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Helping battered women and their children build hope for the future through safe, affordable housing
Introduction
Sixty percent of women leave the City’s shelter system without safe stable housing—still homeless and at risk. At the same time, many low-income housing tax credit units remain vacant while property managers seek to fill the units with tenants matching the income requirements. The lack of a centralized resource listing affordable units and a mechanism for matching and screening potential applicants with vacant units results in a market inefficiency that has negative social and economic consequences. Households desperately in need of housing continue to live in unstable situations—doubled up or homeless—while affordable units remain empty.
Project Purpose
Project Safe Home, a three-year pilot program, seeks to match domestic violence shelter residents with vacant apartments in existing low-income housing tax credit projects in a systematic and coordinated way. The primary goals of Project Safe Home are to increase the number of appropriate affordable housing units available to domestic violence shelter residents and to improve their access to those units, thereby increasing the number of households leaving domestic violence shelters with safe, stable housing.
The federal low-income housing tax credit, initiated in the 1980’s, is the single most successful program to produce affordable housing nationally. Four government agencies can issue tax credits for housing projects in New York City—New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC), New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), and New York State Housing Finance Agency (HFA). Between 1987 and 2003, over 42,000 units of tax credit housing were developed in the City. The largest producer, HPD, has developed 26,000 units under the program and continues to generate about a thousand new units each year. Assuming a conservative 3.5% turnover rate, almost 1,500 of these units are vacated every year. This represents a significant, untapped resource for homeless women and children fleeing domestic violence.
Tax credit housing units are a good source of potential housing for low-income domestic violence shelter residents for several other reasons: (1) the units are affordable to households with incomes at or below 60% of the median income, (2) tax credit projects often have set-asides for households coming from the City’s homeless system, and (3) the units tend to be well-maintained.
Project Description
New Destiny will develop systems for linking homeless victims of abuse with affordable housing units by (1) building relationships with low-income tax-credit owner/property managers, (2) creating a method to identify and track available units, (3) assisting shelter residents to prepare housing applications, including reviewing credit reports, (4) screening applications prior to submitting applications to landlords, (5) tracking housing applications once submitted, and (6) facilitating communication with landlords to improve application outcomes.
Project Safe Home will partner with selected tax-credit unit owners/managers, develop a methodology for matching shelter residents with appropriate vacancies, establish training and screening processes designed to improve candidates’ chances for qualifying for units, and assist potential clients in the rental application process.
The Project Safe Home Coordinator will develop relationships with tax credit owners and managers, maintain a data base of vacant units and work directly with owners/managers to determine the relevant requirements for each available unit. Simultaneously, the coordinator and a Project Safe Home Trainer will create and implement a training program and provide individualized assistance for shelter residents to help them prepare successful applications. The program also seeks to link tenants with after care options in order to help them remain housed.
For more information on Project Safe Home, contact Project Safe Home Coordinator Jennifer Cushman at 646-472-0262 ext. 21.
Please note that Project Safe Home cannot accept client self-referrals. Client referrals are accepted ONLY through housing specialists at domestic violence shelters currently partnering with the Project. If you are a domestic violence victim or advocate who has questions about obtaining permanent housing please contact our Housing Helpline at 646-472-0262 x15. |
