Yet another housing lottery question (low income, apartments, credit rating)

[Satyrical]

I was wondering when it says regarding Community Board Preference Up to half of CB preference units may be allocated through referrals of applicants from city agencies. What does that mean? Referrals from which Agencies? Also are these referrals people that didn't originally apply to the housing lottery or did they apply and the management company just goes through the applications and picks the referrals out first, like they do with all the preferences? Can anyone explain this part of the process? Thank you in advance.

[randomperson2]

Homeless.

[BugsyPal]

Oh lord when will CD ever create a separate forum for these housing lottery posts?

That being said, answer to your query above are those who are various city agencies that deal with the homeless, those in shelters, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, low income and other voucher recipients, veterans, welfare, municipal employees, and so forth. Oh and likely add illegals/immigrants via mayor's office of "immigration".

There was a whole major spread in Sunday's NYT several months ago profiling various winners of these affordable housing units. One was a domestic violence case where city helped her find "affordable" housing in a lottery unit.

As it relates to community board preference if someone is homeless, domestic abuse shelter, or whatever (see above) and lives in area (such as a shelter) they are entitled as any other local resident to get affordable housing. More to the point referrals from various city agencies representing said persons come off the top of whatever total "affordable" units are allocated.

So if there are only 50 units reserved for CB preference, half or whatever contractually agreed number (between city and developer) are set aside for those being referred by city. That leaves only 25 units for CB remaining.

In case you've not noticed there aren't very many affordable housing lotteries overall compared to market rate in many buildings. Number of "low income" units are even smaller. Thus city is forcing things to make sure what limited resources are available get spread around to entire spectrum of "poor" or whatever.

[Satyrical]

Originally Posted by BugsyPal

Oh lord when will CD ever create a separate forum for these housing lottery posts?

That being said, answer to your query above are those who are various city agencies that deal with the homeless, those in shelters, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, low income and other voucher recipients, veterans, welfare, municipal employees, and so forth. Oh and likely add illegals/immigrants via mayor's office of "immigration".

There was a whole major spread in Sunday's NYT several months ago profiling various winners of these affordable housing units. One was a domestic violence case where city helped her find "affordable" housing in a lottery unit.

As it relates to community board preference if someone is homeless, domestic abuse shelter, or whatever (see above) and lives in area (such as a shelter) they are entitled as any other local resident to get affordable housing. More to the point referrals from various city agencies representing said persons come off the top of whatever total "affordable" units are allocated.

So if there are only 50 units reserved for CB preference, half or whatever contractually agreed number (between city and developer) are set aside for those being referred by city. That leaves only 25 units for CB remaining.

In case you've not noticed there aren't very many affordable housing lotteries overall compared to market rate in many buildings. Number of "low income" units are even smaller. Thus city is forcing things to make sure what limited resources are available get spread around to entire spectrum of "poor" or whatever.

Thank you so much! From what I understood people don’t even need to apply for one of those housing lotteries they just need to be referred from an agency. So they can walk into an agency tomorrow and need a place to stay and they will connect them directly to the management handling the lottery or the developers?

That seems so unfair. It seems like either you need to be a part of a program or super rich to afford an apartment in the city. I was just looking on housing connect and I think only 6 lotteries were available. I’m curious what the future of affordable housing will be.

[macnyc2003]

De Blasio ran on a platform of getting the homeless into housing, and the city is taking steps for that to happen. If you’ve been following the changes made to the Marketing Guidelines, all of them seem intended to enable homeless people to qualify for housing.

Off the top of my head: telling developers they can’t do background checks; taking away the requirement for home visits; reducing the asset cap so that more affluent people and people who happen to be good savers are screened out; lowering the credit rating requirement and I think actually saying that credit ratings can’t be taken into account except in certain cases; not allowing the tenant blacklist to be consulted, etc.

Some of these changes are sound. I’m sure many barriers to housing have been removed. But allowing people to skip the lottery and be referred by city agencies may be helping those who know how to work the system while hurting those who may need housing just as badly but are choosing to play by the rules. And that’s sad too.

[BugsyPal]

Originally Posted by Satyrical

Thank you so much! From what I understood people don’t even need to apply for one of those housing lotteries they just need to be referred from an agency. So they can walk into an agency tomorrow and need a place to stay and they will connect them directly to the management handling the lottery or the developers?

That seems so unfair. It seems like either you need to be a part of a program or super rich to afford an apartment in the city. I was just looking on housing connect and I think only 6 lotteries were available. I’m curious what the future of affordable housing will be.

Don't really pay much attention to the scores of "affordable" housing threads on this forum; but even from glancing through posts saw things like "my case worker sent papers to HPD" or whatever. Just who did you think their "caseworker" was and more to point what would they be doing in an affordable housing process?

As another poster has already stated, BdeB, HPD, city council along with liberal/progressive democrats are pushing to get all sorts (busted, broke, homeless, slightly a sandwich short of a picnic basket, illegals, etc..) into housing they otherwise couldn't get a foot past front door.

Democrats learned from their mistakes when first sets of civil rights laws were passed in 1960's/1970's. Whites and or anyone else who earned simply packed up and moved to the suburbs and or otherwise self segregated themselves.

Services/amenities are always much better in wealthier areas than poor (healthcare, schools, supermarkets, etc...), but there are only so many ways to arrange deck chairs.

Since many of the poor or whatever would never be able to get into these buildings/areas of city on their own merits, BdeB and HPD are basically forcing developers to take these people.

White liberal/progressive democrats have this wet dream; that if you force various persons into areas they normally wouldn't be everyone will come together and sing kumbaya. The persons in homes/apartments paying higher rates to carry those who cannot will be happy to be part of a "global" inclusive community. Those who get in will have better education and other options for themselves and or children.