Views from the Northwest Bronx

On June 28, 2018, UNHP hosted a well-attended forum on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) as it moves towards modernization, 40+ years after it was first legislated.

The Bronx is under construction: cranes, excavators, scaffolding, and green demolition fences are everywhere. For long-time community staffers and residents in the northwest Bronx, the building and demolition we see as we walk to work, lunch, or the train is unprecedented.

The UNHP Building Indicator Project (BIP) is a database that leverages public data to gauge distress; it currently captures demographic data, housing and building code violations, and several city liens from municipal agencies for over 62,000 properties with five units or more in all five boroughs; amounting to a staggering 6.2 million data points. Still, more information is needed to ensure distressed buildings are identified and improved.

Data is currency; it has an economic worth that can be purchased, traded and leveraged. Individuals and entities have always leveraged information to create opportunity. OpenData seeks to equalize the balance of power by increasing accessibility to municipal data.

Fourteen individuals from eleven NYC community groups joined UNHP and Research Specialist, Joseph Contreras, in the Heiskell Enterprise Center for Technology at Refuge House on Friday, February 19th to brush up on Excel tips in order to better use the UNHP Building Indicator Project (BIP) data as part of their community-based housing, organizing and neighborhood work.

On February 23, lenders, non-profit, for-profit and HPD representatives squeezed into the conference room at the offices of Enterprise Community Partners to listen to UNHP's latest update on the Building Indicator Project (BIP) as well as income and pricing trends in the Bronx.

The ubiquitous nature of data is undeniable—it is everywhere. We all use data to inform our decision-making, assigning subjective valuations and interpreting what it tells us. The NYC Open Data Initiative offers data from all NYC agencies on a single web-based platform. UNHP's Community Resource Guide can help you sort through the data.

As part of our work to preserve affordable housing, UNHP developed the Building Indicator Project (BIP), a database that leverages public data to gauge physical and/or financial distress of multifamily properties in New York City. While the database is used to highlight the current conditions of multifamily housing, we also track the historical performance of each building. History is important – keeping a record of the past tells the story of the building.

Housing, especially rental housing in New York City, exists with two purposes: to provide homes for people and families, and to be bought, sold and rented as commodities. Today in Part Two, we focus on prices and profitability of housing from the investor side, and a huge surge (perhaps another bubble) in the market.

Housing, especially rental housing in New York City, exists with two purposes: to provide homes for people and families, and to be bought, sold and rented as commodities. Most of the battles around housing arise in the tension between these two purposes.