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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #35-98 Making Rent: The Struggle for Affordable Housing Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. This week on Making Contact... Male speaker #1: We can do something about homelessness. And we can do something to better our society instead of funding jails and corporate greed with the money that's rightfully due to the people of this country. Phillip Babich: According to the Clinton administration, about eight hundred thousand people in the United States are currently homeless. "A growing shortage of affordable rental housing is partially responsible for the rising number of homeless people," says the National Coalition on Homelessness. On this edition of Making Contact, we'll hear from housing rights advocates who'll talk about this trend and what they're doing to protect low-income housing. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact -- an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. In most major cities in the United States, homeless shelters are overcrowded. A recent study of twenty-nine US cities found that, in 1997, nearly thirty percent of all requests for emergency shelter went unmet due to lack of resources. In light of this, some activists are taking direct action and attempting to occupy abandoned buildings, some of which are publicly owned. One such action took place last January in Boston. A collection of self-described "radio activists" were on hand to cover the event. Linda Pinko and Chuck Rosina of WNBR narrated portions of the following segment. Clemencia: We need to build more homes. We need not to look at that homeless person as it's their fault that they're homeless. You know, it's not they're fault. It's everybody's fault that they're homeless. And we need to turn around and make a change. Thank you. Linda Pinko: That was Clemencia, a resident of Roxbury, who attended the rally because of her concern over gentrification and people being pushed out of their homes. Unidentified male speaker #1: This is a demonstration of our right to be civilly disobedient. And through our action we hope to let the Congressmen and our state representatives, our mayors, and the people of our state and our nation know that there is a better way, and that we can do something about homelessness. And we can do something to better our society instead of funding jails and corporate greed with the money that's rightfully due to the people of this country. Linda Pinko: Hi. Why are you here today? Unidentified male speaker #2: Well, I work at a large homeless shelter in Boston as a part-time counselor, and I... it's a four hundred fifty bed shelter. We have people on three floors sleeping one on top of another on bunk beds, like animals, you know? I think frankly animals are treated better than the homeless are in the largest city shelters, and... I think it's a shame when they can spend a billion dollars on some cruise missiles that destroy Iraqis, that destroy quote-unquote "the enemies of America", and yet they can't spend a few hundred thousand dollars to build housing for the homeless and for the low-income people. Brian: All these empty evacuated buildings here right on Mass Ave. alone could be renovated by Mayor Monino into homeless... for the homeless. Linda Pinko: That was Brian, a homeless resident of Boston. As most of the protesters marched and made noise outside the site, a dozen or so broke the lock and entered the building. Unidentified male speaker #3: And a group is now heading up with bolt cutters to break the lock that's on the boarded up doorway, while others are here filming the event. Even some of the major media is out for a change -- Channel 5, Channel 7 are out here. And they're in the building. Linda Pinko: Meanwhile, outside the building, the group began to draw a lot of attention. Yvonna Berguize of "Homes Not Jails" read a list of demands. Yvonna Berguize: ...of sufficient vacant housing for emergency shelter for Boston's homeless residents. We demand that the city allow vacant properties to be converted for use as long term, community-run affordable housing or homesteads. We demand guarantees of affordable rental rates and the reinstatement of rental regulation. We demand more Section 8 vouchers and increased federal appropriations for Section 8 certification. We demand that corporate welfare be abolished and that funding for defense and prisons be redirected to social programs geared to the country's low-income population. Chuck Rosina: Shortly after this the police begin to arrive. At first, just a few to direct traffic, but their numbers grew quickly. Linda Pinko: The police have just walked in a mass formation and walked right up the stairs. In fact it seems that they locked people into the building. There's one detective standing by the door, and he's forced everybody on the steps into the building, and therefore they are subject to arrest right now. The police are in the building, and the detective is not letting people out of the building at this time. He's arguing with a photographer who has been pushed into the building and is stuck in there. Unidentified male speaker #4: What just happened inside was that several people were trying to walk out of the building and an officer blocked the door and said that we couldn't leave. Other officers upstairs told us to leave the building, and a photographer... here he comes right now. Can I ask you a question? Chuck Rosina: Okay the first person's being carried out of the building now by the police. They've taken the classic passive resistance: going limp. One... three police per person. They're carrying them out now and placing them in the wagon. Linda Pinko: After the arrests, Jen Jones of "Homes Not Jails" summed up the finale of this event. Jen Jones: Basically, seven people were arrested and have been taken down to the jail and a whole group of protesters just went to follow them down there to support them: bail them out, get them out of jail. And it was fast. The last action we did they arrested folks at about 7:00 p.m. and this time it's about 2:30 when folks were finally arrested. So, I think that one of the positive things that that shows is that they're hearing about us, and they're coming out and trying to quell the activity before it gets out of hand. So we're just going to continue to do it, and hopefully, eventually we'll get our house. Phillip Babich: That report was produced by Linda Pinko, Chuck Rosina, John Greebe, Steve Proviser, Dave Goodman, and Mark Peltier. Shereen Meraji: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States, in Canada, in Haiti, South Africa, and around the world on Radio for Peace International short wave. You can also hear us on the internet. