Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Brendan Cheney, Director of Policy and Operations at New York Housing Conference
2:15:14
·
139 sec
Brendan Cheney from the New York Housing Conference testified on the proposed legislation regarding Housing Connect, expressing support for the goals but concerns about implementation. He highlighted issues with the current Housing Connect system and emphasized the need for improvements in transparency, access, and efficiency, particularly for re-rentals.
- Supported the goals of the three pieces of legislation but raised concerns about unfunded mandates and the current capabilities of the Housing Connect portal
- Appreciated HPD's willingness to grant waivers for re-rentals to address long vacancies and revenue issues for providers
- Urged that future changes to Housing Connect prioritize speedy and efficient re-rentals and increase the portal's capacity to meet desired goals
Brendan Cheney
2:15:14
Good afternoon.
2:15:15
My name is Brendan Cheney.
2:15:16
I'm the director of policy and operations at the New York Housing Conference.
2:15:20
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
2:15:22
And chair Sanchez, I wanna especially thank you for your leadership and your advocacy here.
2:15:26
We always appreciate your advocacy around housing issues and especially today sort of highlighting issues to Housing Connects, we really appreciate it.
2:15:33
So I'm gonna start by talking about the the three pieces of legislation.
2:15:38
We very much support the goals of the of the legislation.
2:15:41
We really wanna see a single portal that has all affordable housing and re rentals on the portal.
2:15:48
We really wanna see a portal that has notifications and we really want to and and we do support a robust housing ambassadors program but we are concerned about legislating these three things.
2:16:01
We're concerned about unfunded mandates especially in an environment where federal housing funding is really under threat.
2:16:09
And then for December, especially I think just concerned about legislating something that the housing connect portal isn't prepared to do effectively right now.
2:16:20
But but but obviously very much support the goals of those three bills and and really appreciate your leadership on that.
2:16:28
So look, Housing Connect should provide transparency and access to affordable housing but right now between the functionality that exists and bureaucratic hurdles, it's not meeting those goals.
2:16:39
It's leaving units vacant for months at a time.
2:16:43
We appreciate HPD's willingness to grant waivers for re rentals right now.
2:16:48
It's as as you've heard and as you've heard before this, the re rentals are causing a lot of long vacancies and and revenue issues for for the providers.
2:16:58
We appreciate HP's pause on this while they're working on a longer term fix.
2:17:03
As they work for a longer term fix and longer term solutions to those issues, we request the changes prioritize speedy and efficient re rentals and really increase the capacity of the portal to to meet all the goals that we really wanna see Housing Connect have.
2:17:22
And so I think, just just to wrap up, over the next years, they're looking to make those changes.
2:17:27
We wanna make sure those changes really do deliver Housing Connect that we all wanna see.
2:17:31
So thank you.
2:17:32
Happy to answer any questions.