National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

The six-part New York Times series presents graphically the appalling conditions in which poor people in New York City are forced to live. It explains the economic forces that have brought about that situation, and examines the failure of the city, state and federal governments to take the steps needed to cure the problem. The articles themselves are a product of 10 months of research by the Times staff. Although the series’ focus was only upon New York City, the situation is not unique to New York. Similar work done by newspapers in other cities and rural areas around the country would be equally valuable in shedding light on this all too pervasive problem and in informing public opinion to take corrective action.

The New York Times Magazine article looked at the same problem addressed by the series, but on a nationwide basis. It drew upon Charlotte, North Carolina, for its specific examples instead of New York City to make the point that the desperate situations encountered by poor people looking for a place to live are not limited to this country’s biggest cities. The end result, however, was a picture much like that presented by the series as a whole — a horrendous problem that cries out for public funding, determination from political leaders, and the insistent pressure of public opinion, but that has generated no such political will.

The information presented in the newspaper series and the magazine article is hardly new to people who have spent their lives trying to improve housing opportunities for people who are poor. However, anyone who can take the time to read the articles should do so because they so powerfully depict the nature and urgency of the problem. This summary is included here for those who cannot get to read the real thing and as an inducement for those who might otherwise pass the articles by. The information and the ideas they present should renew our energy and commitment to guarantee a decent home for all who live in America.

The Series

We can start with the newspaper series, both because it was published first and because it focuses specifically on the situation in one locality, New York City. It does an incredible job of conveying the horrendous conditions in which the poorest 20 percent of New York City’s population live. It clearly explains the causes of their housing crisis, pinning the blame on economic realities and governmental unwillingness to do anything about them. It powerfully conveys the human, social, and fiscal consequences of compelling people to live in such extreme and intolerable situations.

The Conditions

The most striking condition presented in the articles is the nearly unbelievable overcrowding that people are being compelled to endure. When the pictures and words describe studio apartments that have been modified to accommodate 11 occupants by the installation of triple-decker bunk beds lined up against the walls with barely any room left to walk between them, you begin to understand how bad things are. When a father explains his family’s situation — it is so overcrowded that even though they can fit into the apartment during the day, when everyone is sitting or standing, there is not enough room to go around at night when the family members lie down to sleep — the concept of not having enough room to live in takes on a new reality. The whole situation is encapsulated by the observation that these poor people are being forced to "share beds with their children, bedrooms with their in-laws and bathroom with strangers."³

These places passed off as apartments have no bathrooms or kitchens. The cooking areas are located in shared hallways. The bathrooms are located down the hall, to be shared with everyone in the building. There are no closets, only clotheslines stretched across rooms to hold clothes.

Even outside of Manhattan in the more suburban-like neighborhoods of Queens, there is still severe overcrowding. Houses built for one or two families have been modified to accommodate four and, in the case of boarding homes, even more families. Attics are transformed into apartments and cubicles are carved out of the below-ground cellars in order to provide more rent to owners who cannot afford the buildings without renting out every inch of extra space. The conversions are done illegally, violating both the local zoning laws and, more disastrously, the building codes. Exits are not provided for the attic apartments. Instead of being replaced, electrical systems that are no longer adequate for the original dwellings are overtaxed to handle the added apartments. Plywood walls of cellar apartments are built right up against the basement boilers. Ceilings barely reach six feet and pipes are left exposed.

The overcrowding is rivaled by the physical deterioration, which in many cases contributes to the deterioration. The articles present graphic pictures of substandard housing that recall the tenements and shanties of 19th Century urban and rural America. Plaster falls from ceilings because of old age and leaks from above. In fact, some ceilings no longer have any plaster and cannot be called ceilings any more, just exposed floor joists and the bottoms of the rotting floors in the apartments above. Water cascades down from broken or leaking pipes, puddles of water stagnate on basement floors. Sinks no longer have running water; when they give way, toilets become the only source of water in bathrooms for washing, for drinking, for everything. Stairways slope to one side or shake when walked on because their structural parts have so badly deteriorated. Exterior walls move because they have become disconnected from their foundations. Buildings list to the side because their foundations have become unstable. Foundations are supported by makeshift braces because no one has the money to rebuild them. Boilers constantly break down and in many cases no longer work at all, leaving the tenants with no heat, even on the coldest days of winter. Windows are covered with blankets and garbage bags in the residents’ nearly futile attempts to keep the cold out, even in those apartments that do have some heat. And, of course, there are vermin everywhere: cockroaches laying eggs in infants’ noses, mice running through the walls and over the beds at night, rats chewing on baby bottle nipples and biting babies’ toes.