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It's toll-free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs. Phillip Babich: Nationwide, there is a shortage of nearly five million affordable homes for low-income people, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is an all time high. One factor contributing to the loss of affordable housing is a trend known as "gentrification". For more on this development, correspondent Judy Campbell spoke with Michael Hardesty, a free-lance writer and former member of the rent board in Oakland, California. Michael Hardesty: There's a tremendous element of real estate speculation here. That's on the market side. There's also specific funds that are given to certain favored real estate developers and contractors -- construction people -- to build certain projects. And they get certain tax abatements, which is deferrals from paying taxes, over a certain period of time. And they build these projects. And then the people who are in the neighborhoods often get displaced. They can't afford the rents or their whole building gets torn down, the block gets radically changed. They're usually displaced into another neighborhood in the same city. Sometimes, they're driven out of the city all together if the process is radical enough. Judy Campbell: Gentrification is a funny word depending who you talk to. Some people find it a real positive word and some people find it a real negative word. On the positive side, it's an urban area that goes from being unsafe to being safe, ugly to pretty. How do cities, in general, look at gentrification? Is it commonly seen as a problem? Michael Hardesty: Well, it's seen as a problem because, like everything, it has effects. It has the positive features that you mentioned, and then it has the side effects of displacement of people, displacement of small businesses, displacement of more of a diversity, a variety of people, variety of cultures. It's tending to more and more favor the upper income levels. They tend to be largely Caucasian, but they can be other people too. But it's becoming less of a diversity, less of a multicultural society that really isn't a reflecting the whole society, the real actual makeup of our society. Judy Campbell: Is that something that mayors are addressing? Do you see... why don't you give me some city comparisons of how cities look at gentrification? Michael Hardesty: Well, they can go across the board. Places like Houston, which are still primarily overwhelmingly pro-growth... well, Houston doesn't even have zoning. It still has a rapid development mentality, although the voters are starting to turn against rapid growth at any cost in Houston. But, traditionally it's been a place of "Let's just pour it in. Let's have more development. Let's displace these people." They have a large poor African American neighborhood near where George Bush lives in the River Oaks section and they displaced a lot of those people. In Seattle, on the other hand, they're taking a more critical look at urban renewal and gentrification because they want to have the diversity, they want to have the variety, they want to have a place for more moderate income people to live. So there's been talk of like cooperative housing, there's been talk of restricting gentrification, there's been talk of making developers have a certain percentage of affordable units. And then of course what affordable is can be a dicey question, but maybe twenty to forty percent of the units in a particular building in Seattle, for instance, may have to be affordable. And there's also some ideas of a progressive nature or semi-progressive nature of that in Portland, Oregon, and I think in Boston and a few other places. And then some places, like I said, like Houston and Atlanta and Dallas, are basically totally, well from my perspective backward on that. And that's just development at all costs. Judy Campbell: What are some solutions that do work to combat gentrification? Michael Hardesty: The solutions are... well, there's a number of solutions. One is to encourage low cost housing, non-profit housing, cooperative housing. That if the government is going to give the tax breaks, let's give it to those people who actually build affordable housing and not to the regular, you know, big construction people and the big real estate people and real estate and landlord interests who are only interested in getting the biggest, you know, buck for the bang. It's actually... They can actually have tax and zoning policies and planning policies which, instead of encouraging gentrification, can encourage an improvement, but through affordable, low-cost housing, through neighborhood associations... There's all sorts of ideas. I mean, even in this kind of corny volunteerism that can work with some governmental assistance and some governmental help and encouragement. Unfortunately, the short-sighted vision has tended to be these downtown areas where they want to say, "Let's build up the model downtown." As Jerry Brown, said "Let's have market housing in downtown. That'll just make everything, you know, hunky-dory." But it doesn't because it brings a sterile downtown where you have just upper income people living in these gated apartment buildings, these closed communities, and you have a few big banks and a few businesses. And it does nothing in terms of creating a real renaissance for the city. I have thought for a long time that the real estate, construction, contractor, landlord, the whole real estate complex is sort of like the military-industrial complex as relates to the larger governmental body like the US government. President Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex. Well, actually he got it from C. Wright Mills. But anyway, what happens at the local level is that the real-estate-contractor-development-landlord complex runs the city councils and the county governments of the cities and of the major urban areas. And it's the real estate money. It's money. Judy Campbell: How does a neighborhood raise the standards