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    Suburban Home Sales Soar in the New York Region

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySuburban Home Sales Soar in the New York RegionLines of cars at open houses and multiple offers above the asking price, often all cash, have become a regular occurrence.Open houses across the region, including one at this house in Port Washington, N.Y., have drawn crowds as sales inventory has dwindled during the pandemic.Credit…Tara Striano for The New York TimesVivian Marino and March 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETHeading into the spring sales season, the housing market in the suburbs of New York has already gone into overdrive, with bidding wars becoming the norm and many homes selling within days of coming on the market.The frenetic sales activity — a second wave after a surge last summer — has been fueled by multiple forces: historically low mortgage rates; pandemic-fatigued city dwellers desperate for more space; and many employers’ willingness to embrace remote work, allowing buyers to look in places beyond what would be considered an easy commute.Another major factor: unusually tight inventory, as people hold onto their homes longer, which over the last few months in some suburbs has led to demand outstripping supply for the first time since the pandemic began.Brokers across the region report long lines at open houses, multiple offers coming in as soon as listings go live, and all-cash deals ruling the day. “This is the strongest market I have seen in two decades,” said Sara Littlefield, an agent in Connecticut with Coldwell Banker.“If there is a silver lining in this devastating pandemic, it’s that it has allowed people the freedom to make lifestyle choices like relocating, or downsizing, or moving up,” Ms. Littlefield added, “and they’re taking that freedom.”At the same time, Manhattan’s housing market has also finally picked up. “Contract activity first broke even back in December with year-ago levels,” said Jonathan J. Miller, a Manhattan-based real estate appraiser who also monitors suburban markets. Then it rose in the first two months of 2021, he said, adding that he expected the strong pace to continue through the spring.In a just-released February report for Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Mr. Miller found that signed contracts for all property types in Manhattan jumped 73.1 percent from a year ago. “It’s a combination of softer pricing, low rates and the distribution of the vaccine — people are feeling more safe about living in the city,” he said.Jeffrey Otteau, the president of the Otteau Valuation Group, based in Matawan, N.J., agreed that once-depressed urban areas would recover. “I don’t think anyone expected people would leave the city,” he said, “and never come back.”For those buyers focused on the suburbs, here’s a glimpse at what’s going on throughout the region.WestchesterBrisk could describe the weather and pace of sales in Westchester this winter, as the single-family sales market builds on its 2020 gains, from Pelham to Scarsdale to Armonk.A shortage of single-family houses explains the heightened competition. Starting last fall, demand began eclipsing supply, according to a new report from Douglas Elliman, and signed contracts have picked up since January: The busiest brackets have been houses priced from $1 million to $2 million, with $600,000 to $800,000 a close second.Among the crop of deals that closed this winter, the time from being listed to going into contract had shrunk to just two months, according to Julia B. Sotheby’s International Realty, though brokers say that spread can be misleading because much of the time is eaten up by overworked bankers and lawyers completing paperwork.In actuality, some houses are finding new owners shortly after hitting “coming soon” websites.“Buyers think they are buying at the peak, but at the same time, they’re still doing it,” said Jennifer Meyer, a Compass agent, who received an offer on a six-bedroom Tudor-style house in Pelham, listed for $1.275 million, on Feb. 26, two days after it went live.Low interest rates and scarce inventory, which are national trends, explain some of the local spike in demand and prices. But other factors are also in play.Troy Benson, left, and Nolan Fitzgerald are relocating from Manhattan to Armonk, N.Y., a suburban hamlet in Westchester County.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAfter spending extended time outside of New York to avoid coronavirus, lockdowns and street protests, some buyers warmed to the idea of full-time nonurban life. Troy Benson, 37, who owns a marketing firm, and his husband, Nolan Fitzgerald, 34, who works in fashion, so enjoyed the months spent in their weekend house in Orange County that they decided to stay out of the city for good.After selling the vacation property — in two days, for 15 percent more than its asking price — as well as their condo in the South Street Seaport, the couple are in contract for a midcentury modern house by Edgar Tafel on six woodsy acres in Armonk last listed at $2.475 million.“New York is very high energy,” said Mr. Benson, who will scale down his time in his Manhattan office to just a few days a week. “But I think a lot of people get addicted to the energy and get stuck.”Recent converts to Westchester, brokers say, also include New Yorkers facing expiring leases on the rentals they escaped to last spring and who are now angling for more permanent addresses, further pressuring the market.But it’s not just transplants who are being squeezed. Last year, Marialena Pulice, 39, a school psychologist, and her husband, Chris, 39, who works in finance, made offers on 15 houses, most of which were rejected. “We were outbid, or the seller would go with somebody who had a bigger down payment,” Mr. Pulice said. “Houses were being scooped up left and right.”Late last year, a three-bedroom house in Hawthorne, listed at $589,000, caught the eye of the couple. But their above-ask offer of $595,000 was not enough to seal the deal — at least until the first buyer backed out. The Pulices, who have a young son, have been staying with Ms. Pulice’s parents and will move into their new home this month. “I really can’t wait,” Mr. Pulice said.Homes are selling fast in Montclair, N.J. “The only houses on the market that are sticking around are those that are not so wonderful,” said Roberta Baldwin, an agent with Keller Williams.Credit…Tom Sibley for The New York TimesNew Jersey“The spring market really began in October — that’s how crazy it’s been,” according to Vicki Gaily, a real estate agent based in Saddle River, N.J.As soon as pandemic restrictions eased, Ms. Gaily, the founder of Special Properties, a division of the real estate firm Brook Hollow Group, noticed a burst of pent-up demand, largely from people fleeing urban areas. “I haven’t had a day off since,” she said.Her biggest challenge — and the task facing other harried agents across the state — is finding enough available properties to sell at all price points.As of January, there were nearly 44 percent fewer homes listed for sale in New Jersey from a year ago, according to the New Jersey Realtors trade association. At the same time, closed sales rose during the month by 17 percent and the median sales price surged about 20 percent.