Lessons Learned
While On The Beat
By Eric L. Adams
Protecting Homeowners
When I bought my first house,
where I still reside today, I felt a
mix of pride of fear. Homeownership
is a tremendous privilege and
responsibility – I had scrimped and
saved to get to this point, but I knew
that many challenges, financial and
otherwise, still lay ahead.
Making a house into a home is a
process that often takes several years.
Some people undertake ambitious
floor-to-ceiling renovations, while
others are comfortable with adding
a few personal touches but leaving
everything else intact. But it is a
labor of love – we make a home
because we are investing in our
future. We envision settling down,
raising a family, and growing old in
a place we call home.
Even with the effort we put into
building a home, homeowners –
particularly in Brooklyn - are under
increasing stress today. Some have
fallen behind on their mortgage
payments, others have lost their
homes altogether. Foreclosures
in Kings County last year reached
their highest level since the housing
bubble burst. And on top of that,
a new epidemic of deed fraud
has hit vulnerable homeowners
in gentrifying neighborhoods,
accelerating displacement and
leaving many homeless.
The kicker? The City may
unintentionally be playing a role.
The Third Party Transfer
program (TPT) allows the City to
foreclose on “distressed” properties
and hand them over to developers
to fix up and rent out at affordable
prices. The program began in 1996,
and is administered through the
Department of Housing Preservation
and Development.
In theory, it sounds like a
good idea. Using all the tools at
our disposal to restore properties
that have fallen into disrepair and
increase affordable housing stock
are noble goals. But the reality is
much more complicated. Despite
the City’s best intentions, TPT seems
to be doing more harm than good.
Often, the City deems properties
“distressed” over something as
trivial as an unpaid water bill.
In November of 2018, after hearing
from multiple people and sitting
down with stakeholders throughout
the borough that had firsthand
experience with the program, I wrote
a letter with Council Member Robert
Cornegy to the Mayor outlining our
concerns. We communicated our
belief that TPT had unfortunately
become tainted by fraud, and that
homeowners were being stripped
of their equity without the proper
recourse. We also demanded that the
City, State, and Federal government
conduct a “full-scale, forensic audit”
into the program.
Eric L. Adams
Our concerns turned out to be
justified. In March of this year,
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice
Mark Partnow ruled against the
City and restored properties to
six homeowners who had their
properties seized through the TPT
program. In his decision, Justice
Partnow wrote, “While the Third
Party Transfer Program was
intended to be a beneficial program,
an overly broad and improper
application of it that results in the
unfair divestiture of equity in one’s
property cannot be permitted.”
There is still a lot of work to be
done. In July, the City Council held
a hearing on the TPT program, and
our office submitted testimony. In
the testimony, we reiterated our
call for a full-scale investigation,
and urged the Council to pass Public
Advocate Jumaane Williams’ bill
imposing a two-year moratorium
on the program until we could
implement the necessary reforms
and strengthen oversight.
In the coming weeks and months,
we plan to roll out an ambitious,
comprehensive agenda formulated with
the input of experts and advocates that
combats housing theft and rein in the
excesses of TPT. I am also encouraging
the Governor to sign S1688, a bill the
legislature passed in the most recent
session that would return stolen
properties to their original owners.
After all the time spent making
a house a home, it is almost
unimaginable that it could be taken
away from you over arrears or a
bureaucratic error. Unfortunately, that
is how TPT is currently structured. We
have an obligation to homeowners
throughout Brooklyn and the City to
ensure the homes they spend years
cultivating remain in their hands.
Eric L. Adams is borough
president of Brooklyn. He served 22
years in the New York City Police
Department (NYPD), retiring at the
rank of captain, as well as represented
District 20 in the New York State
Senate from 2006 until his election as
borough president in 2013.
HUMAN RIGHTS CONFERENCE, from p.12
lighting vulnerable LGBTQ communities
while focusing on themes
of resilience and accepting one’s
identity. A panel on transgender
women of color featured Raquel
Willis of Out magazine, who moderated,
along with Janet Mock,
writer, activist, and producer of
“Pose,” and Tracey Africa Norman,
the fi rst transgender model.
“I would absolutely love if the
world could wake up and realize
we are not a threat to anyone, and
to stop the killings, stop the harassment,
and stop the beatings,”
Norman told the audience.
Mock said, “My vision is just so
basic, it’s just that black trans folk
are offered the same resources and
care and nourishing that most
people are often given: shelter and
a loving family.” She added that
her hope for the future is that “underground
economies won’t be our
only options to take care of ourselves.”
Later, in speaking with Gay City
News, Willis contrasted the glamorous
images some trans women
of color have achieved in the media
with the increasing violence against
their community as a whole.
“It is beautiful, right, that we see
so many black trans women just
killing the game in media and out
there more than ever before, but we
can’t ignore the target that puts on
our backs,” she said. “When there
is the heightened visibility but there
haven’t been the material changes
in our community, yes, we become
more visible, but at what expense?
There are still trans women who
are getting attacked everyday, or
trying to fi nd work, or trying to
fi nd acceptance from their communities,
from their families. So it has
to go hand in hand.” Among the
wider LGBTQ community and its
allies, Willis said, “there isn’t this
kind of pouring of the resources
into black trans women who are on
the ground. Our lives matter. We
shouldn’t have to be public fi gures,
we shouldn’t have to be actresses
and models to be respected. We
should be able to just navigate the
world in any given way.”
By bringing activists from
across the globe to New York, the
conference emphasized both the
work that needs to be done on LGBTQ
rights internationally and the
progress that has occurred. Appropriately,
there was, at the conference
and in the WorldPride March,
a large contingent from Taiwan,
where marriage equality staked
out its fi rst win in Asia.
Jay Lin, the CEO of Portico Media,
an LGBTQ publishing concern,
told Gay City News that he
was part of a delegation of 20 Taiwanese
activists in New York to
learn more from others.
“Marriage is one step and there
is a lot of other things we need to
improve on, in terms of human
rights such as transgender rights,
equality in the work force,” Lin
said. “These are all things that
the US seems to be or is one of the
leading sort of countries.”
Acknowledging his surprise at
learning about the violence facing
transgender women in the US,
Lin said, “However, because of this
brutal violence, there are a lot of
role models” fi ghting to change
things. “In Taiwan, we don’t have
a lot of transgender role models at
this stage, so it is good to come and
learn what other parts of the world
are talking about.”
Newly launched international
organizations used the conference
as a networking opportunity. Alan
Wardle, a Brit who is director of the
Global Equality Caucus, explained
that his group, formally launched
at the United Nations a day before
the conference, includes LGBTQ
politicians and allies pressing the
equal rights cause globally.
“Politics has the power to change
people’s lives,” said Wardle.
Other panels included one on
LGBTQ historic sites, where Pulse
nightclub owner Barbara Poma discussed
the plans for memorializing
the 2016 tragedy in Orlando. Antoine
Craigwell, who heads DBGM,
which is focused on the mental
health needs of LGBTQ African-
Americans, moderated a panel
on building allies for such efforts
and discussed her group’s plans
for an October conference in New
York. Bess Hepworth of the Asiabased
Planet Ally hosted a panel
on LGBTQ families, and ORAM,
the Organization for Refuge, Asylum
& Migration, led a session on
LGBTQ refugees around the world.
The conference’s impressive diversity
ranged from military service to
queer theater, and after two years,
its organizers said it is likely to
remain a fi xture of Pride Week in
New York going forward.
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