The Crown Heights Housing Crisis and Its Unsung Heroes

by CrownHeights.info

A simmering anger in the community bubbles up every now and then as the community continues to see new buildings being built in the Shchuna with tiny apartments, which are then promptly being set aside for city housing. The truth is though, that there may be a good reason not to blame the landlords, as it might just be the city’s fault.

In a Frequently Asked Questions release by the City of New York, the payment numbers made for city housing vouchers to landlords can be found, and the truth is, it doesn’t make much sense NOT to rent to the city.

For a one bedroom apartment without utilities, NYC will pay out a whopping $2,033 a month, while two bedroom apartments go for a more “moderate” $2,296, and three bedrooms $2,912.

In comparison, on the open market, an average one bedroom in Crown Heights goes for around $1,700, while two bedrooms goes for around $2,200 and a three bedroom $2,700.

These prices are staggering beyond just their numbers, granting building owners guaranteed income without worry of late or unpaid rent, the biggest concern for landlords. In other words, to bring in a non-voucher tenant into their building, a landlord would have to be willing to take an outright loss as well as a big risk.

CrownHeights.info reached out to landlords in the Crown Heights area looking for comments for this story, only to be informed that none would speak openly to the press about the matter for fear of retaliation from the government, of which they all heavily rely on for their monthly payments.

The issues caused by the skewed rental subsidy numbers is made even bigger by a second issue. It simply doesn’t make sense to build larger apartments for Jews either.

“The numbers just do not make sense to build for Jews,” one developer who did not want to be identified told CrownHeights.info. “The problem is that the numbers do not add up. We are not talking just not making more money, you would have a hard time paying your mortgage.”

The cost of purchasing and building in Brooklyn is comparatively high to other areas of the country, according to the developers, leaving little room for investors margins. In fact, the margins are so narrow that building with the Jewish family in mind makes it not worth it at all.

So many investors have made the decision that they would be building new construction without the Jewish family in mind. Not, as one developer put it, to say that Jews could not rent the newly built apartments, but rather that the developers would focus on what would work financially. In the case of Crown Heights, that would be small, one and two bedroom apartments catered top the stable NYC voucher program.

Already faced with the numerical advantage of renting existing apartments to the city and building new developments with the non-Jew in mind, the landlords face a third issue that puts the icing on the cake.

When it comes to city vouchers, the landlords hands are tied with choosing who their renters will be. One of the government’s requirements is that landlords are obligated to accept anyone who comes knocking on their door with a voucher in hand. No income, credit, or eviction checks are allowed to be used as a reason to decline a tenant, and that means that the landlord is obligated to provide them with any available housing.

With this in mind, the extent that many Crown Heights landlords go to provide buildings and apartments to the Jewish community suddenly takes on a totally different view. They may be some of the unsung heroes of the community.