“I’ve never seen the inventories as low as they are now,” Ms. Gaily said, noting that in Saddle River, which is in Bergen County, there are “maybe 40 homes” available right now, down from the usual range of 55 to 85 this time of year.Farther south, in Westfield, in Union County, “we have about a third of what we should have in inventory this time of year,” said Frank D. Isoldi, an agent at Coldwell Banker Realty based in Westfield. The result, he said, has been homes being snatched up quickly after multiple bids, and often above asking price.“The only houses on the market that are sticking around are those that are not so wonderful,” said Roberta Baldwin, an agent with Keller Williams Realty who is based in Montclair, in Essex County, where bidding wars are also more common.To help get a leg up on the competition, one of her clients, Brian Herlihy, a 42-year-old financial analyst from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, actually devised a bidding formula last summer, based on the price per square foot of comparable sold properties. “But even then we got outbid,” he said.Emily McDonald and Brian Herlihy recently moved into a fully renovated colonial in Upper Montclair, N.J., but only after the original winning bidder backed out.Credit…Tom Sibley for The New York TimesIn the end, after several unsuccessful bids, Mr. Herlihy and his partner, Emily McDonald, a 38-year-old high school teacher from Brooklyn, managed to move into a fully renovated, four-bedroom colonial in Upper Montclair — but only after the original winning bidder backed out of the deal. Mr. Herlihy paid $1.1 million for the home, which was about $100,000 over his maximum budget.Jaclyn and Zach Plotkin also exceeded what they had hoped to pay when recently buying an Upper Montclair colonial. “We paid a lot over — I don’t want to say how much,” said Ms. Plotkin, 28. “When we started looking, we were less comfortable with bidding over the asking price, but then we came to realize that we had to in order to get a house.”The couple and their infant daughter plan to move from their Midtown East apartment sometime this spring.Tom and Alicia Monforte were filling out paperwork to buy their house in Bellmore, N.Y., just two hours after seeing it.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesLong IslandBuyers throughout Long Island are likely to face continued competition, too, along with rising prices, in large part because of the shrinking supply of available homes..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pxllx6 header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:5px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pxllx6 header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}The World’s Tallest BuildingsLearn More About N.Y.C. SkyscrapersLuxury developers use a loophole in the city’s zoning laws to build these soaring towers in New York City. This may be one reason why these supertall buildings are facing a range of problemsTake a look at the view from 432 Park Avenue as it was being built.The current high-rise building boom, with more than 20 buildings that are more than 1,000 feet tall built or planned since 2007, has transformed New York City’s skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come in Manhattan and the boroughs.Tall, skinny buildings tend to sway slightly in the high wind. To keep residents from feeling this movement, developers are placing giant counterweights at the top to slow building motion. Take a step back and take a look with our critic at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks like Black Rock.“In the last two months we’ve seen such a depletion of new inventory that sales growth has been nominal,” said Mr. Miller, the Manhattan-based appraiser who also follows the Long Island market. He noted in the Douglas Elliman report that signed contracts in February were flat from a year ago, while inventory levels, excluding the Hamptons and the North Fork, fell nearly 37 percent. “That’s a free-fall.”(The Hamptons saw a 72 percent jump in signed contracts in February for single-family homes, according to Mr. Miller, and an almost 38 percent drop in new listings.)On the South Shore of Long Island, there’s about a month’s supply of available homes, or even less, in some areas, agents say. “We would normally have five to six months’ worth at any one time,” said Seth Pitlake, an agent at Douglas Elliman in Merrick. “It’s not that inventory is not increasing,” he said, “it’s just that anything that comes out in the market is being scooped up.”Mr. Pitlake’s clients, Tom and Alicia Monforte, both in their early 30s, witnessed these tight conditions as both seller and buyer. Their Great Neck co-op sold in a week, but when they began searching for a larger property farther east, in Bellmore, they found themselves in a crowded field of purchasers.“We would put in an offer only to find out someone else offered $40,000 over the asking price,” said Ms. Monforte, a clinical social worker, adding that “every free moment was devoted to looking.”The couple recently found a house at the end of a long day of hunting. “It was the last house we looked at out of seven,” Ms. Monforte said. The home — a 2,200-square-foot, five-bedroom high ranch with a $649,000 price tag — had just been re-listed after a previous deal fell through. “After five minutes we knew,” she said, “and in two hours we put in an offer for the full ask that was accepted.”Similar scenarios of stiff competition are playing out on the North Shore. Mr. Pitlake’s Roslyn colleague at Douglas Elliman, Maria Babaev, who specializes in the so-called Gold Coast, recently listed a five-bedroom, split-level in Roslyn Pines that “needs lots of work.”In just one showing, she said, “I had 27 groups of buyers coming in and received eight offers, three above asking.” The winning bid: 10 percent above the $999,000 list price. Ms. Babaev said more expensive homes were selling faster than usual, though she was quick to add that all property types needed to be competitively priced to garner any interest.And what do buyers want? “They want green space,” said James Gavin, an agent with Laffey Real Estate in Manhasset, “and a lot are asking for a home office and then a pool.”Single-family houses have seen a bounce in activity this winter in Westport, Conn.Credit…Jane Beiles for The New York TimesConnecticutIn Fairfield County, towns that struggled with flat sales a year ago have seen major bounces.There are also far fewer houses to go around than at any time since the pandemic began, which is starting to cut into sales volume, according to Douglas Elliman. In February, there were 510 signed contracts, versus 623 in February 2020. Greenwich, though, has posted huge gains in the new year: February saw 108 signed deals as compared with 42 a year ago, according to Elliman.Gains were perhaps expected south of the Merritt Parkway, whose popularity derives in part from regular train service. Indeed, in the past two months, Westport saw 33 sales of single-family homes priced from $1 million to $2.5 million, compared with 19 sales last winter, according to William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty.But points north were strong as well. Ridgefield had 18 similar sales, according to Sotheby’s, up from six, and New Canaan had 55, up from 11; countywide, there is almost no difference between list and closing prices.But as potential sellers cancel plans to downsize because of suddenly back-at-home children or over worries about finding new homes, supply has been crimped, and the steady stream of New Yorkers searching for homes into the county have created cutthroat conditions.