HOPE: Housing Organizers for People Empowerment

Through organizing in buildings, educating tenants, building coalitions, and advocating for progressive policy initiatives, the Organizing and Policy Department of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) strives to preserve and strengthen the quality of affordable housing in New York City. We are motivated by our belief that tenants must demand a voice in the oversight of their housing, and

that it is their inherent right to assert a collective vision about how their homes should look and feel. We work in rent stabilized and government subsidized buildings that have high code violations and/or may be at risk of losing their affordability. In the last few years we have focused our energy on buildings that have entered into foreclosure and fallen into horrible disrepair as a result of a local and national problem called, “predatory equity.” Predatory Equity is a process whereby banks make unsupportable loans to speculative buyers, enabling them to purchase buildings with the explicit purpose of removing regulation, raising rents, and displacing low and moderate income families. We are working with tenants to elicit support of partner organizations, legal representatives, elected officials, city housing agencies, and the media, to run campaigns which expose these injustices and demand decent and habitable building conditions.