TESTIMONY: LiveOn NY Right to Counsel

LiveOn NY Right to Counsel Testimony note: acrobat format

New York City Council
Committee on Courts and Legal Services
Council Member Rory I. Lancman, Chair
September 26, 2016

Testimony by Katelyn Hosey, Housing Policy Analyst, LiveOn NY
in support of Intro. 214-A

LiveOn NY thanks Committee Chair Lancman for holding a hearing on this issue.  LiveOn NY also thanks Council Member Levine and cosponsors of Intro. 214-A.

LiveOn NY respectfully submits the following testimony on Intro. 214-A.

LiveOn NY is pleased to stand with Council Members Levine and Gibson, and City Council, to support Intro-214A. At the core of LiveOn NY’s mission, is the desire to make New York a better place to age. Supporting the Right to Counsel is one way to do just that.

Enabling low-income New Yorkers the right to a lawyer in housing court, the Right to Counsel is a groundbreaking piece of legislation and New York should be proud to be the first city nationally to enact it. For seniors, the prospect of eviction could not be more devastating, as research clearly shows the importance of aging in place to a senior’s health and quality of life. The stress of possibly losing your home and being disconnected from the social networks built over decades can have substantial adverse effects on the health of an older adult. Rates of depression are decreased and life expectancy is increased by aging in place, which can only be achieved through secure and stable housing in a community.

Seniors are anchors in their communities and have often lived in their homes for decades. The inability to pay for representation should not undermine the community roots they have worked so hard to maintain. Currently, over 200,000 older New Yorkers sit on waitlists to secure affordable housing, as found by a research study conducted by LiveOn NY. With the increasing difficulties tenants face to merely secure affordable housing, their shelter should not be easily stripped away, nor should they live in fear of unjust eviction.

Further, currently an estimated 3,000 seniors are homeless, sleeping in shelters or on the street every night. Data shows an estimated 37% of homelessness having stemmed from eviction, meaning that many of these homeless seniors may have avoided the harrowing experience of homelessness, if they had only received proper legal representation. New York has a moral obligation to ward against these unjust evictions for all New Yorkers, and particularly for seniors and other vulnerable populations.

Seniors, and all New Yorkers, need and deserve due process of law and it is up to City Council to ensure that it is received. Affirmed in the Constitution and provided for in criminal court cases, due process of law cannot be maintained without representation. With so many tenants unable to afford representation, and landlords recognizing the unbalanced nature of housing court, it is time that city Council tip back the scales towards a fair, equal, and just process.

The reasons to support Intro. 214-A are both numerous and compelling, as shelter is one of the most basic of human needs and the most important of senior’s needs and should not be so easily stripped away. For these reasons, and so many more, LiveOn NY urges City Council, not only to support the Right to Counsel, but to pass Intro. 214-A, this year.

Thank you for your time in working to address this issue.

ALERT: Ask Seniors on SCRIE to take Survey

Printable Verison for this Alert note: acrobat format

Survey in several languages
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in English
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Spanish
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Chinese
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Korean
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Russian

Needed:  Seniors who are on SCRIE to take Survey!

Deadline extended - Please complete survey by September 2, 2016

This survey is crucial to show the need for capping rents at 1/3 of seniors' income

LiveOn NY and Enterprise Community Partners have released a report documenting that substantial numbers of older New Yorkers on the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE)/Senior Rent Freeze Program (hereinafter SCRIE) who are still paying over 50% of their income in rent. SCRIE freezes the rents of senior households living in rent regulated housing who are paying over one-third of their income in rent. Click Here to view the report.

Cap all rents at one-third of income: One of the major recommendations is that NYC establish a program where all seniors on SCRIE pay no more than one-third of their income in rent. This would be an important step forward in ensuring that thousands of older New Yorkers in rent regulated apartments could continue to afford them and have money for other daily needs. Help us strengthen the SCRIE program: Having as many seniors who are on SCRIE fill out this survey will help make the SCRIE program for seniors a better program. 

