| Northern Manhattan Improvement Corp. Building a Path to Prosperity |
 |
 |
 |
| Saturday, 27 February 2010 18:00 | |
|
Housing has been at the heart of Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation’s work for the 30 years since its founding. It soon became clear, however, that assuring safe and affordable homes for poor and low-income families – many of them immigrants – required more than just tenant legal services or even building development.Today, NMIC is also a leader in providing adult education, homelessness prevention, employment, immigration services, family literacy, domestic violence prevention, health care access, child care, benefits counseling, community organizing and building weatherization. Well beyond “uptown”, Northern Manhattan comprises the tightly-packed and densely populated neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood. Bounded by the Hudson River on the west and the Harlem River on the north and east, these communities have always been a home for new immigrants coming to New York. Even before the most recent wave of residents arriving from the Dominican Republic, northern Manhattan hosted strong and vibrant Irish, Greek, Eastern European and African American communities. Today, it is estimated that more than half of the population is foreign born – 70% of those being Dominicans – with almost half of all residents non-English speaking. Earlier immigrant groups were able to find their way into New York’s middle class through jobs in the city’s once-thriving manufacturing sector. Much of the community’s housing stock – predominately four-, five- and six-story tenement-style apartment buildings – was bought by individuals who themselves either lived in or had close ethnic ties to the neighborhood. However, at the time of both NMIC’s founding and the new in-flux of Dominican immigrants, many of these doors to prosperity began to close. Manufacturing – and other forms of employment open to poorly educated, non-English-speaking immigrants – all but disappeared from New York City. Drugs and gang violence began to wreak havoc on the neighborhood, which was an early victim of both the crack epidemic and commuter-style dealing made possible by easy access to New Jersey, the Bronx and points north. As a result, Northern Manhattan’s neighborhoods are now among the poorest in the city. With a median household income of just $32,000, 44% of the population receives income supports including public assistance, Medicaid or SSI. Over the past thirty years, these socio-economic pressures and wild fluctuations in real estate values have led to cycles of both disinvestment and speculation in housing. Second- and third-generation immigrants no longer wanted the headaches associated with owning 25- or 30- unit buildings in a neighborhood that seemed physically unsafe and ethnically unfamiliar. Many began selling to a new breed of private equity investor whose sole ties to the community could be measured in cash-flow and the hope of flipping buildings for a profit. Legal Services It was this increasingly confrontational relationship between landlords and low-income tenants that shaped NMIC’s earliest services. “Every family deserves a place to live that is safe with heat in winter, working plumbing and bedrooms free of rodents,” says Lowry. “We knew of buildings with no heat or hot water. We looked out and saw all these dispossess notices and rent challenges being sent out to tenants. I knew we had to set up a Legal Department.” NMIC’s attorneys represent tenants to combat the over-arching power of landlords in Housing Court. “ The only effective way to counter displacement is to provide full legal representation to individuals and tenants associations,” says Kenneth Rosenfeld, Director of Legal Services. In one recent case, for example, NMIC was able to overturn the eviction of a young immigrant mother with two children. A NMIC attorney was able to stop the landlord from re-renting the vacant apartment and determined that the rent being sought by the landlord was incorrect. In another, NMIC was able to win the release of a client’s bank account that had been frozen based on an erroneous Housing Court judgment. On Super Bowl Sunday in 2005, NMIC’s Legal Department scored a victory for an entire building on West 174th Street – as well as tenants and housing advocates across the City - when a U.S. Bankruptcy Court halted a landlord’s attempt to use bankruptcy and U.S. Marshalls to evict a majority of tenants. The problem has only grown more serious in recent years as the escalation in Manhattan real estate values increased speculation in housing. “Investors would buy a building – or 20 buildings – and their game plan was to get rid of the existing tenants,” says Lowry. Buildings would be blanketed with dispossess notices. “Owners would send them to all of the tenants and some of them would stick. Tenants were petrified,” says Lowry. “Our Legal Department has been inundated with cases.” When Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently investigated the private equity firm Vantage Properties for engaging in tenant harassment, he recognized the work of nonprofits like NMIC for their work on the front lines in the battle to preserve affordable housing. As part of a $1 million settlement announced last month, Vantage will pay $250,000 to nonprofits that provide free legal and educational services to tenants. “In these tough economic times, legal services are more important than ever,” says Lowry, “These new resources will increase the number of tenants that we are able to assist on a daily basis.” During 2009 alone, NMIC’s attorneys have assisted more than 15,000 clients in landlord tenant disputes as well as other legal issues. While the bulk of its work has focused on legal assistance to individuals and families, NMIC’s Legal Department has also played an active role in tenant and group representations, class actions and law reform cases – so called “impact” litigation. The group was active – and ultimately successful – in efforts to pass the 2001 legislation addressing the issue of lead paint