How HRA Needs to Improve Services to Clients on Welfare

This article appeared in today's Center for An Urban Future electronic newsletter, and may be of interest to many of our tenants. (It's about time someone other than welfare recipients recognized what's really wrong with the welfare system...) Here's the link to the original article: https://nycfuture.org/research/publications/a-new-day-at-hra COMMENTARY/OP-ED - NOVEMBER 2014 A NEW DAY AT HRA Though the Human Resources Administration places more New Yorkers into jobs than any other city agency, providing clients with the support they need to find long-term employment has not been a priority for nearly 20 years. As new Commissioner Steven Banks prepares to take the agency in a new direction, CUF workforce fellow David Fischer outlines three principles for success. by David Jason Fischer Tags: workforce development | economic opportunity | human capital | low income The Human Resources Administration (HRA) is by far the largest New York City agency to offer employment and training services, requiring approximately 56,000 cash assistance recipients each month to engage in work activities as a condition of assistance. At approximately $168 million per year, HRA’s workforce budget easily exceeds the combined workforce expenditures of the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) and the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), the other city agencies primarily responsible for providing workforce services to adults and youth respectively.1 But despite the scale of its operations and the enormous amount of money spent, HRA has not really functioned as a workforce development agency for many years. Since the mid-1990s, its focus has been on cutting the public assistance caseload rather than providing recipients with the support they need to find long-term employment. In the words of Jason Turner, a welfare reform pioneer in Wisconsin who served as New York City’s HRA Commissioner from 1998 through 2001, the mission of the agency essentially has been to “create a crisis” in the lives of public assistance recipients in order to spur them to work. The basic idea behind welfare reform—that those receiving support should make a real effort to advance toward self-sufficiency—is in line with the social contract that underlies much of our system of governance. During the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, however, HRA went well beyond the idea of mutual obligation, effectively using cash assistance as a reward that recipients could earn only by navigating a series of obstacles and requirements. A large share of recipients—approaching half the caseload at times—fell afoul of complex and inflexible program rules, and saw their benefits reduced or eliminated, with punishment continuing even after they were back in compliance. The Work Experience Program (WEP) compelled recipients to perform menial work that did little or nothing to help them find permanent employment. Although 60 percent of cash assistance recipients who are required to participate in work activities lack a high school diploma or equivalency, and about one in six has math and reading skills below a ninth-grade level, access to education and training was severely limited.2 This adversarial approach was effective in reducing the city’s public assistance rolls: from 1.1 million in 1995, the caseload fell to fewer than 350,000 in 2013. But the city’s poverty rate has remained stubbornly high, at around 21 percent, and a recent HRA analysis found that approximately one out of every four New Yorkers who moved from cash assistance into employment returned to the rolls within 12 months. Mayor de Blasio’s appointment last spring of Steven Banks as HRA’s new commissioner left no doubt that the new administration would scrap the previous strategy. As head of the Legal Aid Society, Banks had repeatedly clashed with the agency over its welfare policies. Banks joked at his first press conference, “I’ve been at the Legal Aid Society through five mayoral administrations and this is the first one I’m not going to bring a lawsuit against.”3 Testifying to City Council this past May, Banks offered a withering critique of HRA’s previous practices. He explained how the agency had inflated its gaudy job placement claims by including tens of thousands of New Yorkers who found employment on their own, after HRA had rejected their applications for assistance, and noted the outsized share of clients who became homeless after the agency closed their welfare cases.4 Banks hinted that his predecessors had manipulated applications—staggering rejections and acceptance of reapplications—to keep the total caseload steady even through the Great Recession.5 As proof that the agency’s approach could not hold up to objective review, he cited HRA’s low 10 percent victory rate in disputes with clients that went to a hearing. Under HRA’s new paradigm, the agency views cash assistance and other supports not as a reward for good behavior but a means to help sustain recipients while they take steps to improve their employability and earning power.6 Earlier this fall, the full dimension of HRA’s strategy came into focus when the agency released its biennial Employment Plan, which each of New York State’s 58 social service districts must submit to the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. Under the Plan, HRA proposes to: Greatly expand access to training and education, particularly for 18 to 24 year olds Replace WEP with different models of supported work activity Shift from standardized employment programs to customized approaches for serving shelter residents, foster youth, individuals with limited English proficiency, and domestic violence survivors Take a collaborative rather than confrontational posture towards clients Partner with other city agencies In the charged context of welfare reform, these changes are certain to prompt criticism. Removing the politics, however, the new approach seems like nothing more than common sense. If policymakers perceive low skills and language barriers as an obstacle to employment, the logical response is to increase access to education and language programs. Thus, recipients up to age 24 now will be allowed to participate in full-time basic education beyond the current 12-month limit—a necessary provision for those with very low basic skills.7 Further, cash assistance recipients enrolled in a four-year college program can count that as a mandated work activity. And the approximately 4,000 recipients with limited English proficiency can now participate full-time in English as a Second Language classes for up to 12 months, up from the previous two days per week. In addition to education and skills, relevant and meaningful work experience is another powerful consideration for potential employers. But HRA’s WEP program simply didn’t deliver value: an internal evaluation found that 45 percent of placements ended in failure within six weeks. HRA will continue to phase out WEP as its existing contracts for employment services wind down, and pledges to replace it with “other more effective and sustainable work programs.” Finally, HRA seems ready to partner with other city agencies to better serve the clients they have in common. The Employment Plan proposes to work with the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) on a strategy for youth in foster care, and with DOE and DYCD on a broader approach to engaging young adults. Banks and others also have noted employment initiatives now in development by the mayor’s Jobs for New Yorkers Task Force as a resource for HRA and its clients. If effective, HRA’s new workforce-focused approach to welfare reform will open up opportunities for tens of thousands of New Yorkers, strengthening the overall city economy and countless communities across the five boroughs. To this end, the Center for an Urban Future recommends three broad principles as HRA implements its plan: Quickly flesh out the new rules, and hold to them. Encouraging as the Employment Plan is, it represents a vision rather than a fully developed strategy ready for implementation. The agency must move rapidly to fill in some of the gaps, such as what constitutes “sufficient progress” toward an educational credential and what models of subsidized or otherwise supported employment might replace WEP. Likewise, while HRA has eased requirements for cash assistance recipients and developed less confrontational procedures for resolving conflicts, the credibility of its reforms will come under question if recipients violate those rules with impunity. Provide strong and sustained technical assistance for contracted providers that will be doing business in a very different way. The confrontational pose of front-line case workers for the past twenty years was no accident: from the initial tactic of “diverting” applicants for assistance to the high rates of sanctioning, the tacit idea of welfare reform here was to make the experience as unpleasant as possible. While HRA’s policies are changing, for the most part the same workers will be charged with carrying them out. They will require time and support to internalize a new approach. Normalize welfare recipients within the workforce system. One concern regarding HRA’s role in workforce development has been that employers might be leery of a population stigmatized by receiving public assistance. While HRA’s changes could well reduce that stigma, its clients will benefit by being presented to potential employers as no different than other New Yorkers served through employment programs. The de Blasio administration’s moves toward creating a coherent and coordinated workforce system, rather than a set of programs siloed by agencies, should help to enable this change—as should HRA’s new commitment to partner with other public actors. 1 New York City Office of Human Capital Development, “Following the Money: An Analysis of FY2013-FY2014 Funding for NYC Workforce Development and Adult Education,” Dec. 5, 2013. 2 HRA Biennial Employment Plan, Executive Summary: online at http://www.nyc.gov/html/hra/downloads/pdf/news/internet_articles/2014/oct_2014/EmploYPlan2014ExecSummaryAppendixfinal.pdf 3 Yoav Gonen, “De Blasio picks ex-thorn to run HRA,” New York Post, March 1, 2014. http://nypost.com/2014/03/01/blaz-picks-ex-thorn-to-run-hra/ 4 Banks testimony to NY City Council, May 19, 2014. 5 The monthly average caseload in 2013 was 356,000, just 3 percent higher than the figure in 2009. The total that received assistance over the course of 2013, however, was 602,700. Of this number, 500,000 received recurring benefits. 6 For instance, HRA will now accept a federal waiver allowing un- or underemployed adults without dependents to access the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps), qualifying about 40,000 additional New Yorkers ages 18 to 49. 7 The Center for an Urban Future’s September 2014 report on workforce programs for youth and young adults, “Bridging the Disconnect,” strongly urged such a step. “A New Day at HRA” is part of a series of commentaries about workforce development and human capital issues that was generously funded by the Altman Foundation.

