[NYAPRS Enews] NYT: Supportive Housing Grows, Integrates into NYC Neighborhoods

Tue Oct 9 09:27:51 EDT 2012

Still Housing the Needy, In a Changed Manhattan

By Elizabeth A. Harris  New York Times  October 8, 2012

In a wide-open ballroom in Manhattan last week, a room with gilded
columns and dark herringbone floors, men and women in dark suits sat at
a reception for a retiring city official, listening to speeches as they
munched on tidy portions of chicken and salad greens.

They sat in an elegant early-20th-century building near Madison Square
Park, where some of New York's most expensive real estate and finest
restaurants can be found. But the residents living above that fine
golden ballroom did not shell out a few million dollars for their homes;
far from it. The tenants of this building, called the Prince George,
include formerly homeless New Yorkers, people with persistent mental
illness and the very poor.

" 'The Real Housewives of New York' shot here once," said Brenda E.
Rosen, the executive director of Common Ground, which owns the Prince
George and rents out the ballroom to help support the organization. "I
watched them yell at each other in the ballroom on TV!"

About 25 years ago, when many of Manhattan's grand older buildings were
derelict and decrepit, the city started selling abandoned buildings and
troubled single-room-occupancy hotels to social service agencies for use
as long-term "supportive housing" for chronically homeless New Yorkers.
At the time, the buildings were haggard, having surrendered long before
to drug dealers and decay, and the neighborhoods where they stood were
often sketchy.

Today, these facilities are still operating, but they do so in a
different universe.

The Prince George, among the largest welfare hotels in the city before
it was acquired by Common Ground in the mid-1990s and restored, is just
a few blocks from one of New York's best restaurants, Eleven Madison
Park; a supportive building on West 24th Street is opposite a Whole
Foods store and expensive condominiums; there is even supportive housing
on prime West End Avenue, blending in perfectly with its co-op
neighbors, right down to its crisp green awning.

An untold number of drivers have whizzed past and wondered about a
reddish-brick building beside the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, not far
from the Williamsburg Bridge, with two rounded wings, capped by curved
black balconies, that reach toward the East River. That structure, built
as a hospital more than 100 years ago, then gutted and abandoned in the
1980s, has served as supportive housing for nearly 20 years.

"I get calls every day from some real estate company, every day," said
Steve Coe, the chief executive of Community Access, which owns the
building, the Gouverneur Court. Callers leave numerous messages asking
if he would consider selling, he said, but he is not interested in
contributing to the city's supply of fancy condos.

"The reason we became property owners is because our folks are not
welcome in regular housing," Mr. Coe said. "So we, by necessity, became
real estate developers."

The Gouverneur has 124 studio apartments, occupied by people with mental
illnesses or H.I.V./AIDS, and very low incomes. The rents are affordable
- no more than one-third of a tenant's income - and the building, like
all supportive housing, comes equipped with services meant to help
residents manage their affairs. Staff members help tenants apply for
government assistance, remind them to refill their prescriptions and
provide 24-hour security to keep an eye on who comes and goes. Tenants
have rent-stabilized leases and all the protections that that affords.

Even if Mr. Coe decided he wanted to sell the building, his real estate
callers would still be disappointed. That is because supportive housing
buildings have layers of financing and regulatory agreements requiring
that they be used as supportive housing far into the future. Those
agreements, advocates say, would be very hard to unwind.

"It's difficult on purpose; you think we were born yesterday?" said Tim
O'Hanlon, the city's assistant commissioner of supportive housing (and
the soon-to-be retiree who was feted at the Prince George last week).
"Someone might say: 'Gee, I changed my mind. I don't want to take care
of the homeless and disabled anymore. I want to rent to middle-income,
or better.' "

Brokers and developers might be banging on the doors today, but 25 years
ago, Mr. O'Hanlon said, the real estate strategy was all "bottom
fishing," because nobody else was interested in buying those properties.
And with a look back, it is not hard to see why.

Take Euclid Hall, a lovely grande dame built of pink brick that
stretches from 85th to 86th Street on Broadway. In the early 20th
century, when it was built, it garnered occasional mention in the
society pages of The New York Times. But by the 1980s, "it was a mess,"
said Laura Jervis, the executive director of the West Side Federation
for Senior and Supportive Housing, which now owns the building.

"There was a lot of crime in the building and the owner never went above
the first floor," Ms. Jervis said. "People had to come in with hazmat
suits to clean it out."

Over time, however, well-run supportive housing buildings become just
another stitch in their neighborhood's fabric.

"I think if you ask the average resident," City Councilwoman Gale A.
Brewer said of Euclid Hall, "they wouldn't even be aware it is
supportive housing."

That is no accident. Housing advocates say that an important part of
being successful is creating a place that blends into the neighborhood,
in part by making sure the facade is clean, attractive and well kept.

Nonetheless, city officials and housing advocates say that initial
opposition to new supportive housing can be intense.

"When we proposed this, the folks next door in co-ops were convinced it
would be a Bellevue-style inpatient hospital, but with people leaping
out of the windows," Mr. Coe said of Gouverneur Court. "Every time we go
into another community, we hear the same stuff."

These days, most new supportive projects are in new buildings outside
Manhattan, and the populations in them are more varied - including young
adults aging out of foster care
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/foster_c
are/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> , and veterans, for example - but
the basic model continues.

In June, the commissioner of the city's Department of Housing
Preservation and Development, Mathew M. Wambua, announced a plan to
double the production of supportive housing units, and as he spoke, he
made it personal.

Mr. Wambua spoke of his teenage son, who is autistic and does not speak,
and what the future might hold for him.

"I make no assumptions about the heights he's capable of attaining, and
he's proved me, time and again, wrong," Mr. Wambua said. "But I do know
that should he choose to live independently, he will need support. And
the same is true of countless New Yorkers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/nyregion/using-grand-buildings-to-supp
ort-those-in-need.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=nyregion

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