of their neighborhood -- clean it up, make it prettier, make it safer and improve things for their community -- without inviting people, with more money, to come and buy them out? Michael Hardesty: It's a tricky question. I think under the current laws it's very tricky right now because once you become more attractive it's true that then you become like a magnet for these people. I think the laws have to be changed to discourage real estate speculation. I think we have to have -- this is a really heretical idea -- but I think we have to have maybe even caps on the amount of money people can make from selling their homes. It's ridiculous. We have a lot of millionaires in California who never earned it at all, but they just sat on real estate for a long time. I think we have to have some of Henry George's old ideas about tax on land values and so forth. What I think we have to do is encourage these things. It's really good. Like in our neighborhood we have a neighborhood association. We have people that come and clean up our block and a block or two away it's kind of in bad conditions. So we need to get the neighborhood association out there. We need to have self-improvement projects. We need to have people take pride in the neighborhood. And we need to have people assert that it is their neighborhood. In other words, they're not doing it as a conduit to be displaced for purposes of real estate profit. Judy Campbell: Is gentrification inevitable when an economy is booming? Michael Hardesty: No, because it's only inevitable if you have a certain tax and regulatory structure that permits it. If you have another alternative... See, every time they have the so-called "booming economy", even though many people are not really benefiting from the booming economy, they always say whatever happens is inevitable. But you have to look at it this way, I think. It's all made by human beings. And they make human decisions, human institutions, human policies, human ideologies. They can be changed. It's just that if you have an unrestricted capitalist cycle and you don't do anything to help the great majority of the population, and your whole emphasis is on market-market-market and business- business-business, then it is inevitable. But if you intervene and you decide we want to have this kind of this kind of living situation, we want to have these types of laws or regulations, we want to have this kind of community, then it's not inevitable. Phillip Babich: Michael Hardesty, speaking with Judy Campbell. Joining us by telephone from her office in New York is Colleen McGuire. She's a member of the National Lawyers Guild and also a tenants' rights attorney who won a major decision in federal court in January which could have broad implications for renters and landlords. Colleen, thanks for joining us on "Making Contact". Colleen McGuire: Thank you for asking me. Phillip Babich: Well first off, why don't you tell us about this case? Colleen McGuire: This case is Romea, Jennifer Lynn Romee is the plaintiff, against Heidberger and Associates. And Heidberger and Associates is the landlord's attorneys. And it involves a federal statute, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. And that's a consumer protection statute. And it was enacted to prohibit debt collectors from engaging in abusive, deceptive and unfair practices. Now, in New York City, before a landlord... In New York state, I should say, before a landlord can take a tenant to court for non-payment of rent, they must send a three day written notice. And usually it's the landlord's attorneys, who sign these notices. Well, under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act , a judge has agreed with us, that a landlord who signs these notices is a debt collector, that rent is a debt and under the FDCPA, the landlord's attorney must give thirty days notice -- a period of time to validate the debt -- rather than the three days that New York state law permits. And, other thing... the statute also... the federal statute also requires that the landlords, that the debt collector, state the... that this is a debt and any information will be used against the consumer. Additionally, the debt alleged to have owed must be accurate. That's why there's a thirty day period in which to contest it. So what we did in Romee v. Heidberger Associates was the judge ruled that, because the landlord signed the three day notice, and federal law requires thirty days, then there was a violation of the statute. Phillip Babich: Let me just interrupt there. What was Jennifer Romee's situation at the time when she was given that three day notice? Colleen McGuire: I'm glad you asked that, because she had owed maybe two months. She was behind two months in rent. And she had asked her landlord if she could pay, I think, a third or a half up front. And she just wanted some time to pay off the rest. And he said no. And in fact, he said "I'm gonna haul you into court and I'm gonna throw you out in thirty days" -- language almost verbatim to that. And she came to us and we fought it and eventually brought this federal suit. And she's still in her apartment. And the landlord threatened this in, I believe, January of '96. She was served a three day notice like, on the day after New Year's Day. So, here was a case that she was trying to work it out with her landlord and he wouldn't do it and in three days she was supposed to get it all together. And that's one of the reasons we think the statute is important is because we're hoping it would give tenants more time to gather their rent. Particularly tenants who are on state or federal subsidies and maybe there's a snafu in the computer and they don't have their rent on time. Well, boom, then they're thrown into court and face eviction for a problem that's not even their own. Last year, in New York City alone, there were over three hundred thousand cases in housing court and about two... maybe a hundred and fifty thousand of those ended in warrants of eviction. And most of the tenants who face eviction are employed but have incomes below nineteen thousand a year. The other point I want to make about the FDCPA, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, is that for us it levels the playing field. For years, for centuries, the landlord tenant relationships have been under the rubric of property law. And then lately it came under contract law. Now we're