Chelsea Housing Group wins grant to help tenants

Volume One, Issue 26, March 16 - 22, 2007

By Chris Lombardi

For more than seven years, the Chelsea Housing Group has helped local tenants deal with landlords and find new affordable-housing resources. Now, in the face of increased pressure from landlords on rent-stabilized tenants in the form of phony demolition, “owner-occupancy” evictions and illegal hotels, the Hudson Guild–based agency and its activist wing, Chelsea Tenant Action Committee, is planning a big public forum to help residents organize tenant associations in their buildings. And they’re doing it with an award from the Citizens Committee for NYC.

Last week, C.H.G. was one of 41 Manhattan-based community groups chosen to receive New Yorkers for Better Neighborhoods grants from the committee. These grants, intended to “support programs that will improve the quality of life in communities all across the five boroughs,” were presented at a celebrity-studded March 7 ceremony at the Municipal Art Society’s Urban Center, whose presenters including former Mayor David Dinkins and musician Wynton Marsalis.

The Program grants were created to give small-scale community groups the tools and support they need to improve their neighborhoods. The program works closely with local groups around the City to identify top community concerns, then tailors grant-making, training and technical assistance accordingly. Since 2004, the New Yorkers for Better Neighborhoods Program has provided almost $250,000 to local community-based organizations.

C.H.G.’s $600 grant is targeted for its April 25 community housing forum, which will bring in tenants, experts and advocates in a bilingual setting. Rosa Maria de la Torre, the group’s director, said the forum came out of numerous tenants’ complaints about phony demolitions and legal hassles threatening them with eviction.

“I wouldn’t say these are new tactics, but they’re spreading all over the city,” said de la Torre. Thus the idea for the forum, which now “has become a reality” thanks to the funding from the Citizens Committee. She is pleased that the committee wanted to support the overall goal to help grow the Tenant Action Committee and help tenants organize into building associations, which would give them more clout in their interactions with landlords.

“Landlords have the money,” said de la Torre, “but tenants have each other.” A strong tenants association can be an equalizing factor when landlords drag them into court, she added, since “poor people don’t have the time to spend all day in housing court.”

Peter Kostmayer, president of the Citizens Committee, told Chelsea Now that the group’s proposal stood out among hundreds of grant applications. “For people on fixed incomes, young people coming into the city, for everyone but a handful of rich people, housing in the area is increasingly scarce,” said Kostmayer, a former congressman and Clinton Administration official. “Every year, we conduct a survey of neighborhood leaders, and every year housing shows up as the number one concern.” The committee also liked the bilingual aspect of the Group’s proposal, he added, given the overall needs of New York tenants.

At the March 7 awards ceremony, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said, “These community groups are vital partners in the ongoing effort to strengthen Manhattan’s many vibrant and unique neighborhoods. They are truly deserving of this important grant money and along with Citizen’s Committee should be commended for their commitment to enriching the lives of others for the betterment of our entire borough.”

That night, at its “New Yorkers for New York City” gala, the committee also honored nine individuals, including journalists Pete Hamill and Jonathan Capeheart, opera star Martina Arroyo, and De Witt Clinton High School senior Latonia Shakira Edwards, who won the first ever Cornell Family Scholarship Award of $5,000 for her essay on preventing teen pregnancy. Founding chair Osborn Elliott said, “Though it would have been far easier and more comfortable to simply pursue their successful careers and private lives, these honorees chose to enter an environment where significant challenges lay waiting for someone to step forward and make a difference. They did just that, and we are all the better for it.”