“Briefcases full of cash are coming in. It’s been crazy,” said Alex Ramsey, 38, a financial-services worker who for the past year has been trying to relocate his family from their four-bedroom house in Stamford to a five-bedroom in either Westport or New Canaan. One house they liked had 45 showings in two days, Mr. Ramsey said, “and a line of cars with New York plates filling the cul-de-sac.”Six of Mr. Ramsey’s offers have been rebuffed so far, with the most recent in January, when he failed to connect on a Westport house despite offering a 10 percent premium: “There seems to be so much irrational behavior.”A year ago, the Noroton Heights section of Darien had 67 active listings but there are only 17 today, said Sara Littlefield, a Coldwell Banker agent, who canceled an open house for a shingle-sided 1950s five-bedroom, listed $1.595 million, because she got four offers beforehand.Pre-Covid, buyers asked to be 10 minutes from train stations. But now, because they don’t have to be in the office as much, if at all, that requirement is moot. “Working from home is the future,” Ms. Littlefield said, “and a lot of people seem OK with it.”Lori Elkins Ferber (left), a Sotheby’s broker, talks with Susan and Noah Klein in downtown Westport. Since last summer, the Kleins have bid unsuccessfully on three houses in the town.Credit…Jane Beiles for The New York TimesYet even as buyers are acting quickly, speed can lead to problems. Susan Klein, and her husband, Noah, retired residents of White Plains, N.Y., had their hearts set on Westport when they began looking last June. After two failed purchases, they swooped in last month with an all-cash offer for a four-bedroom house, listed for $1.749 million. And it seemed to do the trick; a contract was in the works.But a rushed title search missed problems, and on Feb. 24, the Kleins walked away. (The seller upped the price to $1.849 million a day later.) “This frenetic market forces you to make very quick decisions,” Ms. Klein said, “which you may need to change.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis.

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis.Is it possible to import growth without also importing housing problems? “I can’t point to a city that has done it right.”Construction of homes in Eagle, Idaho, in 2018. The Boise area has become one of the fastest-growing areas in the country.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 10:11 a.m. ETStatistically speaking, Idaho is one of America’s greatest economic success stories. The state has low unemployment and high income growth. It has expanded education spending while managing to shore up budget reserves. Brad Little, the state’s Republican governor, has attributed this run of prosperity to the mix of low taxes and minimal regulation that conservatives call “the business climate.”But there is another factor at play: Californians, fleeing high home prices, are moving to Idaho in droves. For the past several years, Idaho has been one of the fastest-growing states, with the largest share of new residents coming from California. This fact can be illustrated with census data, moving vans — or resentment.Home prices rose 20 percent in 2020, according to Zillow, and in Boise, “Go Back to California” graffiti has been sprayed along the highways. The last election cycle was a referendum on growth and housing, and included a fringe mayoral candidate who campaigned on a promise to keep Californians out. The dichotomy between growth and its discontents has fused the city’s politics and collective consciousness with a question that city leaders around the country were asking even before the pandemic and remote work trends accelerated relocation: Is it possible to import California’s growth without also importing its housing problems?“I can’t point to a city that has done it right,” said Lauren McLean, Boise’s Democratic mayor.That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.Housing costs are relative, of course, so anyone leaving Los Angeles or San Francisco will find almost any other city to have a bountiful selection of homes that seem unbelievably large and cheap. But for those tethered to the local economy, the influx of wealthier outsiders pushes housing costs further out of reach.According to a recent study by Redfin, the national real estate brokerage, the budget for out-of-town home buyers moving to Boise is 50 percent higher than locals’ — $738,000 versus $494,000. In Nashville, out-of-towners also have a budget that is 50 percent higher than locals. In Austin it’s 32 percent, Denver 26 percent and Phoenix 23 percent.Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville. Redfin, the national real estate brokerage, found that out-of-towners had a home buying budget that was 50 percent higher than locals.Credit…William DeShazer for The New York TimesFrustrating as this is for prospective home buyers, the real pain is felt among low-income tenants, a quarter of whom — about 11 million U.S. households — are already spending more than half their pretax income on rent. As rising costs filter through the market and the rent burden gets more severe, food budgets get squeezed, families double up and the most vulnerable end up on the streets.In city after city, studies have shown that homelessness has a distinct financial tipping point. As soon as the local rent burden reaches the point where renters on average spend more than a third of their income on housing, the number of people on the streets starts to rise sharply, according to researchers at Zillow and elsewhere.Cities are built around jobs, and the nation’s inequality reflects that. In a trend that has been exhaustively documented by economists and journalists, over the past four decades the U.S. economy has bifurcated into high-paying jobs in fields like tech and finance and low-paying jobs in retail and personal services. It could be described as two separate societies, but in U.S. metropolitan areas these societies are intertwined.This is as true in Boise as it is in San Francisco. Some work has to be done in person. No matter how high housing costs get, there is not, as of yet, a way to telecommute to a cleaning job. So unless the hordes of expatriate Californians flocking to cheaper cities expect their children to be in remote school forever, to never again eat at a restaurant, to always tidy their own homes — and unless companies leaving California expect to do without the services of janitors and security guards — the underlying problem will persist in every next city that has the misfortune of becoming desirable.Scholars started documenting California’s affordable housing crisis in the mid-1970s, and since then liberal and conservative economists have identified stringent zoning regulations and not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) politics as leading causes of the nation’s housing problem. