clients as ABB, Bell Labs/ AT&T, Charles Allen & Co., the Calvert Fund, Cemex, ChinaTrust, the Joint Caribbean Task Force (Scotland Yard/FBI), IBM/Lotus, Intel, RSA Telecom, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swedish Power Board, TransAlta, Volvo, and Daikin. In the public sphere Mr. Henry is a Global Justice Fellow at Yale, where he co-teaches a graduate seminar on “Global Justice Problems” with Prof. Thomas Pogge. He is also a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Investment, and a Senior Advisor to the Tax Justice Network, an international NGO that has led the fight to dismantle tax havens. He has also been an active pro bono environmental and constitutional lawyer in New York. In investigative journalism, Mr. Henry has written numerous articles and several books about international private banking, offshore havens, debt, capital flight, and development, and has conducted first-hand investigations in dozens of developing countries. He was the principle author of The Price of Offshore Revisited (July 2012, TJN), a seminal work on offshore wealth whose estimates have recently (June 2020) been validated by the OECD.

Layla Law-Gisiko, 18 years on Manhattan Community Board Five As a District Leader for Assembly District 75, Part A, I’m here to lead and serve. I’ve proudly served on Manhattan Community Board Five for 18 years, where I currently hold dual leadership roles as Chair of the Land Use, Housing and Zoning Committee and the Landmarks Committee.

Nina Schwalbe, MPH, PhD, is a New Yorker, public health practitioner, scientist, and advocate who has spent her career working to ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to health.  She is now running as a democrat for US Congress in NY-12 (https://www.ninafornyc.com/)

In 2021 she was appointed by the Biden-Harris Administration to design, launch, and implement a US$7 billion USAID emergency initiative delivering one billion COVID-19 vaccines to low- and lower-middle-income countries.

From organizing local grassroots action to international head of state summits, she believes that progress happens when people work together, listen to one another, and lead with empathy

Viren Brahmbhatt is an architect, an urban designer, and the founder of de.Sign Studio in New York City -an international design practice that works towards significant and implementable change through design. His work includes various community and recreational centers and urban design projects for affordable housing including many for the City of New York and Seoul, Medellin, Mumbai and New Delhi. He has been teaching at various  schools of architecture as an adjunct professor including at GSAPP, Columbia University, Sam Fox School/WashU St. Louis, , CCNY’s The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture and Pratt Institute, New York.

Rob Robinson is senior advisor at Partners in Dignity and Rights, and a human rights movement-builder with roots in New York City and networks worldwide. His work focuses on economic justice and addresses issues such as debt, police violence and access to broadband. Robinson also has been involved with the U.S. Human Rights Network, the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights, and the Land and Housing Action Group of the Take Back the Land national movement.

ADDENDUM C: PUBLIC HOUSING STATUS

  • Takeroot Justice has filed a petition on behalf of the tenants of Elliott-Chelsea and Fulton Houses against New York City Housing Authority, NYCHA. John Low-Beer and Chuck Weinstock have filed an Amicus Brief in support. We were In Court To See Justice David B. Cohen on Wednesday, Dec 4, 2025 to defend the seniors. The Judge was extremely upset with NYCHA for suing the seniors (see transcripts)— 10AM, 71 Thomas Street
  • John Low-Beer filed an application for a TRO, temporary injunction has been granted, and hearing is set for March 2, 2026

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