NEW YORKERS ORGANIZE TO DEMAND FOR MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING!

"I didn't want to complain to my landlord because I am afraid he will evict me," recounted one Chinatown resident. Another one simply said:"I can live with no hot water and heat just as long as the landlord doesn't retaliate."

These are just two of the many concerns raised by the residents of Chinatown, prompting Asian Americans for Equality to mobilize almost 100 residents of Chinatown and Flushing Queens to rally with thousands of other New Yorkers on February 2, 2005 to demand New York City to build and preserve affordable housing now by demanding the City to:

• Keep the Promise: Use Battery Park City Surplus to build and preserve more affordable housing;
• Guarantee housing for low and moderate income people in neighborhoods being rezoned;
• Win back New York City's right to determine our own rent laws;
• Provide permanent housing for homeless people living with AIDS; and
• Support legislation to strengthen tenants rights to a healthy home through better inspections and tougher penalties.

Besides the immediate need to produce more affordable housing units, there is also a tremendous need to preserve what affordable housing we currently have to make sure they are livable conditions. According to a housing survey of 33 residents living in Flushing, 14 of the apartments have roach/rat problems, 8 units has either a leaking roof/no heat/water, and more than 50% of the tenants recorded that landlords do not respond to the repair requests in an adequate time frame.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, in Chinatown, currently 21.8% of the households are considered "severe crowding" and 21.5% of the households have "severe rent burden." Over the last 10 years, Manhattan's housing production rate was only at 0.4% where the increase in population was 3.3%. In Flushing Queens, 27% of the households spend more than 50% of their monthly income on rent and 19% of the households live in severely overcrowded conditions, compared to only 9% in the borough of Queens.