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Urban Homesteading Assistance Board

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The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), formed in 1974, is a city-wide non-profit housing and tenant advocacy group in New York City.[3][4]: 253, 258, 261–264 [5]

Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
AbbreviationUHAB
Formation1974
TypeNon-profit organization
PurposeTenant advocacy and housing group
HeadquartersNew York, New York
Region served
Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, United States
Membership
1,300 HDFCs
President
Andrew Reicher (1981[1] - 2023[2]) Margy Brown (2023 - Present)[2]
Websitewww.uhab.org

UHAB was originally sponsored by the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.[6] In the late 1970s, they began to contract with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to provide classes for tenants for the city's Tenant Interim Lease (TIL) program and Community Management Program (CMP), which allowed the city to turn ownership of buildings to tenants.[7] UHAB had originally proposed the TIL program, which the HPD adopted in 1978.[8]

An analysis in 2015 showed approximately 1,300 existing Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFC) (a form of limited equity cooperative in NYC), the majority of which had been created in the 1970's and 80's and clustered in low-income areas. They had primarily been created through the CMP, the TIL program, and Third Party Transfer program. UHAB was the main organization helping tenants transition into ownership and occasionally became interim landlords.[9]

In 2002, UHAB purchased 11 squatted buildings from the city for 1 dollar each, helping the homesteaders form HDFCs.[4] Beginning in 2005, as predatory equity became more prevalent in NYC, UHAB worked with other organizations to collect on predatory equity and produce guides to help tenants recognize and respond to it.[10]

Founding

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In November 1973, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Harlem announced a two-year program to rehabilitate 200 buildings containing 3000 apartments. The program, known as "sweat equity" or "urban homesteading", would allow the tenants to renovate their buildings and eventually own them as a cooperative with advice from UHAB.[11]

In 1974, James Parks Morton, the left-wing Dean of the Cathedral, Donald Terner, an urban studies professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and former employees of the Housing Development Administration (HDA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).[6][3] It was also initially supported by John Turner, a major proponent of self-help housing.[6] UHAB's association with St. John the Divine, the fact the founders were highly educated and white, and their rhetoric emphasizing the self-help nature and economic feasibility of homesteading helped attract media attention and meetings with city officials.[3]

UHAB was located on the grounds of the Cathedral until moving to an office in lower Manhattan in 1987.[12]

 
St. John the Divine Cathedral

Activities (1974 - 2000)

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In late 1974, residents at 1186 Washington Ave. formed the People's Development Corporation (PDC) and renovated the building for approximately 6 months before applying for a municipal loan. They were turned down initially but after protest alongside UHAB of the HDA and Roger Starr, including a sit-in resulting in 31 arrests, they secured an approximately $300,000 loan and went on to receive widespread media attention. Around the same time, the PDC, UHAB, and Adopt a Building convinced HUD to launch its first multi-family sweat equity project.[3]

In 1975, the New York City fiscal crisis caused most of the funding programs for co-op programs to collapse. The Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers (ANHD) and UHAB aided the tenants in the programs, however only 48 of the 286 formed or prospective low-income co-ops in 1973 were eventually completed.[13] In 1976, UHAB secured funding through the Comprehensive Employment Training Program (CETA) and Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), federal programs during the Presidency of Gerald Ford which granted stipends to homesteaders to learn construction skills and perform renovations. That year, they were assisting 49 buildings. In 1977, Vice President Walter Mondale praised homesteading and championed organizations such as UHAB, the PDC, Adopt a Building, and the Harlem Renigades.[3]

In 1976, HUD awarded UHAB an approximately $10,000 grant to document its techniques and experiences.[14] The following year they awarded UHAB a $3 million dollar grant to support a technical assistance program for lower-income New Yorkers and test the efficacy and potential of sweat equity homesteading.[15]

In 1978, the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) began the Tenant Interim Lease (TIL) program which UHAB had proposed, wherein tenants take over buildings, rehabilitate them, and manage them as cooperatives.[8][16]