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have taken up the NIMBY issue. Jack Kemp, the secretary of housing and urban development for the first President George Bush, convened a housing advisory commission whose 1991 report was called “Not in My Back Yard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing.”President Barack Obama spoke against “rules that stand in the way of building new housing” in a speech in 2016, and President Donald J. Trump, echoing Mr. Bush, signed an executive order in 2019 establishing a White House council on affordable housing. (Mr. Trump reversed course a year later, ending an Obama-era program intended to combat racial segregation in the suburbs.)The problem is that opposition to new housing also has bipartisan agreement. Blue cities full of people who say they want a more equitable society consistently vote to push housing costs onto others. They will vote for higher taxes to fund social programs, but also make sure that whatever affordable housing does get built is built far away from them. Red suburbs full of people who say regulation should be minimal and property rights protected insist that their local governments legislate a million little rules that dictate what can be built where. What does it mean to respect property rights? In zoning fights, it gets fuzzy.“Normally we think of ownership as determining who has a right to use a piece of property in a certain way,” said Emily Hamilton, an economist and director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. But when a city tries to add density, she said, it’s common to see this framed “as harming the property rights of people who could experience changes in their neighborhood.”It’s a distant memory now, but in the weeks before the pandemic shut down the economy, housing policy was having a minor political moment. The field of Democratic presidential candidates, including President Biden, had released a flurry of federal housing proposals that varied in their particulars but revolved around a series of tax breaks, affordable housing funds and promises to encourage intransigent local governments to make it easier to build.The track record of previous administrations suggests that the federal government can accomplish only so much. That’s why Dr. Hamilton, who closely follows local housing policies, is encouraged that there are also a flurry of proposals coming out of state and local governments.In 2018 the City Council in Minneapolis voted to outlaw the practice of declaring some neighborhoods off limits for apartment buildings — what’s known as single-family zoning — becoming the first major U.S. city to do so. Since then, a half-dozen states have introduced bills to limit single-family zoning. Various others have passed laws to prevent cities from banning backyard cottages and require them to permit more apartments. Ms. McLean, the mayor of Boise, recently started an effort to rewrite the city’s zoning code.The action might be local, but the message should carry nationwide: The only way to solve the housing crisis is to address it in every city it visits. Otherwise, we’re just spreading it around.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Pandemic’s Toll on Housing: Falling Behind, Doubling Up

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPandemic’s Toll on Housing: Falling Behind, Doubling UpEviction moratoriums don’t keep arrears from piling up, and aid to renters may not reach the most vulnerable.Angelica Gabriel and Felix Cesario of Mountain View, Calif., moved out of the bedroom they shared with their two youngest children so they could rent it out. They now sleep in the living room.Credit…Sarahbeth Maney for The New York TimesFeb. 6, 2021Updated 2:54 p.m. ETAs the pandemic enters its second year, millions of renters are struggling with a loss of income and with the insecurity of not knowing how long they will have a home. Their savings depleted, they are running up credit card debt to make the rent, or accruing months of overdue payments. Families are moving in together, offsetting the cost of housing by finding others to share it.The nation has a plague of housing instability that was festering long before Covid-19, and the pandemic’s economic toll has only made it worse. Now the financial scars are deepening and the disruptions to family life growing more severe, leaving a legacy that will remain long after mass vaccinations.Even before last year, about 11 million households — one in four U.S. renters — were spending more than half their pretax income on housing, and overcrowding was on the rise. By one estimate, for every 100 very low-income households, only 36 affordable rentals are available.Now the pandemic is adding to the pressure. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showed that tenants who lost jobs in the pandemic had amassed $11 billion in rental arrears, while a broader measure by Moody’s Analytics, which includes all delinquent renters, estimated that as of January they owed $53 billion in back rent, utilities and late fees. Other surveys show that families are increasingly pessimistic about making their next month’s rent, and are cutting back on food and other essentials to pay bills.On Friday, as monthly jobs data provided new evidence of a stalling recovery, President Biden underscored the housing insecurity faced by millions. The rental assistance in his $1.9 trillion relief plan, he said, is essential “to keep people in their homes rather than being thrown out in the street.”Bobbing above the surface of a missed payment, the most desperate are already improvising by moving into even more crowded homes, pairing up with friends and relatives, or taking in subtenants.That is the case with Angelica Gabriel and Felix Cesario, residents of a two-story apartment complex in Mountain View, Calif., largely inhabited by cooks and waitresses and maids and laborers — the kinds of workers hit hardest by the pandemic.With their incomes reduced, Ms. Gabriel, a fast-food worker, and her husband, a landscaper, recently moved out of the bedroom they shared with their two youngest children, 6 and 8. They now rent the bedroom to a friend of a friend, while the couple and the kids sleep on a mattress in the living room. (Two daughters, 14 and 20, continue to share the other bedroom.)The arrangement has kept them current by bringing in $850 toward the $2,675.37 monthly rent, which Ms. Gabriel reeled off to the penny.“We weren’t able to pay the rent by ourselves,” she said in Spanish. “Suddenly the hours fell. You couldn’t pay, buy food.”Such changes are not directly reflected in rent rolls or credit card bills, but various studies show that disrupted and overcrowded households have a host of knock-on effects, including poorer long-term health and a decline in educational attainment.Reflecting the broader economy, the pain in the U.S. housing market is most severe at the bottom. Surveys of large landlords whose units tend to be higher quality and more expensive have been remarkably resilient through the pandemic. Surveys of small landlords and low-income tenants show that late fees and debt are piling up.One measure of relief came when Mr. Biden extended — by two months — a federal eviction moratorium that was scheduled to expire at the end of January, as states and cities also moved to extend their own eviction moratoriums. In addition, $25 billion in federal rental aid approved in December is set to be distributed.But for every million or so households who are evicted in the United States each year, there are many more millions who move out before they miss a payment, who cut back on food and medicine to make rent, who take up informal housing arrangements that exist outside the traditional landlord-tenant relationship.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    How the Pandemic Left the $25 Billion Hudson Yards Eerily Deserted

