New York, New York - City and State

Since Tuesday I have been in New York working on the next leg of my Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship (www.WCMT.org.uk)

I met with Tom Eastman from Enterprise Communities, together with David Rowe, Sharon Browne and Margaret Taddy of CAMBA. Enterprise are a syndicator that supports the development of affordable housing. I met with Scott Hoekman from Enterprise when I visited Washington DC.

David and Sharon showed me around a recently completed scheme and another scheme which was a few weeks away from Practical Completion. CAMBA have worked in New York for more than 30 years and supplied a wide range of services including, financial literacy, legal aid, social work support etc. In 2005 they moved into the development of affordable housing as tackling homelessness has always been a major plank of their mission. Enterprise have acted as their syndicator for each of these projects.

The scheme at CAMBA Gardens was being developed on land that CAMBA had purchased from a hospital. It was an old psychiatric  hospital that had housed, before it was closed, the serial killer 'Sam' of 'Summer of Sam' fame.

The new building is phase one of a £67m scheme. Phase one contains for 209 apartments of which 60% are for formerly homeless. The scheme comes with a large staff team of 8 case workers, a part time psychiatrist, as well as security and a building management team. The revenue for the project was coming from project based section 8 revenue funding as well as a series of New York City and State grants to support people with a range of support needs. Most of this is derived from a tariff with a specific annual support grant for people with a particular types of support needs. Different needs attract a different tariff and this gives rise to a matrix. The vast majority of the individual households living in the project do not work and all of the residents will receive Assistance. There was some very significant research undertaken by New York University that revealed that the cost to the state of the homeless population was higher when they were not housed compared to when they were. This was due to them needing emergency care, police intervention, social services intervention etc. Although there are a lot of revenue grants going into to the project it is still less expensive than not supporting this population in this way.

The quality of the scheme was very high. The 2 bedroom apartments were c. 900 ft in floor area, 1 bedroom apartments were 700 square feet and 3 bedroom apartments were 1,200 square feet. Ceilings were high at 12 feet on the ground floor and 9 ft on upper stories. The scheme had polished terrazzo kitchen counter tops as well as heating and air conditioning. In addition, the scheme had a number of outside play areas for children, underground parking and an office base for the workers. Unusually for New York the scheme also had fairly large an outside open garden area at ground level. The entrance lobby at which there was a security presence 24 hours per day,  was highly specified with a green living wall and 'high end' reception area. The project is LEED Platinum standard.

Despite the specialist nature of the scheme, it had attracted a tax credit investor who had invested £24m into the project. The remainder of the capital cost was mainly covered with New York City and New York State  grants and loans.

I met with Chris Allred, Eric Enderline an Miriam Colon from New York City on Wednesday. They took me through some of the strategic challenges of working in New York where build and land costs are very high and market rents are extremely high. There is also the challenge of improving and redeveloping their public housing stock. New York City's proposals for improving the public housing in the State are the subject of a legal challenge by a tenants group. Chris helpfully sent me a number of documents and links on the LIHTC programme and the affordable housing programme in New York.

I met with Carl Wise from Hunt Capital Partners. Carl helpfully took me through his work as a private sector syndicator, including trading Low Income Housing Tax Credits
pricing and market rates. Carl has promised to send on an example on an excel spreadsheet.

I met with Arturo Suarez and Pierre Downing of LISC (Local Initiative Support Corporation). Arturo and Pierre told me about the work of LISC and their sister organisation National Equity Fund (NEF); and about the realities of working in New York City. Local politics is very important in decision making in respect of Low Income Housing Tax Credit allocation and re-syndication in year 15. We also discussed some of the complications in respect of working with land donated from the City to non profit developers and the margins they are expected to work within compared with the higher margins of the for profit developers. We also discussed the challenges of working often with small inexperienced community groups.