The Results

The articles also did a good job of communicating the consequences of having people live under such intolerable conditions. We all know that having a decent place to live is essential to getting and keeping a job, to staying and learning in school, to doing one’s homework, to preserving one’s health and to keeping one’s family together. The article brought those points home when they reported a mother’s explanation that on cold winter mornings after a night of no heat her children would not get out of bed to go to school because they were too cold. Some of us may have heard our parents talk of getting up on cold winter mornings and leaving their unheated bedrooms to dress in the kitchen around the wood stove. The difference for this generation of poor children in New York is that there is no kitchen, no stove, no furnace, not even a warm pipe passing through their room. Their only chance of keeping warm is to stay in a shared bed buried under blankets because there is no source of heat at all in the places they call home.

As you work your way through the article about overcrowding in Queens, it is easy to think that these illegal subdivisions are not all that bad. They certainly do not reach the level of horror presented by the 11-person studios with triple-decker bunks in Manhattan. In some ways, they increase the supply of housing, albeit with not much in the way of amenities and with a few short-cuts violating the building codes. You read about the overtaxed electrical systems, the frayed wiring and the warnings of fires, but you think, somewhat like a teenager with a new driver’s license, that those accidents will never happen. The articles, however, do not let you get away with that kind of thinking. They follow up the general picture with an in-depth story of a woman who died with her three-year-old child at her feet and her boyfriend in her arms in a fire caused by a space heater attached to an inadequate wiring system in another room carved out of the attic in which she lived.⁴ That story makes real the dangers of these deathtraps, dangers that people might otherwise think of only as abstract remote possibilities.

It is the quotes from the tenants themselves that express most effectively the overcrowded and deteriorated conditions they endure. One said, "We live like animals. The rats crawl over us and the roaches fall into our cooking pots."⁵ Another put it: "We’re trapped in a cage."⁶ Describing what it was like living with three children and a husband in a 12-by-15-foot room, one mother said, "This room has destroyed us. It has brought out the worst in us."⁷ She went on, "Sometimes, I feel like a prisoner here."⁸ Pointing to an empty lot in which some homeless people were living, one tenant said, "There are dozens of them living back there. They are living like dogs, the poor souls."⁹

The Causes

The series also effectively presents a sound analysis of the reasons why the poorest people in New York City cannot get a decent place to live. One aspect of the problem is the dramatic decline in housing code enforcement in the City. One of the six articles is devoted to an analysis of the City’s two code enforcement agencies. It explains that, in effect, the City has stopped enforcing the codes, or at least the agencies have ceased to function effectively. The number of inspectors has dropped from over 800 in the early 1970s to fewer than 200 today. Annual, citywide preventive inspections were eliminated first, then concentrated attacks on particular neighborhoods were dropped. Responses to complaints about conditions merely labeled "hazardous" were the next to go. The only responses were to complaints about emergencies. In the wintertime, the only emergency complaints that produce a response are those about no heat. When the inspectors do respond, they leave orders only that repairs be done and allow the landlords to certify that they have made the repairs. In response to criticisms of the system, the agency is reduced to claiming that only 30 percent, not 40 percent, of the landlords file false certifications.¹⁰

A thought-provoking part of the series contrasts New York’s current circumstance with the situation facing the City at the end of the last century. Then, Jacob A. Riis lead the crusade, through writing and photography, to bring to the public’s attention the horrible living conditions endured by tenement dwellers in those times. As the series points out, the conditions these articles document today are nearly as bad as those prevailing then. Riis’s actions led to the enactment of housing codes, the demolition of much substandard housing, and eventually the development of programs to make decent housing available to people who are poor.