In 1979, Mayor Edward Koch created the Division of Alternative Management Programs (DAMP) within the HPD.[17] He appointed St. Georges, formally the head of UHAB, to serve as the DAMP's head. DAMP's main programs were TIL and the Community Management Program (CMP); the latter's goal was to sell properties to either neighborhood organizations or the tenants as a co-op after moderate repairs. By the end of 1979, one-third of occupied in-rem units were enrolled in a DAMP program, of which nearly two-thirds were in TIL or CMP.[13]

Having initially relied on the sponsorship of the cathedral, in the late 1970's UHAB entered a contract with the HPD wherein tenant leaders are required to take courses and UHAB's staff are required to be available to tenant associations of sold buildings.[7] UHAB contracted with the HPD to provide classes on property management and accounting for all tenant leaders entering the CMP and TIL programs.[7] UHAB also contracted with the HPD to provide all trainings for Article 7A programs.[18] The 7A program allowed state courts to appoint administrators to manage buildings the landlord had failed to care for.[6]

In 1987, UHAB started two projects. The first was financed by state grants of $1 million in 1985 and $3.8 in 1986 and devoted to "gut rehab", where future tenants take over and rebuild abandoned buildings. The second was financed by the Leonard N. Stern foundation to find and rehabilitate apartments for 1000 homeless families within the next three years.[19]

An analysis in 2015 showed that the majority of the approximately 1,300 existing Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFC) (a form of limited equity cooperative in NYC) had been created in the 1970's and 80's and clustered in low-income areas. They had primarily been created through the city's Community Management Program, TIL, and Third Party Transfer program. UHAB was the main organization helping tenants transition into ownership and occasionally became interim landlords.[9]

Activities (2001 - present)

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In 2002, after three years of negotiation with the city administration and HPD, UHAB purchased eleven squatted buildings in the Lower East Side for $1 each, including ABC No Rio, Bullet Space, C-Squat, and Umbrella House. The twelfth squat in the neighborhood, 272 E. Seventh St., was not accepted into the program. UHAB promised financing to bring the homes into code compliance and helped each building form a Housing Development Fund Corporation. The units would be purchased for $250, have a property tax exemption, and have limits on the resale price.[4][20]

 
Squatter's notice at C-Squat

Problems developed, as UHAB took out loans from the National Consumer Cooperative Bank that accrued a large amount of interest that the homesteaders were now obligated to pay. Eight of the buildings sued the city and UHAB under adverse possession; tenants stated the contractors had done terrible work. Complaints about the resale limit led to them being adjusted upward, as the homesteaders pointed out the market value added to the building through their labor.[4][20][21]

As predatory equity began to develop in New York City in 2005, a group of community organizations including UHAB collaborated to track investments and found thousands of apartments were possibly overleveraged, having far more debt than rental income. In 2009, UHAB, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and Tenants and Neighbors collaboratively published a Predatory Equity: The Survival Guide, which provided explanations of various actors in and facets of predatory equity and outlined how to campaign against it on multiple fronts; UHAB also hosts a blog, The SurReal Estate, chronicling ongoing struggles against predatory equity. The organizations launched a multi-pronged campaign against New York Community Bank, which at the time had approximately 800 rental units across 34 buildings in foreclosure with a combined total of over 5000 violations.[10]