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    The company that built Hudson Yards had said the entire project would be finished in 2024. It no longer offers an estimated completion date.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesHow the Pandemic Left the $25 Billion Hudson Yards Eerily DesertedThe largest private development in U.S. history has attracted marquee companies, but is struggling with unsold luxury condos and a mall barren of shoppers.The company that built Hudson Yards had said the entire project would be finished in 2024. It no longer offers an estimated completion date.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMatthew Haag and Feb. 6, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETWhen Hudson Yards opened in 2019 as the largest private development in American history, it aspired to transform Manhattan’s Far West Side with a sleek spread of ultraluxury condominiums, office towers for powerhouse companies like Facebook, and a mall with coveted international brands and restaurants by celebrity chefs like José Andrés.All of it surrounded a copper-colored sculpture that would be to New York what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.But the pandemic has ravaged New York City’s real estate market and its premier, $25 billion development, raising significant questions about the future of Hudson Yards.Hundreds of condominiums remain unsold, and the mall is barren of customers. Its anchor tenant, Neiman Marcus, filed for bankruptcy and closed permanently, and at least four other stores, as well as several restaurants, have also gone out of business.The development’s centerpiece, the 150-foot-tall scalable structure known as the Vessel, closed to visitors in January after a third suicide in less than a year. The office buildings, whose workers sustained many of the shops and restaurants, have been largely empty since last spring.Even more perilous, the promised second phase of Hudson Yards — eight additional buildings, including a school, more luxury condos and office space — appears on indefinite hold as the developer, the Related Companies, seeks federal financing for a nearly 10-acre platform on which it will be built.Related, which had said the entire project would be finished in 2024, no longer offers an estimated completion date.The project’s woes are in many ways a microcosm of the broader challenges facing the city as it tries to recover.Related said it was counting on wealthy buyers filling its condos and deep-pocketed customers packing the mall to make Hudson Yards financially viable.But that was before the coronavirus arrived in New York.With the pandemic forcing white-collar workers to stay home — and keeping foreign buyers and tourists away — it is not clear when, or if, demand will reignite for the vast supply of upscale aeries and blue-chip office space crowding the city’s skyline.“The challenges facing Hudson Yards aren’t unique,” said Danny Ismail, an analyst and lead of office coverage for the real estate research firm Green Street Advisors. “All commercial real estate in New York City has been impacted by Covid-19. However, I would argue that post-pandemic, Hudson Yards and the area around it will be one of the better office markets in New York City.”The Vessel, left, a 150-foot-tall scalable structure at Hudson Yards, was closed to visitors in January.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe creation of Hudson Yards capped nearly 30 years of planning for the last large, undeveloped parcel in Manhattan, industrial land between Pennsylvania Station and the Hudson River.It is New York’s largest public-private venture and the city’s biggest development since Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, aided by roughly $6 billion in tax breaks and other government assistance, including the expansion of the subway to the West Side. Even with the subway expansion, Hudson Yards is still relatively isolated from the rest of Manhattan, off the beaten path from the busiest avenues for tourists, shoppers and workers.Related acknowledged that it was facing the same financial problems as the rest of the city, but said tenants were still moving into the project’s office buildings and that Hudson Yards would eventually rebound.Four office buildings at Hudson Yards — including 50 Hudson Yards, which is under construction — are 93 percent leased, a spokesman for Related said, though it is unclear how much of that occurred last year. Facebook signed a lease in late 2019 for roughly 1.5 million square feet.“Our strong office leasing, even during the pandemic, is why we’re well positioned to lead New York’s comeback from Covid and why the adjacent neighborhoods and the entire West Side will recover faster,” the spokesman, Jon Weinstein, said.The mall on a recent weekday. Last year, the main anchor, Neiman Marcus, filed for bankruptcy and closed permanently.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesStill, the troubles confronting Hudson Yards have caused Related to rethink its plans.Led by its billionaire founder Stephen M. Ross, the company set out to build Hudson Yards in two phases. The first phase, which opened in 2019, has four office towers, two residential buildings, a hotel and the mall.The second part was supposed to include 3,000 residences across eight buildings closer to the Hudson River, as well as a 750-seat public school and hundreds of low-cost rental units. At least 265 apartments are meant to be “permanently affordable,” according to a 2009 agreement between City Hall and Related.In total, Hudson Yards was expected to stretch 28 acres over existing rail yards and encompass 18 million square feet of space, roughly double the size of downtown Phoenix.The developer has considered an array of new options, including even a casino, though that idea is no longer front and center, according to Mr. Weinstein.Related cannot construct the second half until it builds a deck over the rail yard. The company, along with Amtrak, has been in discussions with the federal Department of Transportation about a low-interest loan to finance the platform and preserve the right of way for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson that Amtrak is planning to build.Related has been seeking more than $2 billion, according to two officials briefed on the proposal who were not permitted to discuss it publicly.“The residential is going to have to recover, or they switch it up and look at a different product mix over there,” said Robert Alexander, chairman of the tristate region for the real estate brokerage CBRE, which is marketing space at Hudson Yards. “To me, it’s a major development site and there’s very, very, very few major development sites in New York.”Related is also facing pressure from its investors to deliver a fuller accounting of the project’s finances. A group of 35 investors from China — a sliver of the roughly 2,400 who contributed $1.2 billion to Hudson Yards — sued the company last year, accusing it of refusing to open its books or say when it might repay their investments.The developer, the Related Companies, is seeking $2 billion in federal financing to build a 10-acre platform over an existing rail yard for the second phase of the project.