in New York City apartment buildings – a significant problem in Northern Manhattan. (See: box above.) Community Organizing In addition to taking on landlords one case at a time, NMIC decided that it needed to bring tenants together in their efforts to help themselves. “We learned early on that improving the quality of housing throughout the community will never happen if we try to resolve each crisis separately,” says Lowry. “There were tenants out there who were battling drug dealers and bad landlords. They needed support.” The agency became a leader in tenant organizing. “We help tenants communicate with landlords and, when that fails, we organize rent strikes, legal actions and administrative proceedings,” says Evan Hess, Director of Community Organizing. Since its inception, NMIC has helped to organize hundreds of buildings and it is currently working with nearly 50 different tenant associations. In 1989, NMIC helped organize the Union Comunal de Washington Heights - or – the Washington Heights Community Union, to give neighborhood residents a stronger voice on community issues. Today, Union Comunal has more than 2,700 members. “It is a major reason why municipal authorities are more responsive to residents’ needs,” says Lowry. Weatherization One of the programs which Lowry quickly tapped to help both tenants and struggling landlords was the federal Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). Since 1981, NMIC has been a leading provider of weatherization services which assists buildings with low-income residents to add insulation; replace inefficient windows, boilers and refrigerators; and install energy efficient lighting, all with no costs passed on to the tenants. NMIC’s weatherization program staff conduct energy audits of buildings and certify the income levels of tenants to determine building eligibility. The weatherization work itself is conducted through both NMIC’s in-house teams and outside sub-contractors who handle the more complicated aspects of multi-unit building boiler replacements, roofing work, etc. Building owners are responsible for paying a percentage of the total cost, and share heat and energy savings with tenants in the form of rent reductions. The program is an excellent investment. “For every $1 invested in a WAP funded program, weatherization returns $2.73 in energy and non-energy related benefits,” says Daniel Rieber, Director of NMIC’s Weatherization Program. “At current prices, low income families will save an average of $350 in reduced first-year energy costs.” In 2009, NMIC provided weatherization services for 527 units in nine buildings. Historically, NMIC’s weatherization program has received approximately $2-$3 million annually in U.S. Department of Energy funding passed through the State of New York. As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – the federal stimulus program – WAP funding was increased dramatically, with New York State’s total allocation increasing by an estimated $400 million. Consequently, NMIC’s budget for weatherization has increased to over $10 million. “It is a challenge,” admits Lowry, who also is confident that NMIC can rise to the occasion. “We have been running weatherization programs for a long time and we are good at it. We know how to do income documentation, negotiate with landlords, work with contractors, and run a crew that does hands-on quality work.” Social Services Legal services and community organizing, however, are only one of the ways in which NMIC assists clients to resolve their housing problems. Many of the poor and low-income individuals and families coming to NMIC for help are eligible for a range of income support programs – programs which can mean the difference between a secure home and homelessness. The young mother of two saved from eviction by NMIC’s Legal Department, for example, was found to be eligible for both public assistance and a rental subsidy. NMIC’s Domestic Violence program works on a similar model, providing both legal and social services for victims of domestic abuse along with community outreach, education and collaborative relationships that support clients. Early on, NMIC began screening all of its clients to determine their eligibility for programs and services that would help them keep their homes and support their families. Today, that effort includes a Single Stop program with benefits and financial counseling -- run with support from the Robin Hood Foundation -- as well as an Earned Income Tax Credit program run with the Food Bank for New York City. NMIC is also able to directly enroll residents for food stamps and health insurance. NMIC has recently begun implementing new software system that will allow it to track each of its clients and the various services they access. “We are committed to serve our clients better by knowing who is walking through our doors, what services they are asking for and how we can help them with other services they need,” says Lowry. “We need to know if people in adult education have been to Single Stop and are getting their tax credits. We are hoping to do a longitudinal study for 18 months. We want to follow families and track their income.” Homelessness Prevention It was this client-centric approach to service delivery that allowed NMIC to develop its innovative model for homelessness prevention back in the late 1980s. “We began a program for people at risk of eviction that made counselors available at some of the City’s neighborhood welfare centers,” says Lowry. “There was an attorney, a social worker, a paralegal and support staff all working inside the welfare offices” The initiative had the dual benefit of helping individual clients to avoid eviction while also sharing NMIC’s experience in tenant/landlord disputes with their colleagues at HRA. “We probably spent as much time doing training on what a Dispossess looks like and what could happen in Housing Court,” says Lowry. Ultimately, the Homelessness Prevention Program, as it came to be known, was adopted by the City as standard practice through partnerships with nonprofit service providers who station caseworkers