Nothing Happening Here Tonight...

NEWSFLASH

Another Kenmorean tries to escape before

Halloween... lotsa luck with that!

 

 

It's not JUST about the money - it's your REPUTATION, too!

I'm posting this article from the New York Times because it directly addresses some of my concerns about H.S.I.'s - and the CCoC's - gathering of PPI (Personal Protected Information) about their tenants (who they refer to as homeless, even though they have leases and pay rent - or have rent paid for them through various subsidies including Section 8). They use a protocol and software referred to as HMIS, and report data to HUD and other government agencies in order to receive additional funding to pay for the supportive housing programs in S.R.O.s.  Who knows where else it goes on the way to the government agencies - or where it goes afterwards? H.S.I.'s Privacy Policy is only available and posted on their website; I've posted the document on this blog because I have informally asked tenants at Kenmore Hall if they've ever seen it or been made aware of it when they're talking to social workers on the second floor, and so far, I haven't met anyone who's seen or heard of it. I'm tired of hearing other tenants blindly repeating the phrase "It's all about the money" like sheep; of COURSE it's all about the money - H.S.I. wants to collect as much government funding as possible to provide social services to tenants as possible, or they wouldn't be able to cover their salaries or the cost of programming for tenants (rent collected from tenants goes primarily toward covering maintenance and costs associated with keeping the "physical plant" aspects of the building covered). BUT - it's also about MUCH MORE - it's about your PRIVACY and REPUTATION, TOO. If you're poor, your reputation is harder to protect - and it matters much more. If you don't care, keep talking to social workers and staff. According to their Privacy Policy, H.S.I. apparently feels no particular obligation to let you see your records - especially if they think you're gathering information while planning a lawsuit.

The data collected by H.S.I.'s social workers whenever tenants talk to them may promote a false profile of each and every tenant living in their buildings; the profile includes being chronically homeless (remember, they call their tenants who are NO LONGER HOMELESS, HOMELESS even though there's a logical contradiction in terms once someone signs a lease and starts paying rent - or having it paid for them by participating in an appropriate program) or MICA (Mentally Ill, Chemically Abusing). Not all of us are chronically homeless, and many of us are NOT mentally ill, drunk or high. Who knows how long the profile will be attached to tenants, or who/what agencies it's actually being shared with, or how long the profile will be kept on file with other agencies? Who knows how much of the information identifies specific people?