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesAn arbitrator in the case recently denied the investors’ claims and ruled that Related was not required to disclose detailed financial information.The company’s lawyers said that Hudson Yards was facing “significant headwinds as a result of Covid-19” and that because of the economic downturn and lockdown restrictions, it may be unable to recoup its investment in at least one property there, 35 Hudson Yards, a mixed-use tower with a hotel, according to filings in the case obtained by The New York Times.Another group of Chinese investors, whose contributions of $500,000 per person were part of a United States visa program that can grant them a path to citizenship, are said to also be considering filing a similar lawsuit against Related, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.Related made it clear before the outbreak that it intended to earn the bulk of its money at Hudson Yards through its condos and mall since Mr. Ross said it had been leasing office space at cost, without taking a profit.The pandemic has laid bare the tough road Related faces. In 2020, 30 residential units sold at Hudson Yards, compared with 157 the year before, according to an analysis for The Times by the appraisal firm Miller Samuel.So far this year, several condos are under contract at Hudson Yards, according to Related, a possible sign that the market may be stabilizing.Still, Manhattan has a record number of condos for sale right now, especially luxury units like those at Hudson Yards, and it could take years for sales to truly bounce back, according to Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy.“Hudson Yards was built for a buyer that’s no longer there and maybe partly a tenant that’s no longer there, and that was someone who wanted to live in Manhattan but not live in the city per se,” said Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, referring to the development’s homogeneity and somewhat isolated location.Several stores at Hudson Yards have closed and customers have been in short supply.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe retail picture is also bleak. The vast space occupied by the failed Neiman Marcus store will no longer be taken by another retailer. Instead, Related will convert it into more offices.In the meantime, the company has intervened in Neiman Marcus’s bankruptcy case claiming that the department store owes $16 million for breaking its lease and an additional $129,000 for the removal of its signage throughout the mall, including a giant sign that hung in a five-story glass atrium.While the mall was closed by lockdown orders from mid-March to early September, shoppers are still largely absent.Related has battled its other beleaguered retail tenants, even threatening stores with $1,500 per day fines for failing to stay open after the mall reopened.Several stores, including Forty Five Ten, a luxury clothing store from Dallas that opened alongside Neiman Marcus, have shuttered permanently. The mall opened with 79 stores and now has 89, Related said.Related said the mall had added at least 11 stores since September, including Herman Miller, Levi’s and Sunglass Hut.In the weeks before Christmas, tourists and office workers were in short supply and some stores were still closed, while others like Rolex were open by appointment only. Mall employees far outnumbered shoppers inside the cavernous building, where the most crowded spot seemed to be the line at Blue Bottle Coffee.Weekday traffic at the Hudson Yards subway station, part of the No. 7 line extension the city paid for to help make the development possible, plunged to an average of 6,500 riders in December, a sharp drop from the 20,000 daily average in 2019, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway.The lack of shoppers at the mall has cut into Related’s revenue because the company structured some retail leases so that shops pay rent based on a percentage of their monthly sales. In addition, a number of leases were specifically tied to the fate of Neiman Marcus — if it closed, smaller stores would not have to pay rent or could break their leases without penalty.Hudson Yards was meant to transform the Far West Side into a bustling business district. Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesRelated would not comment about its terms with tenants, including whether any were withholding rent payments.Mr. Weinstein, the company spokesman, said that retail would “always be a key element of our new neighborhood.”Despite the uncertainty, Hudson Yards has already helped turn the neighborhood into a key business district and part of a stretch of Manhattan along the West Side that is becoming a major tech corridor.The development has attracted a who’s who of companies, including HBO, CNN, L’Oréal USA, BlackRock and Tapestry, the parent company of Coach, Kate Spade New York and Stuart Weitzman.“I think New York City will be fine, and Hudson Yards will be fine,” Mr. Florida said. “Will Hudson Yards be the same as it is envisioned? That’s the open question.”The developer said three office towers and one under construction were 93 percent leased. Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

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    ‘One Property at a Time’: A City Tries to Revive Without Gentrifying

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterMarjorie Perry, a contractor, is one of the builders turning an abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times‘One Property at a Time’: A City Tries to Revive Without GentrifyingNeighborhoods in Newark are beginning to see a flurry of redevelopment, a decade after the city’s downtown gained vogue.Marjorie Perry, a contractor, is one of the builders turning an abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETNEWARK — Construction workers in the South Ward of Newark, one of New Jersey’s most distressed areas, are busy converting a long-abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.A decrepit mansion in the Central Ward built by a Newark beer baron before the turn of the 20th century is being revamped as a “makerhood,” a first-of-its-kind co-working residential and retail space.Siree Morris, a developer, recently finished erecting six three-bedroom apartments on a formerly vacant lot. Next up: condos made from shipping containers and an affordable-housing complex named for his slain brother, Michael, on the street where they grew up.While the downtown corridors of Newark, a poor industrial city burdened by decades of disinvestment, have been on the rebound for years, much of the rest of the city had been largely left behind.But now even the city’s far-flung residential neighborhoods are in the midst of a slow recovery.The transformation, fueled largely by a push to expand affordable housing and homeownership in this city of renters, is part of a deliberate strategy with an ambitious goal: erasing Newark’s long legacy of blight without pushing out residents, 86 percent of whom are Black or Latino.“It’s coming up the hill, into the inner city,” Arnita Rivers, a Newark resident who runs a variety store and barbershop and also works as a housing contractor, said of redevelopment.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesThe challenge of avoiding gentrification while revitalizing a city once synonymous with urban decay is steep.More than a quarter of Newark’s 282,000 residents live in poverty and only 22 percent own homes. Many neighborhoods are still reeling from the 2018 discovery of elevated levels of lead in tap water.Streets are pockmarked by an estimated 2,000 vacant lots, haunting reminders of the middle-class exodus that began before the city erupted in flames during five days of deadly unrest in 1967 and accelerated in the decades that followed.And Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, is now struggling under the catastrophic weight of the coronavirus: One in 342 residents has died from virus-related complications.But there are also signs of hope. Side streets are alive with forklifts and hard hats. Older men gather on corners, sharing stories of days gone by and expressing optimism for even the most overlooked swaths of the city. A breakfast for homegrown entrepreneurs — an extension of monthly “men’s meetings” initiated by Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka — attracted 2,500 just before the start of the pandemic.