The Critics
While the mayor is pushing to bring mixed-income developments to the city, she also is trying to solve an affordable housing shortage of 15,000 units. However, because of funding shortages, her plan only includes the development of 2,100 new units by 2002.
Even with her commitment to affordable housing and the city’s 1 percent vacancy rate, the mayor still has critics.
While Steve Frenz, president and owner of JAS Apartments Inc., recognizes the importance of the city’s 20 percent affordable housing requirements of publicly subsidized developments. But, he says the mayor’s other actions are anti-affordable housing. He points to the decision to tear down 1,200 public housing units throughout the city rather than rehabilitate them.
He also points to the administration’s decision to increase licensing fees by 20 percent, which gets passed on to the residents, and the city’s “three strikes and you’re out” policy – if landlords have three residents with undesirable backgrounds that cause problems at the property, landlords can loose their licenses. “These practices squeeze out residents at the lower end [of the pay scale],” he says.
Another complaint is that city council increased the multiple dwelling fees in the city by about 25 percent, says Steven Schactman, principal of Steven Scott Management Inc. “When that happens, it ends up passed back in the form of rent increases to the residents,” he says.
And while everyone agrees there is an affordable housing crisis, Schactman does not believe that increasing fees is the solution to the problem. Like Frenz, he believes that public housing units that are in poor condition should be sold to a private developer for rehabilitation, not torn down.