A group of New York is trying to alleviate the city's housing crisis by
turning what's referred to as zombie homes into affordable homes.
Now, what our Zombie Homes?
Well, they tend to be vacant, unkempt and abandoned properties that were foreclosed
on by various banks and the banks typically don't take care of the homes.
They certainly don't put them back on the market or
turn them into affordable housing.
And so, what this one group of activists have started to do,
is use the Zombie home laws that were passed in New York state, to essentially
force these banks to turn them into affordable housing and I love it.
So, let's talk about what they're doing.
The local Initiative Support Corporation, a national nonprofit organization,
has funded and provided guidance to the Department of Housing Preservation and
Development to ensure banks follow the state zombie law to restore these
vacant homes into affordable units.
Now, let's get into the zombie law a little further so
you understand what it is.
Maybe you can start advocating for
it in your state if your state doesn't have these types of laws.
So in 2013, when the state became home to the second largest housing-foreclosure
inventory in the nation, the state attorney general's office introduced
the Abandoned Property Neighborhood relief act, which became known as the Zombie law.
It requires financial institutions to maintain the outside of vacant homes
that hold delinquent mortgages, fixing the windows trimming grass and
patching roofs until a foreclosure process is completed.
If banks disregard the law,
they are find a non compliance fee of $500 a day for each house.
So, as you can imagine,
there's quite an incentive there to ensure that they're keeping up the property.
And it's important to do it, right?
Because when you think about like the broken windows, type policing, right?
For the criminal justice system, there were some negative ramifications for that.
But when it comes to neighborhoods,
this policy of making sure that you deal with every broken window, is important.
Because once, like a home in that neighborhood or a series of homes in that
neighborhood start falling apart, then that entire neighborhood starts to suffer.
So that was the thinking behind the law.
But now this group is using that law to essentially get these financial
institutions to flip the homes to affordable housing.
I'll get to those details in just a second, but Jack any thoughts.
>> Yeah.
The one thing that comes screaming across here is, every time Democrats say they
can't do something about any given issue, you realize, no, that's not true.
You actually could pass laws that can make a big difference.
So, but here, give the Democrats credit, this is New York, they control New York,
they pass this back in the day and it's actually helping people.
So, it looks like if you actually make an effort,
there's a lot of things you could do.
>> So let's get to the DEET's, okay?
How many of these Zombie homes exist in New York?
And how much progress has this group made?
Well, there are an estimated 1.3 million Zombie homes across the United States.
And it turns out that New York state has the highest share.
So, HPD estimates that more than 2000 Zombie homes stand
vacant in New York alone.
New York city alone, just let that sink in for a second.
There are 2000 homes in New York City just sitting empty.
The Zombie homes, right?
That could easily be turned into affordable housing,
which as you can imagine is desperately needed right now.
These vacant homes are sprinkled throughout the state,
especially in communities of color.
They are not only dampening property values and fostering local crime.
The wasted housing stock is also contributing to the state's, worsening
housing shortage, but by using the zombie laws that are currently in place.
Here is what the group is doing, okay?
We've brought successful lawsuits against banks who have lent
vacant homes deteriorate and now we are finding ways to renovate and
resell them to low income families,
says the director of the neighborhood stabilization at NYCHPD.
And one home is actually located in the neighborhood of Brownsville Brooklyn.
And it's one of the city's biggest success stories.
Let me give you the details on that.
In 2017, Wells Fargo owned the vacant home but failed to maintain the property.
HPD filed a complaint when it didn't receive a sufficient response from
Wells Fargo, the city demolished the property, leaving the bank on the hook for
the demolition fee.
Seeking forgiveness for the debt,
Wells Fargo transferred ownership of the property to the city of New York.
And by 2024 the property will be included in a habitat for humanity homeownership
project that plans to transform it into affordable multifamily housing.
>> Beautiful.
>> Love it.
>> Okay, so, the most shocking part of the story is that it's not Detroit
that's leading a zombie homes, right?
If you've ever been to Detroit,
the most important part of that phenomenon of all the abandoned homes,
is that it destroys the property values of all the homes around it.
And a lot of the minority communities have built up wealth in their homes only to
have it destroyed by the zombie homes, right?
So, clearing that up is not a small thing,
it not only helps the community by cleaning up those homes, but
it also has cascading effect that is positive for all the different families
there cuz their their wealth goes up when the property values go up.
So, it's a super important program.
I also don't want you to get confused between this program and
the other type of zombie homes.
All the homes that are empty cuz they were bought by foreign oligarchs and their use
this just for money laundering operations, which is a huge part of Trump tower.
But to be fair to Trump,
tons of real estate properties do this kind of money laundering.
And it's not just with Russian oligarchs, Chinese, Saudi's from all over the world,
come and buy our properties and
then leave it completely empty cuz they're just cleaning their money, right?
That's a different problem.
And one that New York has been terrible about addressing.
>> No, I mean not just New York, I mean this is a nationwide problem and
other countries became privy to the issue like for instance in Canada,
Vancouver specifically.
The local government realized we're starting to have a housing crisis here and
a lot of our property is being purchased by
foreign investors who don't even live here.
They don't wanna live here, they're just parking their money in the real estate.
And guess what?
They put some pretty strict restrictions against that and it helped.
But we don't do that here, okay?
We don't actually look out for ordinary people.
We keep talking about how we have a housing crisis yet
we don't address it in ways that make sense.
Los Angeles California is another perfect example of that,
where a study that was done several years ago showed that there
were as many as 110,000 empty units empty, okay?
So, the city council in L A, considered implementing attacks that would impact
landlords who don't ready these units and rent them out to people, right?
Cuz there's a housing crisis, they ended up folding because I'm sure whatever
lobby represents landlords had a stern talking to the LA city council and
they didn't end up doing a damn thing.
So, you literally have empty units all throughout Los Angeles
that could be rented but aren't being rented for one reason or another.
>> I just solved it.
In the middle of the story I solved it.
Cuz there's something weird about this story.
It actually helps the average American, that never happens.
And it was passed back in 2013, in New York,
when Andrew Cuomo and his corporate rain was in charge.
So, it was just I kept reading and I don't get it, it's positive,
there's something off, right?
And I just figured it out.
So, it's against the bankers.
The bankers are not happy about it cuz they are forced to do fines and
the cleanups et cetera.
But it is supported by the number one lobbying group at the local level,
real estate interests.
Cuz when they clean up the homes,
real estate value goes up as I just told you earlier.
So, the real estate lobby must have beat the banker lobby in New York and
that's why they passed this law.
So and that's why they won't touch the rich homes that are empty because real
estate guys make even more money from that.
By cleaning up the poorer homes that are empty,
that they'll do because that helps the real estate interest.
It also helps us, so that's in corporate rule, you have to kind of
align your interest with and kinda just trail along a corporation and
see if you can get the crumbs off of them and that's what this story is.
But hey, I guess we'll take the win.
>> Yeah, way to go, Jack.
Thanks for taking a positive story, making it super dark.
Playing Anna Castleberry Inn on the show today is thank you.