That commitment to code enforcement has ended in the last 20 years, with the City not being willing to spend money on it and some officials making the judgment that substandard housing is better for poor people than no housing at all. Not unlike the critics of Jacob Riis’ campaign, city officials today say they cannot enforce the codes because the result would be only that more people would be homeless.

In one sense there is some reality to that position, as the series demonstrates when it presents the economics of the private housing market. That presentation reiterates what we already know: poor people cannot afford decent housing. They do not have enough income to pay the rents landlords need to provide decent housing. Using many different angles, the series explains these market realities. For example, in New York it costs $386 per unit per month to operate cheap apartments, and that does not even include mortgage payments and profits. The median income of the poorest 20 percent of the population in New York is $483 per month. Welfare recipients receive only $286 per month for housing, stuck at that level for 10 years.¹¹ With those kinds of incomes and the $386 monthly costs, poor people have trouble renting any apartment, much less a decent one. As the landlords put it, "There isn’t any money in low income housing any more."

Looked at another way, in 1981, tenants with the lowest incomes could pay the rent with 60 percent of their income. Since then, their monthly incomes have fallen, in 1996 dollars, from $550 to $483. At the same time, their rents and utilities have risen from $330 to $382. The result is that poor people in New York now pay 79 percent of their income for rent.¹² The $382 they pay is not enough to cover the landlord’s monthly costs, even if they paid on time. In fact, when housing takes up 79 percent of anyone’s income, it is unlikely the full rent will be paid every month, much less paid on time.

Another angle focuses on the supply of cheap housing. Fifteen years ago there were almost 1.2 million apartments in New York City renting for the equivalent of $450 or less, in 1996 dollars; now there are fewer than 700,000. A half million units were lost because some landlords were able to raise the rents and reach higher income tenants; others gave up, abandoned their buildings which were eventually demolished or at least boarded up.

When tenants cannot afford to pay what it takes to cover the expenses of decent housing, a downward spiral inevitably ensues. Tenant households double up to spread the rent over more people and more incomes. The overcrowding causes more deterioration. Landlords who cannot get enough rent out of the tenants to cover their costs split up their buildings into even more units, often illegally cutting corners along the way. When that still does not produce enough revenue, the landlords cut back on maintenance and eventually cease doing any repairs at all. Next, they stop paying their mortgage, eventually quit paying the taxes and soon thereafter simply walk away. The lenders write off the mortgage, because they know the properties have no economic value.

For years, New York City would take over the properties in tax foreclosure sales. It was not willing, however, to use spend the money that was needed to make those buildings work, to cover the gap between the repair and operating costs and what the tenants could afford as rent. In 1993, the City even stopped foreclosing upon these buildings and now it
is trying to get rid of as many of the units in its inventory
as possible.

The City’s response to the problem reflects the lack of political will needed to make sure that poor people have a decent place to live. The City will not put the needed resources into code enforcement. It will not repair and maintain the abandoned apartments that it acquired through tax foreclosures. It will not even acquire those buildings any more and is trying to divest itself of those that it currently owns. A decade ago, the City did embark upon a program to build or rehabilitate housing for moderate-income people, and some who were poor, and produced 40,000 units in the process. It has since terminated that effort.

This lack of political will on the city level is doubled and tripled on the state and federal levels. The state has pulled out of all its efforts. The waiting list for federal public housing is years long. Virtually no new Section 8 money is coming into the City.

The newspaper series makes it clear that housing for people who are poor cannot be made available by the private market alone. All of the experts interviewed, as well as the landlords, agreed that the government must provide the subsidies if poor people are to have homes to live in, but the political will to do that is simply not there. At the turn of the last century, Jacob Riis undertook his crusade with the belief that if only people knew how bad the living conditions of the poor were, they would not stand for it. He believed society would do what was needed to make sure that everyone had a decent place to live. At the end of this century, it appears that the public no longer cares, that the society lacks the political will to make sure that no one has to live like this. Reagan’s cuts in the early 1980s ended the development of new housing for people who are poor. Clinton’s cuts now have ended the expansion of rental subsidies to private landlords for poor tenants. The direction of Congress for the immediate future is to reduce, through attrition, the number of families receiving federal housing assistance of any kind, except for the favorable tax treatment for wealthy and middle-income homeowners.