I'm bringing this up on the blog because many of the very people who complain about having the social workers aggressively pursue them to participate in H.S.I.'s program don't seem to get the full implications of what's going on. It's annoying to have to connect the dots for people who don't seem naive or gullible, but who keep asking the same questions over and over. I'd like to give people credit for having the intelligence I assume they have based on their age and potential wisdom gained through life experience - but I've been repeatedly providing the same information in print and here in the virtual "blog-o-sphere", which is this: Tenants in S.R.O.s who have rent stabilized leases, like we do at Kenmore Hall, have plenty of rights. There are responsibilities that go along with those rights, too; on a practical level, you have to comply with what's in your lease, and make sure your rent is paid. You're NOT, however, obliged to cooperate with anything that's NOT in your lease, including the social services provided by a supportive housing program. This isn't a jail, shelter, or nursing home. READ YOUR LEASE: not just the most current one, but the ORIGINAL one. And think carefully about how you want social workers, who have an agenda that may not match your own, to represent you to other organizations. The potential damage to your reputation could be significant and long-lasting.

By the way, many of us may already be on the Tenant Blacklist referred to in an earlier post to this blog (scroll down). Anyone that's been through housing court has a good chance of landing on that list - and it's just one particularly juicy example of how personal data gets sold and works to the DIS-advantage of the people included in the list.

The Dark Market for Personal Data

By FRANK PASQUALE OCT. 16, 2014

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Credit Sam Potts

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BALTIMORE MD- THE reputation business is exploding. Having eroded privacy for decades, shady, poorly regulated data miners, brokers and resellers have now taken creepy classification to a whole new level. They have created lists of victims of sexual assault, and lists of people with sexually transmitted diseases. Lists of people who have Alzheimer's, dementia and AIDS. Lists of the impotent and the depressed.

There are lists of 'impulse buyers.' Lists of suckers: gullible consumers who have shown that they are susceptible to 'vulnerability-based marketing.' And lists of those deemed commercially undesirable because they live in or near trailer parks or nursing homes. Not to mention lists of people who have been accused of wrongdoing, even if they were not charged or convicted.
Typically sold at a few cents per name, the lists don't have to be particularly reliable to attract eager buyers '” mostly marketers, but also, increasingly, financial institutions vetting customers to guard against fraud, and employers screening potential hires.
There are three problems with these lists. First, they are often inaccurate. For example, as The Washington Postreported, an Arkansas woman found her credit history and job prospects wrecked after she was mistakenly listed as a methamphetamine dealer. It took her years to clear her name and find a job.
Second, even when the information is accurate, many of the lists have no business being in the hands of retailers, bosses or banks. Having a medical condition, or having been a victim of a crime, is simply not relevant to most employment or credit decisions.
Third, people aren't told they are on these lists, so they have no opportunity to correct bad information. The Arkansas woman found out about the inaccurate report only when she was denied a job. She was one of the rare ones.
'Data-driven' hiring practices are under increasing scrutiny, because the data may be a proxy for race, class or disability. For example, in 2011, CVS settled a charge of disability discrimination after a job applicant challenged a personality test that probed mental health issues. But if an employer were to secretly use lists based on inferences about mental health, it would be nearly impossible for an affected applicant to find out what was going on. Secrecy is discrimination's best friend: Unknown unfairness can never be detected, let alone corrected.
These problems can't be solved with existing law. The Federal Trade Commission has strained to understand personal data markets '” a $156-billion-a-year industry '” and it can't find out where the data brokers get their information, and whom they sell it to. Hiding behind a veil of trade secrecy, most refuse to divulge this vital information.
The market in personal information offers little incentive for accuracy; it matters little to list-buyers whether every entry is accurate '” they need only a certain threshold percentage of 'hits' to improve their targeting. But to individuals wrongly included on derogatory lists, the harm to their reputation is great.

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The World Privacy Forum, a research and advocacy organization, estimates that there are about 4,000 data brokers. They range from giants like Acxiom, a publicly traded company that helps marketers target consumer segments, to boutiques like Paramount Lists, which has compiled lists of addicts and debtors. Companies like these vacuum up data from just about any source imaginable: consumer health websites, payday lenders, online surveys, warranty registrations, Internet sweepstakes, loyalty-card data from retailers, charities' donor lists, magazine subscription lists, and information from public records.

It's unrealistic to expect individuals to inquire, broker by broker, about their files. Instead, we need to require brokers to make targeted disclosures to consumers. Uncovering problems in Big Data (or decision models based on that data) should not be a burden we expect individuals to solve on their own.
Privacy protections in other areas of the law can and should be extended to cover consumer data. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or Hipaa, obliges doctors and hospitals to give patients access to their records. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives loan and job applicants, among others, a right to access, correct and annotate files maintained by credit reporting agencies.
It is time to modernize these laws by applying them to all companies that peddle sensitive personal information. If the laws cover only a narrow range of entities, they may as well be dead letters. For example, protections in Hipaa don't govern the 'health profiles' that are compiled and traded by data brokers, which can learn a great deal about our health even without access to medical records.
Congress should require data brokers to register with the Federal Trade Commission, and allow individuals to request immediate notification once they have been placed on lists that contain sensitive data. Reputable data brokers will want to respond to good-faith complaints, to make their lists more accurate. Plaintiffs' lawyers could use defamation law to hold recalcitrant firms accountable.
We need regulation to help consumers recognize the perils of the new information landscape without being overwhelmed with data. The right to be notified about the use of one's data and the right to challenge and correct errors is fundamental. Without these protections, we'll continue to be judged by a big-data Star Chamber of unaccountable decision makers using questionable sources.

