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What type of housing do you live in? Unregulated rental apartment
Are you now, or have you ever been a landlord? No
If yes, how many units and briefly describe what your experience has been.
Does your campaign accept contributions from real estate developers (including related individuals), corporate lobbyists, organizations that participate in the carceral system, and/or landlords? No
Have you ever worked in, or had another affiliation with, the Real Estate industry? No
Have any of your campaign or advisory staff held a position as a corporate lobbyist or an executive role with the Real Estate industry? No
If so, how can we be assured you will have tenants’ interests in mind?
Do you believe housing is a human right? Yes
If so, what does that mean to you, and if not, why not? Landlord profits should not take priority over someone keeping or creating their home. All human beings need housing to live, and in a city with such tremendous wealth it is unforgivable that so many cannot afford a roof over their head in our current housing market. The government has an obligation to provide housing to those who are currently in shelters, on the streets or doubled up with friends and families, and it must work aggressively to prevent displacement and evictions.
What actions have you taken in the past to fight for housing justice? In my role at the Arab American Association, and within Council member Justin Brannan’s office, I worked diligently to ensure that people were not being taken advantage of by their landlords. Bay Ridge has one of the largest number of rent stabilized apartments in the city, and Coney Island is home to thousands of units of public housing. In my time in the council members office I worked to ensure that Rent Stabilized tenants understood their rights, and were given resources to combat harassment by landlords that wanted to turn their apartments over for profit. We worked with NYCHA residents to help them navigate bureaucratic hurdles and ensure their apartments were well maintained and dignified.
What are the most pressing housing issues, and what would you do as an elected official to address them? Over the last 25 years rent has skyrocketed across our City because developers and landlords viewed housing as a commodity rather than a public necessity. While construction was omnipresent, it was focused on luxury units that very few could afford. Landlord consolidated portfolios and took on massive amounts of debt under the assumption that they would be able to evict people from their homes. Tens of thousands of individuals and families were relegated to shelters, many of them for years at a time.
There must be a multi-faceted approach to addressing this critical issue. We need to ensure that the reforms to the CityFHEPs program passed by the City Council last year are enforced. We need to give NYCHA the resources they need to fix our public housing infrastructure, but we also need to give residents a greater voice in deciding how that money is prioritized. We must increase our supply of new affordable housing without giving tax breaks for luxury development.
Have you or anyone close to you (family, friend, etc) been evicted or been threatened with eviction? Yes
Have you ever had to fight a landlord for repairs or faced harassment? Yes
Do you believe that housing should be decommodified (publicly owned and tenant-controlled)?
No
Please explain your answer. Some of the most popular housing developments in my community were built by the government through the Mitchel-Lamma Program. District 47 is also home to thousands of units of public housing. Neither of these programs are perfect, but they form an important counterbalance to private developers who are only interested in building high cost luxury housing. These kinds of programs are significantly more effective than giving private developers tax breaks to include modest amounts of affordable housing in buildings that otherwise would be totally unaffordable to the people who currently call South Brooklyn home. The city must look to international models that allow for tenants and homeowners to have a greater control over their buildings.
What is one rent and/or eviction protection you would enact if you had the opportunity?
Right to Council has been one of the most successful programs our city has ever enacted, but far to often tenants are not able to meet with an attorney until the crisis of an eviction has already begun. We need more funding for the program in general, but that should include legal services tenants can access outside of housing court, so that we can prevent displacement and harassment earlier.
Do you agree that all evictions are violent? Yes
Why or why not? No one wants to go through the pain and destabilization of losing their home, and so armed marshals are required to carry out many evictions. I do not believe that people who cannot afford their rent are criminals, and we should not be sending armed police to force them onto the streets. Even when an eviction occurs voluntarily, the devastating effect that it can have on a person or family can stay with them for years after the event.
Do you support the concept of universal rent control? No
For decades the Rent Guidelines Board has fueled the affordability crisis it was created to address. Most NYC tenants are rent-burdened, and hundreds of thousands of families, primarily Black and brown, are forced to deprive themselves of necessities to keep a roof over their heads, while owners’ profits hover near the 40% mark. Do you support freezing or even rolling back rents given these circumstances?
Yes
Do you support proposals to revise the RGB to make it more responsive to the needs of the tenants it was created to protect? No
Why or why not? The stakes of the Rent Guidelines Board vote will always be higher for tenants then it will be for landlords. The process must be reformed to reflect the fact that protecting a landlords profit margins are not as critical as keeping people stably housed.
Do you support the NYCHA 2.0 Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) and other privatization schemes? Yes
Please explain why or why not: NYCHA Residents need to be given the opportunity to decide on privatization on a case by case basis. The NYCHA residents that I would represent in Coney Island have had to deal with the neglect in NYCHA for a generation, and their voices must be prioritized as we seek solutions. Obviously, we cannot lose our stock of public housing to private developers, so we should be continually building more of it as we seek to find avenues to repair the buildings we currently rely on.
NYCHA has suffered from chronic underfunding, neglect, and disrepair. What do you see as the best strategies to rectify these problems?
There is no one size fits all solution for problems that NYCHA buildings face, and we must work with NYCHA residents themselves to figure out what their priorities are in terms of addressing the neglect with the resources available to them.
How would you use your office to put pressure on landlords to make repairs and stop harassing tenants?
We would work tirelessly to help members of our community navigate housing court and find justice, and ensure that landlords in our district understand that we will always stand up to those who intentionally neglect units to turn a quick profit.
Do you support regulating the 300,000 deregulated rent-stabilized apartments? Yes
Do you support significant expansion of HPD’s emergency repair program, including adequate funding, with the city correcting hazardous violations when the landlord doesn’t act promptly, then bills the landlord for the repairs and takes title to the building if the landlord doesn’t pay, keeping it as social housing? Yes
Why or why not? Some repairs are a matter of life and death, and we cannot wait for unscrupulous landlords to do the right thing. That said we cannot reward the worst actors in our city. Some of the most successful affordable housing programs in our city came about as a result of seizing property from landlords who were not paying taxes or upkeep on their buildings, and we should seek to emulate their success.
Do you support stronger penalties against landlords that practice source of income discrimination? Yes
Despite the city’s commitment to a right to counsel for low income families facing eviction in housing court, currently fewer than half of eligible tenants are getting lawyers. Meanwhile, landlords have pressed the courts to speed up the eviction process so they can take advantage of record high rents, negating efforts to reduce homelessness. Do you support fully funded right to counsel and slowing down the housing court eviction mill?
Yes
What other ideas do you have to address the housing crisis, and what is your strategy for accomplishing them?
District 47 is often seen as more conservative than other parts of our city, but if you walk around Bay Ridge and Coney Island you cannot help but acknowledge the tremendous legacy of ambitious government approaches to create affordable housing. District 47 is made up of rent stabilized units, Mitchell-Lama units, and public housing units that allow it to be a place where middle class families can thrive. I want to use our community to show the City, State, and Federal governments that there is no one size fits all solution to our housing crisis, rather, that we need a mix of ambitious ideas that address the problem head on.