 Survey Instructions

• In order to move this effort forward, we would greatly appreciate as many seniors who are on SCRIE as possible to out this survey. It is brief and can be filled out by hand or online at www.liveon-ny.org. Filling it out online saves us a lot of time as we will have to enter all surveys filled out on paper into the database manually.

• The survey is available in several languages:

Click here for SCRIE Survey in English
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Spanish
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Chinese
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Korean
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Russian

• To fill it out by hand, you can simply print this survey out and distribute it for seniors to take. If filled out by hand, please mail completed surveys in bulk to SCRIE Survey, LiveOn NY, 49 W.45th Street, 7th floor, NY, NY 10036

• Anonymous survey – We only ask for your general demographic information, no names or any identifying information.

• For questions or comments on this survey, contact Bobbie Sackman, Director of Public Policy at 212-398-6565x226 or bsackman@liveon-ny.org or Andrea Cianfrani, Deputy Director of Public Policy at 212-398-6565x233 or acianfrani@liveon-ny.org.

• Please complete surveys by Friday September 2, 2016.

 Thank you! This survey is crucial to our work to make SCRIE a better program.

ALERT: SCRIE Survey for Seniors

Printable Verison for this Alert note: acrobat format

Survey in several languages
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in English
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Spanish
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Chinese
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Korean
     Click here for SCRIE Survey in Russian

ACTION ALERT
JUNE 23, 2016

LiveOn NY Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE)/
Senior Rent Freeze Program Survey

This survey is crucial to show the need for capping rents at 1/3 to further our work.
Please complete survey by July 22, 2016

• LiveOn NY and Enterprise Community Partners have released a report documenting that substantial numbers of older New Yorkers on the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE)/Senior Rent Freeze Program (hereinafter SCRIE) who are still paying over 50% of their income in rent. SCRIE freezes the rents of senior households living in rent regulated housing who are paying over one-third of their income in rent. Click Here to view the report.

• Cap all rents at one-third of income: One of the major recommendations is that NYC establish a program where all seniors on SCRIE pay no more than one-third of their income in rent. This would be an important step forward in ensuring that thousands of older New Yorkers in rent regulated apartments could continue to afford them and have money for other daily needs.

• Help us strengthen the SCRIE program: Filling out this survey will help make the SCRIE program for seniors a better program.

Instructions

• In order to move this effort forward, we would greatly appreciate as many seniors as possible to out this survey. It is brief and can be filled out by hand or online at www.liveon-ny.org. Filling it out online saves us a lot of time as we will have to enter all surveys filled out on paper into the database manually.

• The survey is available in several languages.

Click here for SCRIE Survey in English
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Spanish
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Chinese
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Korean
Click here for SCRIE Survey in Russian

• To fill it out by hand, you can simply print this survey out and distribute it for seniors to take. If filled out by hand, please mail completed surveys in bulk to SCRIE Survey, LiveOn NY, 49 W.45th Street, 7th floor, NY, NY 10036

• Anonymous survey – We only ask for your general demographic information, no names or any identifying information.

• For questions or comments on this survey, contact Bobbie Sackman, Director of Public Policy at 212-398-6565x226 or bsackman@liveon-ny.org or Andrea Cianfrani, Deputy Director of Public Policy at 212-398-6565x233 or acianfrani@liveon-ny.org.

• Please complete surveys by Friday July 22, 2016.

Thank you! This survey is crucial to our work to make SCRIE a better program.

MEDIA FEATURE: A way to help seniors afford their rents

BY JUDI KENDE AND BOBBIE SACKMAN
MAY 26, 2016

No one who has worked their whole life should struggle to afford the most basic necessities in their elder years. Yet every day too many seniors in our city are forced to make terrible choices between paying rent, buying food, filling prescriptions and other necessities.

New York City’s affordable housing crisis is becoming more pronounced, with rents rising at an unprecedented pace. For low-income older adults, this is especially scary as incomes are fixed or decline with age. For example, Social Security beneficiaries did not receive a cost-of-living adjustment this year, even as rents continue to rise.

Today, one out of three single New York seniors pays more than half of his or her income on housing, and one unexpected expense could result in a missed rent payment and eviction. This problem is only expected to grow as New York City’s senior population increases by an estimated 40 percent between 2010 and 2040. The need to help ensure older adults have an affordable home has never been greater.