“You take it one property at a time, one parcel at a time,” said Mr. Morris, 38, who has continued to build throughout the pandemic. “That’s the only way to rebuild a community.”Fifteen miles from the heart of Manhattan, Newark’s downtown commercial district has successfully lured housing developers, a Nike factory store, a Whole Foods Market and the corporate headquarters for Audible, Amazon’s audiobook and podcast service.But in the last five years, more than 3,500 units of affordable housing have also been built or are underway, much of it outside downtown, city records show. Newark sold almost double the number of abandoned parcels at auction in 2020 as it did in 2019, and the average price of land — none of it downtown — was about 30 percent higher. Between 2015 and 2020, major crime, including murder, robbery and assault, plummeted by 40 percent.“This right here is extremely personal to me,” said Siree Morris, a lifelong resident of Newark whose company recently finished construction of two new apartment buildings on a formerly vacant lot.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesBig neighborhood projects, like a $100 million expansion of Beth Israel Medical Center, are moving forward alongside smaller ones, including a 51-unit housing complex for seniors and the renovation of three homes that will be sold to residents of public housing using Section 8 vouchers.Even the brutal economic fallout of the pandemic is not expected to erase Newark’s gains.“They took advantage of the growth in downtown, and the strength, and they put effort into all of the wards,” said Doug Goldmacher, an analyst with Moody’s Investors Service, a financial rating agency.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    New York Real Estate Begins Its Recovery

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    What Giant Skeletons and Puppy Shortages Told Us About the 2020 Economy

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    Use It or Lose It: Tenant Aid Effort Nears a Federal Cutoff

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUse It or Lose It: Tenant Aid Effort Nears a Federal CutoffEmergency pandemic funding to help renters must be distributed by Dec. 30. But getting the money to those who need it is no small task.Gregory Heller of the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation is scrambling to get emergency aid into tenants’ hands before a federal deadline.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDec. 15, 2020Updated 7:15 p.m. ETFor several months, Gregory Heller, an official with a Philadelphia nonprofit group, has grappled with an unusual problem. He had $60 million in rental aid to help low-income tenants weather the pandemic — and a whole lot of trouble spending it.Designing questionnaires, verifying bank statements, processing stacks of paperwork: There is a wide administrative gap between the goal of getting money to renters who need it and the reality of cutting a check to their landlord. People like Mr. Heller are trying to bridge it.He is among hundreds of public servants and nonprofit employees nationwide who are scrambling to unload hundreds of millions in federal aid for tenants before a Dec. 30 deadline. They don’t have enough money to address a growing rental housing crisis yet are struggling to pay out what they have — an undertaking that has become even more urgent as other federal emergency programs, including unemployment benefits and an eviction moratorium, are also about to expire.Working from a home office in front of a laptop whose spreadsheets represent roofs over families’ heads, Mr. Heller, senior vice president for community investment at the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation, is so engulfed in his efforts that he now supplements the work of his support staff by taking calls from tenants and landlords on his cellphone. That way he can pitch in on answering questions and review applications on the fly, part of a rush to stave off a wave of evictions, one tenant at a time.“I get calls all day, every day,” he said. “I’ve basically joined the help desk.”Philadelphia is a case study in the simple-but-not-easy task of helping tenants with the rent. Social programs are often a partnership in which cities provide funding and lay out rules but delegate the execution to quasi-governmental nonprofit organizations like Mr. Heller’s. Like most places, Philadelphia isn’t close to satisfying the need for help. But through rounds of rejiggering and three phases of funding — each with its own maze of rules and requirements — Mr. Heller’s group built a team to distribute aid, whittled down the processes that delayed it and ultimately concluded that the best way to help was the most straightforward: Give the money directly to renters.“There’s a societal belief that poor people can’t spend money the right way, and I think it’s important to start questioning that assumption,” Mr. Heller said.Almost from the moment the pandemic spread across the United States, advocacy groups have warned that the economic fallout could cause mass displacement of low-income tenants. In response, more than 400 state and local governments have used money from the federal CARES Act to set up funds to cover at least $4.3 billion in rental assistance — money that has helped tenants pay their bills and landlords stay current on their mortgages, according to a database set up by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a policy group.But now many jurisdictions are reporting trouble spending it, and with barely two weeks left in the year, they are on pace to have more than $300 million left over, according to the coalition’s database. In a pattern that predated the pandemic, the programs have been complicated by bureaucratic hurdles, competing budget demands and a reluctance among landlords to take part.There was shifting federal guidance on how CARES Act money could be spent. States passed legislation that piled local rules on top of the federal rules. Each layer was ostensibly created to improve programs — preventing fraud, making sure the money went to the neediest tenants — but added numerous hurdles for both tenants and landlords, and in the end cost time.“In trying to build bulletproof programs, you build programs that take a long time to get off the ground or simply don’t work because they are too clunky,” said Brad Gair, a principal with Witt O’Brien’s, an emergency-management consulting firm that has helped about a dozen state and local governments create rental funds.Hoping to distribute the remaining aid before it is forfeited, many states and cities are simplifying applications and moving money from nonprofits that can’t process the aid fast enough to those that can. Others are redirecting the funds to different purposes, lest they go unspent.Philadelphia is a case study in the simple-but-not-easy task of helping tenants with the rent. Like most places, it isn’t close to satisfying the need.