Frank Pasquale, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 17, 2014, on page A31 of the New York edition with the headline: The Dark Market for Personal Data. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

time to set your clocks back - NEXT WEEK

1. Daylight Saving Time (United States) 2014 began at 2:00 AM on

   Sunday, March 9

   and ends at 2:00 AM on

   Sunday, November 2

Overview of Recent Posts

It's incredibly important for tenants in this building to read and understand the Tenants' Bill of Rights because of all the questions they've recently had about exactly this issue. I can't stress enough how important it is for tenants here to pay attention to this; there's been a lot of confusion about what rights S.R.O. tenants have because H.S.I. management and staff have been insisting for the past year this is a supportive housing building, as though that cancels out the rights rent stabilized tenants are entitled to (and yes, we all have rent stabilized leases, and I've checked with local council members who helped draft this bill, and they tell me that the Bill of Rights applies just as  much to S.R.O.s as any other building with rent-stabilized units).

There is a Tenant ProtectionAssistance Unit that gives tenants another option in getting legal issues with their landlords resolved and possibly bypass the court system. The Blacklist for landlords is a step in the right direction and may represent more progress for tenants. However, there's an equivalent listing of tenants who have had to go through court, and the scary thing is that people who may have had a totally legitimate reason for going to court may become stigmatized as deadbeats or troublemakers whether the outcome of their case was in their favor or not. Also, if  you're planning to move out of the building, beware of discrimination based on having a rent subsidy lik Section 8; it's illegal, but part of the issue is having to PROVE you've been discriminated against.

Settlement in Investigation of Brooklyn Landlord Over Rent-Regulated Units - NYTimes.com.htm

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Settlement in Investigation of Brooklyn Landlord Over Rent-Regulated Units

By MIREYA NAVARROOCT. 7, 2014

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Officials at New York State’s Tenant Protection Unit said they have reached a settlement with a Brooklyn landlord accused of harassing longtime residents to clear the way for higher-paying tenants.

The accusations against the landlord, Yeshaya Wasserman, involved alleged practices in eight rent-regulated properties with 181 apartments in Flatbush and Crown Heights. The state investigation targeted practices that tenant advocates say have become more commonplace in fast-changing neighborhoods where the market now can demand rents many times higher than those paid by long-term residents.

Some of Mr. Wasserman’s tenants have lived in their apartments for more than 20 years and pay less than $1,000 for three-bedroom units, said representatives of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, which aided the state investigation. Some tenants complained that the landlord did not cash their rent checks, a tactic that officials said relies on the expectation that tenants will not have the money to pay the back rent when it is finally demanded of them. Other tenants said the landlord cut off heat and hot water or took them to housing court on frivolous charges.

The settlement requires the landlord to devise policies to protect tenants from illegal actions and to pay to have an independent monitor oversee business practices at his buildings, both current and future properties, for up to three years. The monitor will also audit rents set after vacancies, to make sure apartments are not illegally deregulated, and will administer a $60,000 compensation fund to be set up by the landlord to pay claims to any mistreated tenants.

Mr. Wasserman’s lawyer, Steven Sidrane, declined to answer questions but said in a written statement, “While our client engaged in appropriate management procedures and denies any wrongdoing, it has agreed with T.P.U. to undertake recommended best practices in its policies and procedures in dealings with its tenants.”

The landlord is also facing a federal lawsuit in which black tenants at one complex, Homewood Gardens Estates in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, say the efforts to evict them stem from racial discrimination.

Edward Josephson, the director of litigation at Legal Services NYC, which represents tenants in the lawsuit and in Mr. Wasserman’s buildings, praised the Tenant Protection Unit for seeking settlements and stopping bad conduct and displacements faster than litigation would. The settlement came a year after enforcement officials served Mr. Wasserman with subpoenas.

Mr. Josephson said the $60,000 compensation is “a very modest amount” but that the monitor is what gives the most value to the agreement.

“It establishes a framework to closely look at everything the landlord does,” he said. “There’s at least a good chance that landlords will act differently if they know they’re watched closely.”

Formed in 2012, the state unit investigates patterns of illegal behavior by landlords and conducts audits to deter the illegal deregulation of rent-stabilized apartments. The Wasserman settlement is similar to a major agreement announced this year in which the owner of about 1,700 apartments in Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx agreed to an independent monitor after being accused of pressuring Spanish-speaking tenants with low buyout offers and other tactics to waive their tenancy rights.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a written statement that “this administration will not tolerate landlords who seek to harass and bully tenants out of their homes.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 8, 2014, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Settlement in Investigation of Brooklyn Landlord Over Rent-Regulated Units. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Despite New Law, Subsidized Tenants Find Doors Closed - NYTimes.com.htm

Despite New Law, Subsidized Tenants Find Doors Closed

Annie Tritt for The New York Times

Dilcia Escano, with two of her children, Mageline, 13, left, and Juan Felipe, 4, says her voucher was refused.

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

Published: September 19, 2008Reprints

In March, New York City enacted a law making it illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants who planned to use federal subsidies known as Section 8 vouchers to help pay their rent.