saying, hey, let's put it under consumer law where the power relations are more equitable, because under feudal law property relations landlords have all the power. The landlords keep saying that housing is. it's a market issue, that it should be dealt with by market forces -- the rent should be set by market forces. Well, our position is housing is a human right and it should not be set by market forces. But, if that's the tact that the landlords' and the landlords' attorneys are going to take, then let us protect the consumers of that commodity -- that commodity being housing. And if tenants are indeed consumers, then the federal statute, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, must apply. So this is a novel way of regarding landlord-tenant relationships that behoove tenants, because it more equalizes the imbalance in the power relations. Phillip Babich: I wonder, how is the housing situation, or rent -- owing rent as debt as you're putting it -- different than, say, not being able to make one's car payments or, you know, something along those lines. Why should... I mean I know I've been late on my rent before too and, you know, I've had to scramble to come up with money to be able to pay that rent... Why is it any different? Colleen McGuire: Well, I'll tell you. If you're behind in the payment on your television, or your car, whatever, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies, and nobody just comes in and takes away your television without you having an opportunity to dispute it. In housing court, granted you can... you get a trial, although that is changing now with the new laws that Governor Pataki enacted last year. In housing court your apartment is just taken from you without a thirty day opportunity to validate whether indeed you owe the rent. So, we're saying that these laws must apply the same as they apply to any other commodity -- to dishwashers, televisions, whatever you buy -- that housing should be on the same standards. Phillip Babich: So, what you're saying is that the recourse that an owner of a property is perhaps more severe, more swift, than the recourse of someone who owns a television that one may be making payments on. Colleen McGuire: Absolutely. Yes. Though the property owning classes are on the offensive, at least in New York City. In New York state we feel it. And we tenants, and tenant lawyers and tenant advocates have to fight back by any means necessary in the legal arena or grassroots wise. So we just have to come up with creative ideas to counteract their aggressive measures, because the landlords and their lobbies have a lot more money than tenants' lobbies do. Phillip Babich: Maybe we can back up a little bit and explain in more detail what effect or impact the Romee decision may have in other parts of the country. And, what sort of impact are you seeing in recent days with regards to the Romee decision? Colleen McGuire: Okay. Well, in the rest of the country I'd have to admit that I don't know all the laws for other states. But if there are states wherein before the landlord can take a tenant to court or evict a tenant, a notice must be given. And if that notice is less than thirty days, and if the attorneys of the landlord are signing these notices, then it violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. And perhaps these tenants can get these notices thrown out of court, which would give them more time to gather their rent and prevent their eviction. Now, in New York City, our case -- Romee v. Heidberger and Associates -- is in federal court, 'cause it's a federal statute. But there have been three cases now in housing court that have thrown out the non-payment petition because it violated federal statute. And in fact, I'm just delighted, today there was one in the New York Law Journal where a judge ruled that housing court must abide by the federal court decisions. So that's very encouraging because the FDCPA has numerous consumer rights protections to it. For one, you've got to be correct in what the debt is. So many times these non-payment demands are just computer generated and just spit out, and particularly when the attorney signs them, they don't discuss with their client whether or not the amount of rental arrears being claimed is correct. And tenants are hauled into court, often times, when the rent isn't even owed. Or it's totally incorrect and the arrears... much of the arrears have been paid and tenants have to lose time from work, and pay, to go into housing court. And at least in New York City most, and when I say most I'm talking over ninety percent of tenants, do not have lawyers. Whereas over ninety percent of the landlords do have lawyers. So you have that real unequal bargaining power in court. So, we're hoping that this decision can keep more cases out of court, where tenants might have tenant advocates to help negotiate if there's a problem in the rent. Because, when you go into court, the stakes just get much higher and on a three day notice -- boom -- you're in court really quick. Whereas if there's a thirty day, the federal statute calls it a validation period, we kind of tend to call it a cooling off period, where you can check and see what exactly is owed here. We believe that it would reduce litigation. Phillip Babich: We've been speaking with Colleen McGuire. She's a member of the National Lawyers' Guild and also a tenants' rights attorney based in New York. Colleen, thanks for joining us on "Making Contact". Colleen McGuire: Thank you. Phillip Babich: Jennifer Romea's case was appealed by the law firm, and on December 9, 1998, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in her favor, essentially giving rent-paying tenants the status of a consumer protected by the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act. Eventually, Romea settled with Heiberger and Associates. The case received a great deal of press, and according to the New York Law Journal, the decision "sent shock waves through the New York Real Estate community." That's it for this archive edition of Making Contact, a look at housing rights. Thanks for listening. We have production assistance from Stephanie Welch and Courtney Malone. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Our production assistant is Shereen Meraji. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we would like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Bye for now. |