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesNone of this is for lack of demand. In interviews, more than a dozen officials of nonprofit groups and housing administrators reported a deluge of applications, while reports show tenants are piling up credit card bills, back rent and loans. Moody’s Analytics estimates that by the end of the year some 11 million lower-income renters will be about $70 billion in arrears.Tenant advocates, landlord organizations and local-government associations have called on Congress to extend the Dec. 30 deadline. “The idea of reverting that money back to the Treasury just as the eviction moratoriums expire and renters are on the brink is absurd and cruel,” said Diane Yentel, chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.Like most U.S. cities, Philadelphia had a housing problem long before the pandemic. Rents are lower than in markets like New York and San Francisco, but the burden on tenants is still high. In 2018, about a third of the city’s tenants spent at least half of their pretax income on rent, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.Despite this, federal aid for housing has been declining for decades, part of a continued disinvestment in the social safety net. The line for the federal Section 8 program, which gives vouchers to low-income renters, is more than a decade long in Philadelphia. At the same time, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program is giving the city less than half of the funding that it received in 1995, adjusted for inflation.Looking to expand aid, Mayor Jim Kenney announced in early March that the city would budget $50 million for a five-year program to assist low-income households. It would also run an experiment, giving one group of households rental vouchers while another group of families got unrestricted cash assistance.The coronavirus ended that by blowing a hole in the city’s budget. But the CARES Act added some $60 million in new funds, some through the state and some in direct federal support to cities. The catch was that it had to be spent quickly. And that’s where Mr. Heller’s group came in.Mr. Heller, 39, has spent his career in the nonprofit world and has been a consultant on neighborhood development projects in two dozen cities. In 2016, he was appointed to run the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, a role he still holds, and last year he joined the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 15, 2020, 4:17 p.m. ETEuropean Central Bank will lift ban on bank dividends, a sign of cautious optimism.Top congressional leaders met to discuss a stimulus deal and a year-end spending bill before the deadline on Friday.European truck makers say they will phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2040.Money can come in an instant, but running new programs involves a bunch of mundane but important tasks. Mr. Heller’s organization could not take applications or distribute aid until it had built new information technology infrastructure, with a web portal for claims and 18 full-time employees to review applications and field calls.The first phase was rolled out on May 12 and covered up to $2,500 in rent over three months. Within four days the city had 13,000 applicants. About a third were approved, consuming $10 million of the eventual $60 million.At the same time, Pennsylvania used CARES Act money to start a separate rental-aid program. This was confusing to landlords and tenants, because while that money was also distributed through nonprofits like Mr. Heller’s, it had different criteria from Philadelphia’s program. The major distinction was that the state program would cover no more than $750 in rent, and to receive it property owners had to agree to forgive the balance, and to waive late fees and back rent. This caused a number of landlords — especially in Philadelphia, where the median rent is $1,600 — to balk. And without landlords’ consent, tenants couldn’t get the aid.Victor Pinckney, a landlord and former president of HAPCO, a city landlords’ group, said the reason was simple: He and others didn’t want to take less than the market rent, or give up the right to collect back payments. “It was a no-brainer,” he said.The result was that tenants like Christy Lee Nicholas, who spent two days filling out the questionnaire and assembling pay stubs and bank statements, didn’t even have their applications looked at because the city couldn’t process them without landlord forms.Ms. Nicholas, 42, made about $1,400 a month from a part-time teaching job but was laid off during the pandemic. She recently applied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, and pays $1,100 a month in rent. She is one month behind on rent and applied for the city’s program, but her landlord didn’t send in his own forms.Linda Harkins applied to the city’s rental assistance program, but was denied because her landlord did not send in a form.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York Times“I got an email that said, ‘Sorry, but unfortunately participation requires your landlord,’” she said.This problem went far beyond Philadelphia. Vincent Reina, an urban planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania, recently found that in some cities as many as half of tenants could not get landlords to cooperate with rental assistance programs. The reasons included not wanting to deal with bureaucracy and an unwillingness to comply with terms like waiving back rent or losing the right to evict tenants collecting aid.“We’ve consistently created programs where owners have ultimate veto power over whether a tenant can access the housing assistance that they’ve applied for and need,” Mr. Reina said.To coax more landlords into the program, Philadelphia used its own CARES Act money to augment state rental funds, allowing it to cover up to $1,500 a month in rent. That took care of an additional $30 million, but even with a higher rent cap, 37 percent of landlords still refused to take part.With the end of the year approaching, the city gave Mr. Heller’s organization $20 million for a third program for tenants. This time, instead of having separate applications from landlords and tenants, the organizers asked people who weren’t able to get aid from the first two rounds to reapply — for a cash payment.“We don’t want to penalize them just because their landlord won’t play ball,” Mr. Heller said.One of them was Linda Harkins. Ms. Harkins is a 67-year-old retiree who makes about $1,200 a month from a pension and Social Security, and until recently supplemented it with about $600 a month from a part-time job with the Census Bureau. When her position was cut, Ms. Harkins applied to the city’s rental assistance program.Her application, like Ms. Nicholas’s, was denied because her landlord did not send in a form. Last month, she applied for the new direct-aid program. Ms. Harkins is hoping the check will arrive by Christmas, or at least the first of the month.With the new cash program, Mr. Heller said he was confident that all $60 million would be spent by year’s end. But the need for help will continue.“We now have a whole program set up to funnel millions of dollars to tenants and landlords,” he said. “This issue predates the pandemic and it’s going to continue after. The question is whether we’re going to continue to fund it, or not.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More