Related

• Bias Is Seen as Landlords Bar Vouchers (October 30, 2007)

But Section 8 discrimination remains a widespread problem, housing advocates, tenant lawyers and voucher holders say. Renters are routinely turned away by landlords who refuse to accept the vouchers, and apartment listings continue to discourage Section 8 tenants from seeking advertised units with phrases like “No Section 8” and “No programs,” supporters of the law said.
Dilcia Escano tells what housing advocates assert is a common story. Ms. Escano, 34, a single mother and pharmacy worker who lives in Washington Heights with her three children, said her landlord and the landlord’s representatives refused to take her voucher before the law passed and then refused to take it afterward.
“He said, ‘No, we don’t recognize that,’” Ms. Escano said her landlord told her. “I thought, all is lost.”
The nonprofit Fair Housing Justice Center released a report this month that found that on one day in July on the Web site www.craigslist.org, there were 1,543 apartment listings posted by landlords and real estate brokers that discriminated against renters who receive government subsidies.
“If this ad said ‘No blacks allowed’ or ‘No Catholics allowed,’ there would rightfully be a huge uproar,” said City Councilman Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat who introduced the bill that became the law. “Effectively what they’re doing is illegal, and it has to stop.”
The law prohibits landlords from discriminating against tenants based on their use of Section 8 vouchers or any other form of local, state or federal government assistance. It amended the city’s Human Rights Law by adding a person’s “lawful source of income” to the list of protected classes.
The law applies to landlords with six or more units. Owners of five or fewer units are excluded, with two exceptions. The law applies to rent-controlled tenants in buildings with five or fewer units, and to buildings with five or fewer units that are owned by a landlord who also owns a building with six or more units.
The vouchers, financed by the federal government but administered by two city agencies, had for decades virtually guaranteed landlords in struggling neighborhoods a modest profit for housing low-income New Yorkers. But as those neighborhoods have gentrified, voucher holders are finding that property owners who might have taken their vouchers in the past are now turning them away, despite the new law.
Section 8 tenants, many of whom are poor, disabled or elderly black and Hispanic residents, pay about 30 percent of their income toward rent, and the vouchers cover the rest.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg criticized the bill for prohibiting private owners from making sound business decisions about their property while turning a voluntary government program into a mandatory one. The mayor vetoed the measure, but the City Council overrode the veto on March 26, and the law took effect immediately.
Since then, housing advocates have complained that the city has not done enough to enforce the law or to notify the public about its passage. Lawyers for landlords and tenants, meanwhile, are disputing whether the law applies to both prospective and current tenants.
A recent cursory review of Craigslist found dozens of listings for New York City apartments with phrases like “No Section 8.” Some of the listings make it a point to welcome renters with pets, but state bluntly, “No programs accepted in this building.”
Mr. de Blasio has written two letters to executives at Craigslist, advising them to discontinue the listings, and said he was considering protests or legal action against the Web site if the listings continue.
The law prohibits the circulation of housing advertisements that discriminate based on a person’s source of income.
A spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio said that a lawyer for Craigslist contacted the Council’s General Welfare Committee, of which Mr. de Blasio is chairman, and said that the Web site was taking the matter seriously.
An e-mail message sent to Craigslist seeking comment did not receive a response.
One ad reading “No Section 8” for a two-bedroom apartment in a 32-unit building in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, boasted that the building “has more than 60 percent gentrified.” When asked about the law, a man listed as the “showing agent” said the landlord did not accept Section 8. “You’re asking questions I can’t answer,” he said before hanging up.
Others who placed ads barring Section 8 tenants said they were unaware of the law. “I didn’t know that,” said Veronica Dumitru, a real estate agent who posted a Craigslist ad for a Queens apartment reading, “No Section 8 or other programs please.” She said she was going to remove the language from her listings.
Diane L. Houk, executive director of the fair housing group, said the report, the advertisements and other data from their research were given to the authorities, including the state attorney general’s office. She said the report illustrated the frequency of the practice in just one month on one Web site.
“It’s not limited to any particular size apartment or to a borough or to a price range or to a kind of building or broker,” Ms. Houk said. “If you’re the tenant looking, it’s going to hit you at some point in your search.”
The city’s Commission on Human Rights opposed the bill when it was before the City Council, saying that it would add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to an already successful program. Now the commission is in charge of enforcing the new law for the city.
Since March, the commission has investigated or received 77 complaints of source of income discrimination, said Cliff Mulqueen, its deputy commissioner and general counsel. Of those complaints, 15 were resolved and the tenants’ vouchers were accepted after the commission contacted the property owners. The 62 other complaints became official cases. Some of those cases have since been settled, while 33 of them remain unresolved and active, he said.
The commission has the power to fine a landlord and award the tenant compensatory damages. No landlord has received a fine, he said. “We’re actively enforcing the law,” said Mr. Mulqueen, adding that the commission also monitors and looks into “No Section 8” advertisements on Craigslist. “I guess we could always do more. We’re doing what we can do.”
The Legal Aid Society has sued about 90 landlords from around the city in three separate lawsuits, alleging that they violated the law by refusing to take the vouchers of dozens of tenants. One of the tenants they are representing is Ms. Escano in Washington Heights.
Maxwell Breed, a lawyer for Ms. Escano’s landlord, Mon-Rose Realty Corporation, said: “Our policy is not to comment on pending litigation.”
Landlords who opposed the creation of the law said their refusal to accept the vouchers had nothing to do with race or class. They said that getting involved in the city’s Section 8 program by accepting vouchers was a bureaucratic nightmare of payment delays, apartment inspections and other problems.
Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel for the Rent Stabilization Association, a trade group that represents thousands of New York City landlords and property managers, said the group does not condone violations of the source of income law.
“On the other hand,” he said, “it seems pretty evident to us that a lot of people in the industry simply don’t know that this sort of practice is illegal. At least for the last decade it’s been entirely lawful to refuse to rent to tenants with vouchers.”

