Testimony: Support the Community Land Act and Social Housing Solutions in NYC

Testimony: Support the Community Land Act and Social Housing Solutions in NYC

Oksana MironovaSamuel SteinIziah Thompson

Testimony before the New York City Council's Committee on Housing and Buildings

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today's social housing hearing. Our names are Oksana Mironova, Samuel Stein, and Iziah Thompson, and we are housing policy analysts at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS). CSS has worked with and for New Yorkers since 1843 to promote economic opportunity and champion an equitable city and state. We work to address urgent issues facing low-income New Yorkers, including the city's chronic unaffordability crisis.

The Community Land Act is a set of bills that gives community land trusts (CLTs) and other nonprofits a fighting chance to develop and preserve affordable housing, as well as community and commercial spaces. It includes Intro 902, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), which gives CLTs and other nonprofits a first right to purchase multifamily buildings when landlords sell. It also includes Intro 78, Public Land for Public Good, which prioritizes CLTs and other nonprofits in public land dispositions, as well as the Resolution 374, in support of the state Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA).

We also call on the City Council to pass:

• the Land Bank Bill (Intro 570), which can work with community land trusts and other responsible property owners to acquire distressed properties, and ultimately replace our unjust tax lien system.
• Intros 1006 and 1007, which will expand the legal definition and regulatory agreements for CLTs to include community and commercial uses.
• Intro 350, to study the feasibility of creating a social housing agency on the city level.
• Reso 777 in support of the state Social Housing Development Authority bill.

We know COPA works. San Francisco passed a similar law in 2019, backed by the San Francisco CLT and the local CDCs. In the years since, the law has proven effective, especially in preserving affordability in rent-controlled buildings. For example, the Mission Economic Development Agency-founded in 1973 to promote equitable economic development for working-class Latino households in San Francisco's Mission District-has successfully closed eight COPA-facilitated purchases, each one in close partnership with the building's tenants.

Similarly, we have proof of concept for Public Land for Public Good. Extensive research by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has shown that mission-driven developers are much more likely to preserve affordability for the long-term in subsidized housing, as compared to for-profits. Given the high cost of land across New York, city agencies should not be disposing city land for private gain.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. If you have any questions or want to discuss further, please reach out to us at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

Issues Covered

Affordable Housing

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