BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – Only time will tell how effective Dec. 1’s “Occupy Newark” has had on the discourse and activity on Newark’s affordable housing crises.
A handful of activists and protestors encamped on Newark City Hall’s front steps at Midnight Dec. 1, intending to stay there for a full 24 hours.
“Wake up!” cried one person with a bull horn in the predawn of that Friday morning. “Gentrification is real! Occupy Newark 2023 is on City Hall steps right now. “If we can’t live here shut this thing down.”
Occupy Newark 2023 organizer Muta El-Amin explained that they were spotlighting housing injustice in New Jersey’s largest city. They were taking issue with what Mayor Ras Baraka’s administration has cited as declines in homelessness figures the preceding week.
Their demands included “an immediate meeting” with the Newark Housing Authority and Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services Director Luis Ulerio and an updated housing resource packet for those on the verge of eviction or homelessness.
“Us speaking about these issues is the only way we bring about change,” said El-Amin, a former sanitation worker, “and the only way this conversation makes it to the dinner table.”
Newark Water Coalition Executive Director Anthony Diaz supported Occupy Newark 2023. He said the occupation of city steps came in the wake of the recent protests held on the same steps over the Israeli-Hamas war. Diaz added that Mayor Baraka had the power to reinstate a moratorium on rent increases like he had during the COVID pandemic.
“The housing crisis – brought on by years of gentrification, displacement, overdevelopment – has really pushed the city to a crisis point,” said Diaz. “It has pushed many cities into a crisis point. The thing that makes Newark so unique in this situation is we have a Democratic mayor and a Democratic governor.”
Diaz, who founded the Newark Water Coalition during the city’s 2018-21 lead water pipe replacement crisis, referred to a Nov. 15 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development audit report on the NHA. The report, as presented by NHA Executive Director Leonard J. Spicer at the agency’s Nov. 16 Board of Commissioners meeting, found that it had an 87 percent occupancy rate – or 13 percent vacancy rate.
“The housing stock within NHA,” said Diaz, “is enough to really house people and house them affordably.”
Occupy Newark 2023 is a reminder of earlier occupations, starting with the 2011 encampment in Military Park. That was in turn based on Sept. 17 – Nov. 15, 2011’s Occupy Wall Street. OWS, launched by Adbusters, encamped in Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Financial Section.
Occupy Newark 2023 was a push back on what city officials consider as a decline on homelessness. Mayor Baraka, for example, said on Nov. 28 that the city’s population of “unsheltered” homeless had declined 57.6 percent Oct. 31 from that time last year.
The city’s figures have 3,841 unsheltered people – those who live on the streets or have no addresses – from Oct. 31, 2022 down to 1,627 on the same date this year.
Homeless Services Director Ulerio, sometimes called “Newark’s Homelessness Czar,” said that the figures came from the state’s Homeless Management Information System. Ulerio, on Nov. 29, said that he was extracting a total number of Newark’s homeless from the state’s figures.
Although agencies who provide from the homeless across the state use HMIS data, it is not known whether they use figures from Essex County’s annual survey. That overnight census consistently ranks Newark as having 1,000-plus homeless – far and away above the county’s other 21 municipalities.
Newark having that dubious top rank makes sense when one considers the city’s size. It is New Jersey’s largest municipality in terms of its 280,000 population. Its 26 square miles is the largest Essex County town. It would therefore have more resources than its county sister towns and cities.
Baraka, Newark Economic and Housing Development Deputy Mayor Alison Ladd and members of the Mayor’s Public Information Office credit the following for their part of the homelessness decline:
- Creating the Office of Tenant Legal Services to provide legal representation in landlord-tenant evictions and in combating corporate LLCs from buying houses for rental conversion.
- Ensuring that new developments include affordable housing units with the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance.
- Offering residents first choice the first 90 days new affordable housing is offered.
- Allowing residents’ use of Section 8 Homeowners Conversion Program rental vouchers to buy homes.
- Selling homes from the city’s Land Bank for $1.
- Providing buyers of homes to be rehabilitated with low-cost mortgages
Ladd, on Nov. 28, advised residents to visit City Hall Room 111.
“Come to City Hall. We can help you person-to-person,” said Ladd. “You don’t have to use the Internet if you don’t want to.”
There may be more improvements from the NHA, depending on how they respond to the USHUD audit.
NHA Executive Director Spicer, who came aboard Oct. 30, said that USHUD gave a zero score on its management. The federal agency was looking for a 93-percent occupancy rate.
“We need to make sure we’re leasing our units,” said Spicer. Having 87 percent occupancy isn’t acceptable in a community where we have thousands of people who need housing.”
NHA also received a zero score in finance for failing to send USHUD its audits in a timely manner, causing the former to ask for filing extensions. The feds, indeed, may be coming to NHA’s 500 Broad St. headquarters in January to see the audits for themselves.
NHA scored five out of 10 points in capital funds – where it needed to pass at 60 percent. The agency was found to not spend its federal grant funds in a timely manner.
“You’ve two years to obligate the money,” said Spicer, “and another two years to actually spend the money.”
The NHA scored 22 out of 40 points in physical conditions. The federal focus was on unit interiors, including plumbing and electrical systems.
“We’re going to have to invest capital dollars into ensuring that we’ve preventative maintenance plans, that our property managers as well as our maintenance staff are doing annual inspections,” said Spicer.
The NHA is the city’s largest public housing agency with considerable clout. It houses 40,000 people – slightly more than to Newark Public Schools’ student enrollment – or 16,000 families.
Only 25 percent of Newark’s residents, however, are homeowners. The City, under the Baraka Administration, has been attracting luxury apartment construction with 30-year Payments in Lieu of Taxes or tax abatements. Developers are required to meet affordable housing and inclusionary zoning conditions.
The luxury housing boom has increased the median sale price from $180,000 in 2015, according to the Redfin real estate website, to $433,000 in May. The median gross monthly rent, however, has gone up 24 percent from 2011 to $1,167 in 2021.
A 2021 Rutgers Law School Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity found that the median affordable housing unit is going for $763 per month – $600 less than what USHUD considers fair market value.
“We’re stronger today,” said Ladd, “but we have to be more equitable and inclusive.”
Community activist Munirah El-Bomani considers the week of data, “Putting a Band-Aid on a deep cut.
“You’ve got to go to landlord-tenant court,” said El-Bomani. “People are being put out every day.”
The county’s filings for its landlord-tenant court here had 3,119 filings in August, more than doubling the 1,510 filings in August 2022. Part of the increase is in the wake of the state’s lifting of eviction and foreclosure filings once the COVID pandemic subsided. It takes about two years for foreclosure and eviction processes to run their courses.
Listed above figures do not take into account inflation, increases in mortgage rates and USHUD’s withdrawal from constructing public housing.
The Dec. 1 Occupy Newark physically did not last 10 hours.
City workers were using the ground floor and Green Street side entrances, like they normally do, when Newark Police Division officers began approaching the steps protesters at 9:30 a.m. They were advised that they needed a permit to continue and it was time to leave.
“Why is this time different?” said Diaz. “Why, this time, do we need a permit? We were just here two weeks ago with the Palestinian protest.”
DPW workers then took protesters’ possessions off the steps. Unlike the other Occupy endings, the items were brought to Diaz’s NWC truck for loading.
“I’m calling on people,” said El-Bomani, “to occupy council meetings, school board meetings, freeholder meetings, NHA meetings and the Statehouse.”