A version of this article appeared in print on September 20, 2008, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Despite New Law, Subsidized Tenants Find Doors Closed.

A Tenant Blacklist, Culled From Tedium - NYTimes.com.htm

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N.Y. / Region

On the List, and Not in a Good Way

A Tenant Blacklist, Culled From Tedium

By JULIE SATOWOCT. 16, 2014

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Room 225 at the New York State Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, where employees of tenant-screening companies compile information from publicly available case files for use by landlords. Credit Anthony Lanzilote for The New York Times

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At New York City Housing Court, on the second floor of a dingy office building in Lower Manhattan, a woman sits quietly with a shawl pulled around her shoulders, looking up names on an old government computer and copying them into a sleek mini-laptop at her side. Behind her, tenants shift anxiously on their feet, clutching paperwork and waiting to speak with one of a handful of clerks sitting behind a glass partition.

The woman, who gives her name only as Carolyn out of fear of losing her job, sits at one of the three public-access computers in the room eight hours a day, five days a week. She is searching an online database for the names of tenants with cases before the court. The information she turns up will soon be compiled in a document and sold to landlords, who will use it as a kind of blacklist designed to prevent supposedly litigious or financially irresponsible tenants from renting apartments.

The state Office of Court Administration, which operates New York’s court system, charges a $20,000 initial fee and $350 per week thereafter for a daily data feed of housing court cases. The seemingly innocuous list of index numbers identifies every new housing court matter and updates existing ones. The feed used to include tenants’ names and addresses as well, but after years of complaints and negotiations, housing advocates and politicians thought they had won a victory when, in 2012, the Office of Court Administration began scrubbing that information.

But just as some Wall Street banks find ways to stay a step ahead of regulators, so, too, have companies that sell tenant names to landlords found a way around this hurdle. Under state law, housing court records are public, so the companies have taken to hiring people like Carolyn to spend hours plugging the index numbers on the court system’s data feed into the electronic case files to find the corresponding names and addresses. The resulting list can include anyone who was in court records, whether because they failed to pay rent, withheld it to force a landlord to make repairs, broke the terms of a lease, or as a result of a landlord’s error.

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Companies that compile the information for landlords “have an extra step now, and it costs them a bit more, but the result is still the same,” said New York State Senator Liz Kruger, one of the elected officials who worked on the 2012 deal. “It is frustrating. We thought we had stopped these tenant blacklists, but the companies have found a way around it, and now it looks like we are back where we started.”

Andres E. Correa wound up on one of the lists. Mr. Correa had been living in an illegal sublet for several years when the landlord sued the tenant whose name was on the lease to evict him, and also sued Mr. Correa. After hiring a lawyer, Mr. Correa, who said he was unaware the sublet was illegal, struck a deal with the landlord: In the court case, Mr. Correa would be identified only as Andres Doe. When the case was settled, however, Mr. Correa’s name was recorded in the court records and then picked up by a tenant-screening company.

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“It has been a nightmare,” said Mr. Correa, adding that he had been unable to sign a lease and had moved eight times in the past two years. Eventually, he hired James B. Fishman, a lawyer who has brought two class actions against screening firms, to help him clear his name.

Nearly all landlords, whether small-time or with thousands of units, perform background checks on prospective tenants. Numerous screening companies offer those who hire them various options to choose from, such as criminal records, watch lists for sexual offenders and eviction histories. Typically, the housing court information notes whether a tenant has been sued, the type of case, the amount of rent the landlord claimed and the outcome.

Federal credit-reporting laws allow screening companies to report information going back seven years, and landlords across the country are able to view it.

“It is a balancing act between public information and the misuse of public information,” said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration. “We were responsive to advocacy groups who believed that the selling of names was leading to misuse,” he said, “and the reality is, this has made it a lot harder for people to misuse the information.”

It certainly has made it more costly. For the past year and a half, Carolyn, 31, who is herself a tenant in Queens, has been paid by the hour to sift through a mountain of data for her employer. She declined to name the company, but there are only three firms currently paying the Office of Court Administration for its housing court-data feed: CoreLogic SafeRent, TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions and ALM, a legal media company. After compiling the lists of names, they can then sell the information to other screening companies or directly to landlords.

There are typically 300 to 400 housing court judgments filed each day in New York City. Carolyn said that it took her up to two weeks to update the information for a single borough, adding that she was running about six months behind.

Sitting day after day in such proximity to those whose names she is gathering takes its toll. “It’s a job. The company sends me a list of case numbers and it is basically like data entry,” she said. Her employers are based in the South, and she rarely has direct contact with them; she has far more with the people she is profiling. “Sometimes it is difficult. I know that not all tenants are bad tenants, and some people fall on bad times.”

Some tenants know what she is doing. She said a woman once screamed at her, “telling me that she knows what I do is just a job, but that people should know there is a tenant blacklist. And then people come in all the time and ask if their name is in the system, and if that means they are on the blacklist. I mean, c’mon. Yes!”

