People Living in Affordable Apartments Pay over 50% of Income for Rent [and] Who is backing Trump?
 |
| The Current NYC Mayor Promises affordable housing; Lower middle and middle class renters pay at least 50% of their income in such affordable apts. The only renters that pay a fair and sometimes too fair rents are NYCHA renters. They just have to put up with high crime and no repair services. NYCHA was a good concept but the politicians with landlords in their pockets made sure it failed. Wether is Amtrak or any subsidized service will surely fail if money is taken for maintenance and up keeping, insuring that the billions spent to built that service ends up in the can (adamfoxie*blog) |
“Before I go into a story on the NYDaily News today let me just say that I’m an unwilling expert on rents in NYC. Not only because Im informed about the issue but because I live it. I live in a rent regulated apt. Why is it rent regulated? Built with federal loan guarantees with the stipulation to give rent breaks to some renters. No one can tell me if the program in which my building gave some breaks to some renters still goes on. I do know that they still do if they need renters and the renters make at least a minimum of a certain amount a year. Leaving the issues about this building aside let me just get to the money. I have paid at times 80% of income on this one bedroom apt. upon lease renewals (yearly leases). If you change jobs, become disabled, get sick or for what ever reason your income goes down the rent keeps going up every time you renew your lease. The average rent increase has been from $45 lowest (one time, except this year there is no increase for the first time ever) and $80 the highest which was happening every year for about 8 yrs. After finally getting approved to a state program because of the high rent opposite my income now my rent is frozen as long as my income does not goes up. Still with this frozen rent and a reduction of about $80. a month I still pay 50% of income in rent + utilities. This is just one story, I don’t know how people are able to manage in this city. For all the talk about SNAP (food stamps) most people will be turn down unless they have kids. I see unwed mother’s having kids without a father so they can leave home and have the government pick up the tap for food, health and apartment. The system is set up for people not to be honest. I have never met one person who cries out foul about food stamps that knows the qualifications for it They just see a fat woman in front of them at the cashier of the supermarket with a cart full of goods. That woman is feeding a bunch of mouths that the government insisted she have in order to help her. If she had no kids she will not even be at your supermarket.Some people loves the Donald because without any information like most voters he says the hell with this and that and they like it. He solves all the problems by magic and promises to make this nation great again (when did it stop being great opposite most nations?) Uninformed people and people that will directly benefit from him i.e. Landlords will find it thrilling that he can say he will do all that. I wish they will go to George Bush’s speeches and see if he didn’t say the same things in a little better language (not much). He was also not a politician before running for governor of Florida and was as rich as the Donald if not more. The thing is that once they are in they are in for two terms. The first term given by the uninformed (the same that say Trump is just using his money and don’t see the money he gets by law and under the table by the PACS) and the second by the system of money and promises.” [Adam Gonzalez]
Bush went after the Japanese and Trump the Chinese and Mexicans. He wont antagonize Putin and never did Bush (Why? The-world-where-putin-inhabits-does-not-exists)
Survey:
“A just released survey found that a large percentage of the tenants cannot afford to live in their apartments and are either rent burdened or severely rent burdened,” the study states.
Last spring, the group surveyed 115 tenants at 16 randomly selected buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx built between 2001 and 2011 by the city's major affordable housing players.
These buildings all got big tax breaks, so developers had to cap rent for eligible lower- and moderate-income tenants.
But as the years passed, incremental rent increases were allowed. With incomes flat for the last decade, rent costs begin to chew up renters’ budgets.
“Even in a low rent increase environment, the rents do go up,” said one affordable housing developer who reviewed the survey. “And if income is flat or if (a worker’s) hours are cut, the gap between 30% of income towards rent and the real rent paid over time continues to grow.”
One in three said their rent jumped more than 20%, while 11% saw their rent skyrocket more than 40%. That compares to an average 12% rent rise in New York City between 2005 and 2013, census data show.
A 55-year-old airport worker who lives in an affordable building in Brooklyn says her rent started 18 years ago at $250. It’s about to go to $600.
“My salary before taxes is $404. After taxes it’s $316,” said the tenant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she fears retaliation by her landlord.
“Everything in life goes up and up and we can’t get everything for free. But if it’s based on your income, it’s still a lot with my salary,” she said.
Real Affordability planned a protest Wednesday at a gala for NYS Association for Affordable Housing, the affordable housing developer trade group.
The survey, which targetted buildings built by NYSAFAH members, shows “once NYSAFAH developers build their ‘affordable’ housing, the rents rise much faster than tenants’ incomes, increasing the rent burden on low-income tenants who struggle to afford their apartments.”
Jolie Milstein, president & CEO of NYSAFAH, blasted the survey, saying it “conveniently fails to note whether or not any of the tenants' incomes decreased over time.”
“A decrease in income could be caused by loss of employment, personal injury or retirement,” she wrote. “If a tenant in affordable housing loses their job and becomes rent-burdened for a period of time, does RAFA suggest they should be evicted?”
Comments