Testimony before the New York State Housing Finance Agency
March 10, 2003
Public Hearing Regarding Front Street Project
My name is Bettina Damiani, director of Good Jobs New York, a joint project of the Fiscal Policy Institute with offices in Albany and New York City and Good Jobs First, based in Washington, DC. Good Jobs New York promotes accountability to taxpayers in the use of economic development subsidies. Our website (www.goodjobsny.org) contains the only publicly available database of the city's large corporate retention deals. In addition, for over a year we have tracked the funds coming into the city for rebuilding after the attacks of September 11th 2001. This project, called Reconstruction Watch, seeks to assist grassroots groups to better understand the numerous incentive proposals being pressed during the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. The website is www.reconstructionwatch.net
Allow me to begin by noting that Good Jobs New York and the Liberty Bond Housing Coalition understand that many members of the neighborhood support the Front Street project, including members of Community Board 1. While we are sympathetic to the community’s desire to move forward with this project, we are stunned at this agency’s audacity to again exclude housing units affordable to the majority of New Yorkers.
Our previous opposition to HFA projects financed with Liberty Bonds remarkably has fallen on deaf ears. Permit me to reiterate why rents ranging from $1, 767 to $2,448 are not affordable for most New York City residents.
The HFA uses the New York City Area Median Index (AMI) to classify who would be eligible to live in the five set aside "affordable" units. This AMI includes income from wealthier areas outside the five boroughs, and then triples the eligibility cap from what HFA considers standard, 50% of the AMI.
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development cites in its New York City 2002 housing and vacancy survey that the median rental income for New York City residents is $31,000 and for all households is $39,000. This means none of the units at the Front Street project or the previous three projects is truly affordable.
The HFA routinely cites that Liberty Bonds were not intended to create affordable housing, but are solely a tool for economic stimulus in Lower Manhattan. But up to this point, one must ask whose economic livelihood HFA wants to enhance. If the New York State Housing Finance Agency is unable to creatively use Liberty Bonds in a way that will provide housing that would be affordable the majority of New Yorkers, then HFA has failed. We are aware that HFA has a separate "public purpose" for Liberty Bonds, but feel that not only is it inadequate, but ventures too far from HFA’s mission.
Regarding the issue of transparency, Good Jobs New York cannot emphasize enough that the process by which information about Liberty Bonds is made public is appalling. For example, the public hearing notice for the Front Street project was printed in The New York Times Saturday, March 1, 2003. However, when Good Jobs New York spoke to HFA personnel on the following Wednesday morning, we were told materials would not be available until Friday. After playing a game of cat and mouse almost identical to that of the three previous HFA Liberty Bond projects, GJNY was finally allowed access to the materials Thursday morning. However, HFA refused to photocopy the documents for us. Instead HFA used precious staff time watching over our research analyst as she spent over five and half hours hand copying documents.
Considering the advances made in communications over the past several years, it would be in HFA’s and the taxpayer’s best interest to streamline this process. May we suggest?
Posting the public hearing notice on HFA’s Web page;
Allowing members of the public to photocopy project materials to guarantee efficiency both with the facts of the project and with time. Better yet, make the project documents available electronically.
If New Yorkers are to believe that HFA’s mission really is "to improve the lives of New Yorkers by providing low cost, flexible financing for the creation and preservation of high quality, affordable multifamily housing," 1 then members of the Liberty Bond Housing Coalition look forward and are eager to ensure that the remaining allocation of Liberty Bonds reaches this goal.