Fortunately, we have a program in New York City specifically designed to help seniors afford their rents. The Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption program, or SCRIE, freezes rents for low-income seniors living in rent stabilized apartments. The landlord receives a refundable tax credit making up the difference between what is paid by the household and the legal rent.

Right now, unfortunately, the program is not effectively addressing the full challenge of affordable senior housing – but with a few modifications it could provide a true safety net for seniors.

Our first recommendation is for the city to create a more robust, sustained public awareness campaign to ensure all those who qualify for SCRIE are enrolled. Currently only 43 percent of people who are eligible use the program, largely due to a lack of awareness and barriers to applying, such as language.

Our second recommendation is for rents under SCRIE to be capped at one third of the household’s income. Today, the average SCRIE enrollee has an annual income of just $16,504. Because of the program’s design, rents are frozen when seniors enter the program, but for many, this freeze occurs after rents have already escalated far beyond their means. As a result, a shocking one-third of seniors enrolled in SCRIE are paying more than 70 percent of their incomes on rent, leaving them with an average of only $183 left over per month to pay for all other needs, including food and medicine.

Increasing enrollment and capping rents will add to the program’s cost. However, the cost of doing nothing is even greater. When senior households pay too much on rent, this often leads to unhealthy outcomes, like skipping meals or doctor visits. In 2014, The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that “on average, severely rent-burdened households … spend more than 40 percent less on food than households living in housing they can afford.” Seniors that are housing insecure are often more vulnerable to abuse. And older adults who are unable to afford their housing often enter higher levels of care such as nursing homes purely because they have nowhere else to go, at enormous cost to the public.

Additionally, SCRIE can support the city’s efforts to preserve affordable housing by keeping seniors in their rent-regulated apartments. The recommendations we outline can help make it a powerful tool to curb the loss of stabilized units across all five boroughs because it prevents unit turnover and allows long-time residents to remain in their community after retirement. This is a win-win for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing plan and older New Yorkers.

We should all agree that our communities are better off when our elders have an affordable place to live. We already have a tool at our fingertips to help thousands of seniors who are living in rent-regulated housing. We just need the will to make these changes.

Judi Kende is vice president and New York market leader at Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., a national organization that creates, preserves and advocates for affordable housing linked to good schools, jobs, transit and health care. Bobbie Sackman is the director of public policy at LiveOn NY, a nonprofit organization recognized as a leader in making New York State a better place to age. LiveOn NY's Affordable Senior Housing Coalition works to increase the availability of affordable housing for older adults. Read more in Enterprise and LiveOn’s latest report, Reducing Rent Burden for Elderly New Yorkers.

MEDIA: Freeze rents for older New Yorkers: advocates

Proposed change would cost city $324M a year in forgone tax revenue
May 17, 2016 11:28AM

Terry Ludwig, President & CEO, Partners & Chair of Enterprise Community Partners

A pair of organizations advocating for New York’s senior citizens will issue a report Tuesday calling for a sweeping rent freeze for the city’s aged residents.

Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing nonprofit, and LiveOn NY, a nonprofit advocate for seniors, are calling for the city to hold rents for qualifying seniors at 33 percent of income.

If enacted, the change would reduce the city’s tax take by about $324 million a year.

An alternate proposal, to set the level at 50 percent of income, would cost $225 million.

The groups proposed changes to the city’s Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption program, which gives landlords tax abatements to cover the cost of subsidizing seniors’ rent. The program currently freezes enrollees’ rent at the level they’re at at the time of enrollment, often far higher than the 33 percent or even the 50 percent level, Politco reported.

In addition, as many as 80,000 of the city’s seniors aren’t enrolled in the program, simply because they’ve never heard of it, according to the city’s Department of Finance, which manages the program. By the time they do enroll, their rents have often risen faster than seniors’ fixed incomes.

The program currently costs the city about $137 million a year. The DOF said in a statement it would back the proposed changes. A vote by state legislature would be required to alter the rules. [Politco] – Ariel Stulberg