in HRA Job Centers in all five boroughs. Help Beyond Housing Assuring safe and affordable housing for poor and low-income immigrant families requires more than just tenant organizing and legal services, however. “We would get clients who just couldn’t pay their rent,” says Paula Walzer, NMIC’s Director of Development. “How do we help them? By giving them better skills so they could get better jobs and higher wages. How do we do that? They need to learn English and increase their literacy skills.” “In the mid-1980s, adult education had really been lost in this community,” says Lowry. “We knew we had to do something. This was a population that needed ESOL (English for Speakers of Second Languages), GED and Pre-GED.” Today, NMIC is a leading provider of these educational programs. Roughly 1,400 adults participate each year in the agency’s ESOL classes, which are offered at churches, synagogues and other community spaces across northern Manhattan. Unfortunately, the need far outpaces capacity. “We have a waiting list of 2,600 people,” says Michael Perrone, Director of Adult Education. “Our trainees and students are passionate about staying the course and their high completion rates show it.” One common challenge for NMIC is a client’s lack of literacy even in Spanish. “Clients were coming to us and testing at a 3rd and 4th grade level in their own language,” says Lowry. In response, NMIC offers BENL (Basic Education in Native Language) programs to help clients begin to bridge this educational gap. “Institutionally, this is not easy for us,” says Lowry. “Few funders are comfortable supporting non-English learning. But, we are determined to go forward because we have already witnessed the different it makes in later English-based learning.” Family Literacy programs are another natural way to meet educational needs of both children and parents in low-income immigrant families. Launched six years ago, the program strengthens the literacy skills of parents while empowering them in the role as their children’s most important teacher. Workforce Development To help community residents find their way out of poverty and into the middle class, NMIC offers a number of well-established and carefully targeted vocational training and employment programs. One natural outgrowth of the agency’s focus on housing has been its training program for construction and the building maintenance trades. Over the years, this program has allowed many clients to find high paying jobs generated by Manhattan’s booming real estate and housing markets. In response to the growing demand for environmentally-friendly building construction and rehabilitation, NMIC is now launching a new program which focuses on training for these “green” jobs. Similarly, NMIC’s vocational training program for health care is an effective way for many women from immigrant families to begin a professional career. “Our program focuses on training aides to work with people with mental disabilities, which requires certifications in patient management and the administering of medications among other essential skills,” says Andy Perdomo, Acting Director of Workforce Development. “Our graduates in this program have had a 100% placement rate and a majority of them are currently working for large and well respected institutional employers where job stability is good.” In 2009, NMIC successfully placed 729 workforce training program participants in gainful employment. Family Day Care The ultimate dream for many Americans – including recent immigrants – is to own their own businesses. NMIC’s Happy Faces Family Day Care Network makes that dream a reality for entrepreneurs – while also meeting critical child care needs for working families. The program was launched in 1997 after a dozen welfare recipients reported that learning how to run licensed day care program was a the top of their agendas, explains Lowry. “These were women trusted among neighborhood families and ready with a good work ethic and a love for children,” says Maria Lizardo, Deputy Director of Client Services. NMIC guides the women through the licensing process, including background checks, and professional development and training. Over the years, the program has trained hundreds of women and currently boasts a network of 98 active providers serving 300 children from infancy through age 12. Looking Ahead Thirty years after its founding, NMIC has evolved to become a complex, multi-service agency meeting a broad range of needs within the neighborhoods of northern Manhattan. Its $20 million budget – which supports the work of nearly 200 full- and part-time employees -- comes through well over 100 individual government contracts and foundation grants. What lies ahead? Unfortunately, Northern Manhattan is still plagued by many of the same problems as in the past. At times of economic hardship, says Lowry, immigrant families with limited education and employment skills find themselves at an even greater disadvantage. Similarly, she fears that the current crisis in real estate values could destabilize the local housing market, possibly leading to multi-family building foreclosures that could lead to large scale tenant evictions. At the same time, newer variations of older social problems have begun to evolve. Financial literacy and credit counseling for low-income families who have been caught in the downward spiral of consumer debt is one new challenge for NMIC’s attorneys and social workers. And, the needs of a growing population of disconnected youth – those young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor employed – represents an enormous problem. In the end, NMIC will continue to focus on its core mission, to serve as a catalyst for positive change in the lives of people in the community on their paths to secure and prosperous futures.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
“The mandate was to figure out the biggest need in the community,” says Barbara Lowry, who was hired in 1979 by a new board of clergy and other community leaders seeking to fill a nonprofit void in Washington Heights and Inwood. 
COMMENTS