Most tenants do not realize that housing court information can be used against them, said Judge Fern A. Fisher, who, as the deputy chief administrative judge for New York City Courts, oversees housing court. “I don’t think most people are aware that companies have access to what happens in housing court. They should, but I think more people are concerned with keeping a roof over their heads.”

Even winning a case may not keep someone off a bad-tenant list. If a tenant withholds rent to force a landlord to make repairs and the judge ultimately sides with the tenant, the only thing that shows up on a screening report is that there was a money judgment against the tenant for the remaining rent owed. Some tenants may even find themselves on a list mistakenly because their name is a common one.

None of the list brokers would comment on how the data they collect is used, but CoreLogic’s website is clear about the rationale: “Experience shows that past lease performance is the single most important predictor of future resident behavior.”

Screening companies typically have their own systems for flagging potentially troublesome tenants. And while some landlords simply follow along, others adopt a more thorough approach. “I don’t necessarily disqualify a tenant when I see there has been a housing court case,” said Robert J. Klehammer, the vice president of multifamily rental management at FirstService Residential New York, which manages 8,000 rental apartments across the city. “But I will ask the broker to go back and get an explanation.”

Mr. Klehammer is perhaps more understanding than many, having spent over a decade working as an assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. But, he said, screening reports are critical for weeding out problems. “There are a lot of people out there who lie. And it is up to us, as a third-party manager, to make sure we don’t rent to any bad tenants.”

Money is also an issue. “Most of our fees are based on the rents we collect, so if a tenant is delinquent on their rent, I don’t earn a fee. That puts a premium on me to get tenants who will pay the rent.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 19, 2014, on page MB10 of the New York edition with the headline: On the List, and Not in a Good Way. 

NYC's Worst Landlords Watchlist About the Watchlist NYC Public Advocate.htm

ABOUT THE WATCHLIST
FAQs FOR TENANTS
RESOURCES FOR LANDLORDS

** PLEASE NOTE: YOU ARE VISITING AN ARCHIVED WEBPAGE.**

This webpage is an archived image of the Office of the Public Advocate's website as of December 31, 2013. These materials are made available as historical archival information only. The Office of the Public Advocate cautions that the information has not been reviewed subsequently for current accuracy and completeness, nor has the information been updated. The information contained on this page may have been superseded by subsequent events and the passage of time.

New York City has more apartments and tenants than any other American city. More than 2.14 million New Yorkers rent and over 64% of all apartments citywide are rentals. Unfortunately, New York City is also home to thousands of broken down buildings where tenants live in deplorable and unsafe conditions.  Complaints of asthma-inducing mold, peeling lead paint, and broken plumbing come in to 311 by the thousands every month. For five years in a row, housing and landlord complaints have been the number one reason New Yorkers call 311.
In August 2010, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio launched NYC’s Worst Landlords Watchlist to mount public pressure on landlords who let violations pile up year after year without consequence. Since it was launched in August 2010, the site has become one of the City's most used commonly used resources, helping tenants better organize to secure building repairs and enabling prospective renters to view a building's violation history of before signing a lease.  The lastest rendition of the site, NYC’s Worst Landlords Watchlist 3.0, includes more than 5,000 buildings.
Rankings and eligibility for NYC’s Worst Landlords Watchlist is based on housing violation data from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development  (HPD).  There are more than 150,000 buildings registered with HPD. From this total universe, over 5,400 qualified for the Watchlist -- representing 3.6% of the total private housing stock.

Eligibility

All buildings registered with HPD are analyzed to determine if they are elible for NYC's Worst Landlord Watchlist.  The Public Advocate's office looks at the number of open violations that were issued after January 1, 2007.  For a landlord to be listed on the Watchlist, they must own a building with fewer than 35 units with an average of at least three open, serious violations (B and C violations) per unit . Larger buildings must have an average of at least two open, serious violations (B and C violations) per unit.  Buildings with one or two total units are not included in NYC's Worst Landlord Watchlist.  Vacant buildings with no current tenants have also been excluded.
Housing code violations are classified by HPD into the following categories:

Class A: Non-hazardous violations, such as minor leaks or lack of signs designating floor numbers. An owner has 90 days to correct an A violation and two weeks to certify repair to remove the violation.

Class B: Hazardous violations, such as requiring public doors to be self-closing, adequate lighting in public areas, lack of posted Certificate of Occupancy, or removal of vermin. An owner has 30 days to correct a B violation and two weeks to certify the correction to remove the violation.

Class C: Immediately hazardous violations, such as inadequate fire exits, rodents, lead-based paint, lack of heat, hot water, electricity, or gas. An owner has 24 hours to correct a C violation and five days to certify the correction to remove the violation. If the owner fails to comply with emergency C violations such as lack of heat or hot water, HPD initiates corrective action through its Emergency Repair Program.

Class I: Violations for which there is an order from a judge to correct a violation. This category also applies if the building is in the Alternative Enforcement Program or an order to vacate exists.

