Affordable Housing via Foreclosure

Abandoned Brownstone Property

While Mayor Bloomberg implements NYC’s $59 million plan, other counties in New York State are engaged in the same effort.

Only in their case, averting Suburban Blight is their chief aim, as demonstrated in Hempstead, N.Y.

While a noble effort by some accounts, we’re all acquainted with the phrase, ” the road to hell is paved with good intentions “.

And such an effort spearheaded by local government may deserve a thorough environmental impact study by outside good government groups to ensure all stake holders are properly represented.

But the money has already been distributed and the program’s implementation underway and hardly discussed or reported on.

What will be the impact?

The Money and the Problem

As a feature of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program received $1 Billion in funding and would be distributed to states and local municipalities to purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed properties.

The goal was to ensure that more low income housing units would become available in areas hard hit by the foreclosure crisis.

But creating affordable housing via foreclosure would create challenges in distributing resources equitably among community stakeholders.  Not to mention the unease felt by residents experiencing a sense of “displacement” in neighborhoods gentrifying.

Fears that the current foreclosure crisis will accelerate the shift in neighborhood demographics are not unfounded as fewer minority families are capable of purchasing homes in neighborhoods which at one time were populated with a majority racial or ethnic group.

NYC ‘hoods and her People

This problem hasn’t been experienced exclusively among African American, Caribbean or Latino communities.  The Polish dominated Greenpoint is experiencing the same growing pains with the migration of “hipsters” from Williamsburg.

Cypress Hills, a community whose predominate inhabitants were Italians right up to the late 1970’s, saw their numbers diminish as Puerto Ricans moved into the neighborhood.

Some may recall how Brownsville was predominately a Jewish neighborhood right up to the 1950’s.  They saw their numbers diminish as public housing came to dominate the housing landscape, and with it a growing African American and Caribbean population.

But the neighborhood transitions described above had occurred over a protracted period of time, usually averaging 20 to 30 years in culmination.  In addition, the demographic shifts occurring in the neighborhoods mentioned were also as a result of economic gains experienced by incoming and outgoing populations.

The Fear Felt by Most

Today’s economic crisis threatens to penalize whole communities for becoming homeowners through the use of  faulty and flawed mortgage financing products that were authorized, sanctioned and unregulated by State and Federal government agencies.

Local elected officials have taken a hands off approach to addressing the issues, preferring instead to lay the concerns at the federal level.  Perhaps it makes sense to do so as a matter of being politically expedient, while remaining on message to fight for affordable housing for their constituents (all at the expense of their constituents)

And now a former HUD Secretary who oversaw programs and initiatives that became the impetus of the foreclosure crisis will soon seek your vote in his bid to become New York State’s next Governor.

All while a new Brooklyn is emerging at the Speed of Crisis…

(unless)