AHTP is crucial to addressing New York’s housing crisis

It took more than a year to get the gas restored to seven public housing buildings in Coney Island. Despite press coverage, countless complaints to the city, and determined organizing from residents, the gas outage lingered the way so many repair needs do in New York City Housing Authority buildings. But justice was finally served and the gas is back on. We at Brooklyn Legal Services Corp. A are proud that our 53 clients have successfully secured cooking gas for their apartments, but the case reflects a larger need to expand legal services for tenants in the city.

As the director of the Preserving Affordable Housing Program at Brooklyn A, I have worked on NYCHA cases like these in the past. No cooking gas, no hot water, or no heat in the winter are just some of the essential service outages NYCHA residents routinely must endure — not to mention the countless other violations that make apartments hazardous, such as mice, faulty appliances, and more.

These recent victories are the product of our clients’ tenacity and determination, but also an example of the importance of the city’s investment in legal services for tenants, such as the Anti-Harassment Tenant Protection Program (AHTP). We can do more of this type of advocacy with an expansion of the AHTP program to include NYCHA affirmative work.

Since its inception in 2015, AHTP has assisted tenants in both eviction proceedings as well as affirmative cases against unscrupulous landlords. The de Blasio administration launched the AHTP legal services program with HRA/DSS-Office of Civil Justice tasked to manage the program. This program is supported by mayoral funding and is part of the city’s annual budget. AHTP offers residents the chance to demand landlords correct violations like gas shutoffs, dangerous conditions, rent overcharges, and harassment.

Still, AHTP currently only allows for the commencement of actions against NYCHA if referred by the Family Justice Centers, the Office of Civil Justice, or HRA. This means most public housing residents are unable to be represented by counsel and therefore find it hard to rectify even the most obviously unjust repair issues that plague their homes.

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Our case demonstrates the impact of legal representation for NYCHA tenants, but also highlights the need for its expansion. The 53 clients we represented in this case were only a fraction of the hundreds of Coney Island NYCHA tenants affected by the gas outages of the last year, and with greater staff capacity we could have represented more clients. What’s more, the gas was hardly the only lingering issue our clients faced: each of our clients had several unaddressed repairs, including exposed wiring, cracked windows, leaking sinks and more.

The economic toll of the pandemic has created a massive shortfall in collected rent that has left NYCHA without the resources to address even the most glaring repair issues. Even for non-NYCHA tenants, expanding AHTP’s funding would help stem the tide of landlord aggression we’ve seen since the pandemic began. In the last year, as the early chaos of COVID has waned, landlords have looked to recover losses by raising rents significantly to push out lower-paying tenants—and shady landlords are known to ignore repairs to pressure unwanted tenants to leave their apartments.

With more funding for attorneys to represent renters in these cases, we could put these emboldened landlords on notice that the city does, in fact, care about housing justice and make it more challenging for owners to use these illegal tactics.

Expanding AHTP to all NYCHA residents would provide them the same tools to demand fixes from their landlord as other renters in the city. Specifically, we think the city should support the provision of legal services to any and all low-income tenants in NYC, regardless of who their landlords are. The need for this work is dire as there are many tenants living in deplorable conditions putting in jeopardy their health and safety and that of their family.

For my clients in Coney Island who lacked cooking gas, being forced to cook on hot plates, being disrupted from their usual diets, and paying large sums to buy more food out wasn’t just damaging to their quality of life, but it was clear, persistent disrespect from the city to the needs of its people.

As one of my clients put it: “NYCHA has expectations for us as residents; we have expectations for them as our landlords.” We encourage the city to continue to ensure the continuity and expansion of the AHTP program for years to come as a vital tool in addressing the housing crisis in New York City.

Ortiz is the director of the Preserving Affordable Housing Program at Brooklyn Legal Services Corp. A.