Buildings in Rehabilitation 

Properties that are certified as "buildings in rehabilitation" are exempted from inclusion on NYC's Worst Landlords Watchlist. The Public Advocate's office, in partnership with the City, has developed criteria, below, for buildings that have violations that would otherwise qualify them for Watchlist but are in the process of rehabilitation by responsible owners. In order to be exempt from inclusion on the Worst Landlords Watchlist, a property must either (1) be assigned to a court-appointed 7A Administrator or (2) meet all of the following criteria: (a) Owner purchased building within the past 18 months; (b) The building and/or owner has been noted publicly as working with City or State Agencies on rehabilitation; and (c) The City or State has verified that the building and/or owner have partnered with City or State Agencies on the rehabilitation of the premises.

Updating Property Information

Landlord information contained on NYC's Worst Landlords Watchlist is based on data contained in HPD Property Registration Forms. For more information about HPD’s Property Registration Unit including details on how to update your property’s registration, call (212) 863-7000 or click here. In cases where a property’s HPD Registration appears out-of-date, the Office of the Public Advocate may also consult the New York City Department of Finance’s Automated City Register Information System (ACRIS). In cases where ACRIS indicates a change in ownership that is more up-to-date than the property’s HPD registration, data from ACRIS is used in place of data from HPD Property Registration Forms.  To contact the Public Advocate's office, you can call 212-669-7250 or send an email to GetHelp@pubadvocate.nyc.gov.  

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City to Publicly Shame Harassing Landlords - NYTimes.com.htm

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N.Y. / Region|City to Publicly Shame Harassing Landlords

N.Y. / Region

City to Publicly Shame Harassing Landlords

By MIREYA NAVARRO  SEPT. 30, 2014

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New York City officials will publicly post the names of landlords found to have harassed tenants, hoping the public shaming will be a deterrent.

The mayor signed a bill on Tuesday that will require the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to post on its website the names of landlords found in housing court to have harassed tenants.

A 2008 city law prohibits tactics, such as interrupting utilities, that are intended to force tenants to vacate an apartment or waive tenancy rights. Such efforts have been on the rise in gentrifying neighborhoods of the city where market-rate rents have soared and some landlords try to engineer vacancies to make room for higher-paying tenants.

Starting next year, landlords who run afoul of the anti-harassment law will face public exposure.

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Related Coverage

• New Law Lets Tenants Sue Over HarassmentMARCH 14, 2008

• Landlord Faces Lawsuit for HarassmentJAN. 28, 2010

“There are good landlords out there, but the ones who don’t do the right thing need to feel consequences,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, who as the city’s public advocate ran a Worst Landlords Watchlist to highlight landlords with numerous open building violations.

But tenant groups say many cases of withheld repairs, baseless eviction proceedings and other harassments go unreported because such cases are hard to prove and because tenants, if they lose, may be ordered to pay the landlord’s legal fees. Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who co-sponsored the bill, said the publicity would work with landlords who may be willing to risk civil penalties, but not their reputations.

“A lot of them have investors, and the investors would have to ask, ‘Is this a good guy?’ ” she said. “This is to get it on the record who the bad actors are.”

Housing officials said harassment complaints rose to 748 last year from 541 in 2012, but only a fraction of cases that reach housing court result in a finding of harassment. Of more than 3,600 cases filed since 2008, most have been dismissed, 810 led to settlements and 45 had a finding of harassment.

Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel for the Rent Stabilization Association, the trade group for the city’s landlords, said the figures showed how unnecessary the law was. He said it would do little more than taint and “vilify” property owners and “curry favor with the tenant movement.”

“It creates an impression that harassment is somehow a systemic problem,” he said. “Should a tenant have their name published for failing to pay rent?”

A spokesman for the housing agency said the public would be able to find offenders by the landlord’s name and by building address. The department already lists building violations and litigation against landlords online, but this is the first time that cases of harassment will be added.

The information must be placed on the website within 30 days of a finding of harassment.

The new law also raises civil penalties for landlords who harass to a maximum of $10,000 per residential unit, from $5,000.

A version of this article appears in print on October 1, 2014, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: City to Publicly Shame Harassing Landlords. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Call of the International Tribunal on Evictions. Communicate your case of eviction before 30/09/14!

The International Tribunal on Evictions launches an international Call to identify cases of evictions for its fourth Session that will take place October 9^th  to 10th, 2014 in Milan, Italy, within the World Zero Evictions Days - in Defence of Land.
» Call of the International Tribunal on Evictions. Communicate your case of eviction before 30/09/14!

Calling for the mobilization of activists for the right to housing, to land and to the city across the world

Neoliberal globalization has produced a global crisis for civilization - its immediate effects are unemployment, environmental devastation, violence, wars, hunger, drug trafficking, disease, migration, discrimination and the evictions of millions of inhabitants from their homes and lands. Furthermore this crisis dispossesses peoples and communities of their common, historical, and natural resources, converting them into commodities.
» Calling for the mobilization of activists for the right to housing, to land and to the city across the world

How participate in October 2014’s World Zero Evictions Days - for the Defense of the Land

Grounded in the Declaration of the World Assembly of the Inhabitants  (WSF 2013, Tunis ) , signed by more than 270 entities form 45 countries and on the Declaration of People’s Alternative Urban Social Forum (Medellin, 2014) , attended by more than 3,000 participants from all continents, we propose to organize or to converge your actions during the whole month of October.
» How participate in October 2014’s World Zero Evictions Days - for the Defense of the Land

The International Alliance of Inhabitants is a global network of associations and social movements of inhabitants, cooperatives, communities, tenants, house owners, homeless, slum dwellers, indigenous populations and people from working class neighbourhoods. The objective is the construction of another possible world starting from the achievement of the housing and city rights.
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