References

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  1. ^ Volner, Ian (2022-10-06). "This Non-Profit Wants to Help You Turn Your Building Into a Co-op". Dwell. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
  2. ^ a b Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (January 20, 2023). "Margy Brown Announced as New Executive Director of The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB)".
  3. ^ a b c d e Holtzman, Benjamin (2021). The long crisis : New York City and the path to neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 32–33, 37–40, 42. ISBN 978-0-19-084373-1. OCLC 1202730108.
  4. ^ a b c d McArdle, Andrea (2015). "[Re]Integrating Community Space: The Legal and Social Meanings of Reclaiming Abandoned Space in New York's Lower East Side". Savannah Law Review. 2: 247.
  5. ^ Buckley, Cara (2011-07-16). "In the East Village, Waiting for the Wrecking Ball". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  6. ^ a b c d Katz, Steven; Mayer, Margit (March 1985). "Gimme shelter: self-help housing struggles within and against the state in New York City and West Berlin". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 9 (1): 15–46. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.1985.tb00419.x.
  7. ^ a b c Leavitt, Jacqueline; Saegert, Susan (1990). From abandonment to hope : community-households in Harlem. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 06, 116, 202, 247. ISBN 0-231-06846-8. OCLC 19322448.
  8. ^ a b Comerio, Mary C. (1987). "Design and Empowerment: 20 Years of Community Architecture". Built Environment (1978-). 13 (1): 15–28. ISSN 0263-7960. JSTOR 23286240.
  9. ^ a b Safri, Mailha (2019). "Mapping Solidarity in the Economy in the United States" (PDF). Presented at UNTFSSE International Conference in Geneva. 29: 26.
  10. ^ a b Fields, Desiree (2015-05-01). "Contesting the Financialization of Urban Space: Community Organizations and the Struggle to Preserve Affordable Rental Housing in New York City". Journal of Urban Affairs. 37 (2): 144–165. doi:10.1111/juaf.12098. ISSN 0735-2166. S2CID 56343275.
  11. ^ Haitch, Richard (August 3, 1975). "Follow-Up on The News: Surgical 'Search' 'Think Tank' Crisis City Homesteaders Hard-Luck Tower". The New York Times. p. 27. ProQuest 120305972. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
  12. ^ Gratz, Roberta Brandes (1994). The living city : how America's cities are being revitalized by thinking small in a big way ([New ed] ed.). Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press. p. 118. ISBN 0-89133-246-4. OCLC 30664688.
  13. ^ a b Lawson, Ronald; Naison, Mark (1986). The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904-1984. Rutgers University Press. pp. 223, 240. ISBN 9780813511580.
  14. ^ Reif, Rita (January 25, 1976). "Some Subsidized Co-ops Far From Pioneers' Ideal: Subsidized Co-ops". The New York Times. p. 274. ProQuest 122602453. Retrieved April 15, 2023.
  15. ^ Stegman, Michael A. (1979-10-01). "Neighborhood Classification and the Role of the Planner in Seriously Distressed Communities". Journal of the American Planning Association. 45 (4): 495–505. doi:10.1080/01944367908976997. ISSN 0194-4363.
  16. ^ Pruijt, Hans (March 2003). "Is the institutionalization of urban movements inevitable? A comparison of the opportunities for sustained squatting in New York City and Amsterdam". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 27 (1): 133–157. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.00436. hdl:1765/19213. ISSN 0309-1317.
  17. ^ Lawson, Ronald (1998). "Owners of Last Resort: The Track Record of New York City's Early Low-Income Housing Cooperatives Created between 1967 and 1975". Review of Radical Political Economics. 30 (4): 60–97. doi:10.1177/048661349803000404. ISSN 0486-6134. S2CID 155081421.
  18. ^ Steinberg, Jonathan (September 9, 1979). "How City Tenant Groups Take Steps Toward Ownership: How City Tenants Take Steps Toward Ownership". The New York Times. pp. R1. ProQuest 120761229. Retrieved 2023-04-15.
  19. ^ Goldman, Ari L. (November 15, 1987). "St. John the Divine: More Than a Cathedral CATHEDRAL". The New York Times. pp. SMA22. ProQuest 110598288. Retrieved 2023-04-15.
  20. ^ a b Anderson, Lincoln (December 31, 2008), "Former squats are worth lots, but residents can't cash in", The Villager, archived from the original on January 24, 2009, retrieved July 17, 2009
  21. ^ Mirvis, Morgan Oliver (2004). "Allocating and Managing Property Rights on Manhattan's Lower East Side" (PDF). New York University Annual Survey of American Law. 60: 543.
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