The Magazine Article

Jason DeParle’s article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, The Year That Housing Died,¹³ picks up the same themes, but describes them on a nationwide basis. It uses Charlotte, North Carolina, as its focus for specific examples. The results, however, are the same.

The article effectively states the importance of housing on a family’s life. In DeParle’s words, "Stable, affordable housing keeps kids in school and adults on the job."¹⁴ "Indeed, "he continues, "it’s hard to imagine a poverty solution that doesn’t take account of the relentless struggles most poor people face just finding a place to live."¹⁵ The current housing problems faced by poor and working poor people have taken on a new and ominous dimension. Housing is central to people’s lives, yet in this era "[it] has simply evaporated as a political issue."¹⁶ The government has thus tacitly conceded defeat in its decades-long struggle to make decent housing available to low-income people.

The article reviews abundant statistics showing the dimensions of the housing crisis faced by poor people in America. Five million families pay more than half their income for rent. Two million of those families are working poor; more than one million of these are working full-time. In 1970, there were one million more cheap apartments nationwide than families that needed them. Now we are running five million units short, because many of the cheap apartments have been demolished and the number of people who are poor has exploded. Of the 15 million households eligible for federal housing assistance, only 5 million — one third — receive it. In most places the waiting lists are closed, they have become so long. At the same time the government is demolishing 100,000 units of public housing and losing many more units of privately owned, subsidized housing.

The housing situation in Charlotte, North Carolina, mirrors these national figures. The city has a population of 160,000. Twenty percent of the households have very low incomes as that term is used in the housing programs (less than half the area median income or, for Charlotte, less than $21,000 per year). Ten percent have incomes below $12,000 per year. In the words of the city’s Consolidated Plan, those with incomes below $12,000 "are likely to be living in highly unstable situations, or doubled up with other families, behind on their rent and prone to eviction."¹⁷ Because of those some impoverished children in Charlotte are known to have switched schools more than six times in one year. HUD’s Fair Market Rents for Charlotte are $545 for a one-bedroom unit, and $511 for two bedrooms. It would take an income of twice the minimum wage to afford those rents.¹⁸ Welfare households, however, receive only $270 per month, total. Over the last two years, the rents of people coming to a local crisis service center have risen from $417 to $448, while their incomes have dropped from $622 to $596. Their rent-to-income ratio has risen from 67 percent to 75 percent.¹⁹

The worst slum housing has disappeared from Charlotte. Over the past 25 years, tenants have gained rights to fair treatment, which DeParle’s interview with Ted Fillette reviews.²⁰ They have a right to have their housing maintained well, they are protected from retaliatory evictions, and they may not be evicted unless the first landlord goes to court. The landlords who used to rent the tin-roofed shanties without running water and indoor plumbing have gone out of business. There is no way of making a profit in that anymore. It takes $600 to 700 per month to make decent housing work in Charlotte these days, and landlords cannot do it for less. In that situation, welfare families are desperate and working poor families pay 50 percent and more of their income for rent. With such a rent-to-income ratio, these families are constantly having their utilities cut off, choosing between paying the rent and buying the bare minimum of food, and moving because of evictions.

The theme of the article is that despite these pervasive, horrendous conditions, the government has given up on the problem and no one seems to care. HUD’s report on the plight of those with the worst case housing situations²¹ rolled off the presses into "utter obscurity."²² The President signed this year’s HUD Appropriation Act in a Rose Garden ceremony to celebrate the provision guaranteeing new mothers 48-hour hospital stays. Never mind that the other provisions in the bill eliminated all funding for incremental housing units, tenant-based or project-based. During the presidential campaign, the only mention of housing was in the proposals made by both Bob Dole and Bill Clinton to provide even greater tax breaks to middle-income and wealthy homeowners who already get 80 percent of the federal government’s housing subsidies. Unlike Reagan’s housing cuts in the early 1980s, those being made by Clinton and this Congress have received no public protest at all.

