New York, NY —
There are few things that can excite New Yorkers as much as a free parking space or a cheap apartment. Each year thousands apply for apartments offered below market rates. There’s a lottery to dispense the new homes but it’s not that simple. As WNYC’s Cindy Rodriguez reports, the lucky winners need perseverance and a lot of luck.
REPORTER: Reyna Martinez is 21 years old. She is a proud single mother living in a new luxury building near 118th street in Harlem:
MARTINEZ: The kitchen, the kitchen is the best part. I got a dishwasher isn’t that cool.
REPORTER: Martinez holds her one year old baby girl, Haley, as she points to her brand new stainless steel appliances. Her living room is bare making it easier to appreciate the dark cherry wood floors and nicely designed wall sconces. She says it will take her time to decorate:
MARTINEZ: I want it perfect I just don’t want a futon that I come home and a I really don’t like. I want everything perfect.
REPORTER: Prior to moving to Harlem, Martinez and her daughter rented a room inside a five floor walk up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where she grew up:
MARTINEZ: The building was horrible it was old so the paint was coming down, the floor it was like peeling….
REPORTER: Now Martinez marvels at her walk in closet and stand up shower with glass walls. The young mom, an administrative assistant at an architectural firm, pays 652 dollars a month for her new 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. Persistence and luck were key to getting the place. She says she applied to 15 other housing lotteries and was rejected each time:
MARTINEZ: I kinda felt like there was no hope because I just kept receiving rejection letters and I thought I wasn’t qualified for it…finally I just kept going and I did it and this place was the only one that called me back and I did an interview with them (begin to trail off) and I gave them all my documents that I asked for.
REPORTER: Martinez’s apartment is below market rate because the owner of her building received tax breaks and in exchange 20 percent of the apartments had to be affordable. This is part of the so-called 421A program. City officials are trying to expand it and council members currently are debating by how much.
Even though the demand for cheap apartments is extremely high - tens of thousands of New Yorkers apply for these housing lotteries each year - it’s still difficult to disperse this rare commodity. There are income requirements that have to be met and certain groups get preference over others so finding the right people is a complicated and tedious task.
WOLF: Good morning, My name is Rubin Wolf ….I’m the Director of Neighborhood Resources, Marketing and Lotteries
REPORTER: Rubin Wolf has been responsible for running the city’s housing lotteries since the Koch Administration. He says early on, he learned some valuable lessons:
WOLF: At the first time I went to a lottery one of the owners whispered to his staff saying look at those cute blue envelopes once I heard that I knew that the word was out in the street that put in a blue envelope we put yours over other people. So I think the developer felt a bit surprised because I went to my car, and I pulled out these large black garbage bags that you see in the street and I made them mix things up and I made them throw things into the bag…
REPORTER: To this day, the practice remains the same. At a lottery for 20 apartments in the Bronx, about 6 black garbage bags sit on top several folding chairs. Thousands of envelopes are inside. They were picked up at a local post office box earlier in the day by the developer responsible for the new building while city monitors from HPD watched.
The monitors continue to watch as a group of volunteers empty the bags on to the floor then get on their hands and knees and mix up the heaps of white envelopes. Once that’s done, the envelopes go back into the garbage bags:
PERALLA: Noone can see into the bag and potentially pull someone that they know
REPORTER: Josephine Parella is Vice President of Phipps Houses – the developer of the project. More than 3-thousand applications have been received for these 20 units. On this day the group will open and process more than half of them. Parella says it’s necessary to open so many envelopes for so few apartments in order to fill certain categories. For instance 5 percent of the new housing must go to people in wheel chairs, 2 percent to those with visual or hearing impairments and 50 percent must go to people who live in the community. There are also strict income levels that have to be abided by Parella says it’s difficult to find poor people still living in certain areas:
PERALLA: So if we’re in Manhattan looking for someone making 20-thousand dollars that lives in the community, it’s very hard….and then the family size has to match, you have to have decent credit not stellar credit because it’s impossible to find stellar credit at this income level.
REPORTER: The applicants also have to pass a home visit and provide verification of their income. Over the past 6 years, an average of 30 housing lotteries have been held annually. Each one is run in this low tech, yet highly organized fashion. For those who apply, getting selected is a life changing stroke of luck. Parella says she doesn’t mind the process because in the past developers used to discriminate against certain ethnic groups and indulge in other indiscretions:
PERALLA: It’s a complicated process but it’s to prevent people from selling apartments, from selling applications from owners putting in their preferred people it’s to give everyone a chance.
REPORTER: And who will get a chance is about to be decided for these 20 units in the Bronx…Volunteers and the city monitors stand by as the first envelope is pulled from a black garbage bag:
VOICES: look at the deadline date is it ok. It’s fine and it’s Wilfredo Rosario…where does that person live….Westchester Avenue in the Bronx…
REPORTER: And the process will continue like this for an entire day. Mr. Rosario will be number one on a long list of potential applicants. If he meets all the stringent requirements he will move into a brand new 6 story building. Parella describes it:
PARELLA: It doesn’t have the bells and whistles. It’s clean and bright the apartments have great views…it’s up on a hill so you can see into Manhattan.
REPORTER: The rents are between 560 dollars and 780 a month. Parella says these apartments and many others are for New Yorkers who work for low wages – such as home health aides and back office people. The supply of housing affordable to this income group falls far short of the demand. But for those selected – it is a way out of apartments that are often overcrowded and dilapidated. Reyna Martinez says being inside her new place really didn’t sink in until her first pieces of mail arrived:
MARTINEZ: That was amazing because I just saw my name and my address and like I did it. It’s real and it’s proof -- I see it in my hand.
REPORTER: For WNYC, I’m Cindy Rodriguez
For more information on how to apply for city lotteries call 311 or go to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development website, part of nyc.gov