We have a president whose agenda contains nothing at all on housing for poor people. We have a vice president who led the charge to have the Department of Housing and Urban Development abolished. We have a HUD Secretary who hopes beyond reason that we can just stay even, hopes that we not fall further behind in our efforts to make decent housing available to poor people. But we are falling behind. Incremental assistance has fallen from the high of 400,000 units a year in the 1970s to zero today. The three-month delay in reuse of turnover certificates and vouchers means that we are now entering the negative numbers. The public housing demolitions without 100 percent replacement make us fall even further behind. The prepayments of private, assisted housing; the sale of buildings from HUD’s inventory without regard to laws requiring that they be subsidized; and the nonrenewal of expiring Section 8 contracts — all of which DeParle chronicles — mean that we are heavily in retreat. DeParle quotes Cushing Dolbeare as saying, "We’ll be very lucky if we don’t lose a million of the 4.5 million subsidized housing units that are already occupied by very low income people."²³

Conclusion

These articles leave no doubt what a monumental challenge we face. They also powerfully demonstrate that we must succeed in making decent housing available to all if we are ever to eliminate poverty in this country and its devastating effects. We have our work cut out for us. It is often discouraging, even hard to conceive that we will succeed, much less see how we will do it. But we have to do for our times what Jacob Riis and his colleagues did at the turn of the last century. We have the benefit of the work done by the writers of these seven New York Times articles. We can count on the support of like-minded journalists in other papers and other media. It is now time to get on with the work.

1. New York Times, Barely Four Walls: Housing’s Hidden Crisis, composed of Deborah Sontag, For Poor, Life "Trapped in a Cage" (Sunday, Oct. 6, 1996), p. A1; Deborah Sontag, A Weak Housing Agency Seems to Be a Step Behind (Monday, Oct. 7, 1996), p. A1; Frank Bruni, with Deborah Sontag, Behind a Suburban Facade in Queens: A Teeming, Angry Urban Arithmetic (Tuesday, Oct. 8, 1996), p. A1; Lizette Alvarez, Down From Poverty: Mexico to Manhattan (Wednesday, Oct. 9, 1996), p. A1; Dan Barry, For Landlords, Hard Numbers and Obligations (Thursday, Oct. 10, 1996), p. A1; and Alan Finder, In Battle for Low-Cost Housing, Faint Hopes and Few Bright Spots (Friday, Oct. 11, 1996), p. A21. The articles are available on the Web at www.nytimes.com, and in libraries generally.
2. Jason DeParle, The Year That Housing Died: Slamming the Door, The New York Times Magazine (Sunday, Oct. 20, 1996), p. 52.
3. New York Times, supra note 1 (Sunday, Oct. 6, 1996), at A20.
4. Frank Bruni, Not Just Shabby and Dismal: Illegal Apartments Can Kill (Tuesday, Oct. 8, 1996), p. A21.
5. New York Times, supra note 1 (Sunday, Oct. 6, 1996), at A20.
6. Id.
7. New York Times, supra note 1 (Wednesday, Oct. 9, 1996), at A1.
8. Id. at A14.
9. Id.
10.  New York Times, supra note 1 (Monday, Oct. 7, 1996), at A16.
11.  New York Times, supra note 1. (Thursday, Oct. 10, 1996); at A21.
12.  New York Times, supra note 1 (Sunday, Oct. 6, 1996), at A21.
13.  Jason DeParle, The Year That Housing Died, supra note 2, at 52.
14. Id.
15. Id.
16. Id.
17. Id. at 54.
18. Id. at 55.
19. Id. at 54.
20. Id. at 56.
21. HUD, Rental Housing Assistance at a Crossroads: A Report to Congress on Worst Case Housing Needs (Mar. 1996) (available from HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research, Washington, DC 20410-6000, for $5.00).
22. Id. at 52.
23. Id. at 68.