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Dear Governor Paterson,
As a resident of the Lower East Side, I am writing to urge that you not cut the budget for the Neighborhood Preservation Program (NPP). Our community has benefited greatly from the work of the Cooper Square Committee which receives NPP funding.
Over the past few years, the Cooper Square Committee has done the following tenant education and community development work:
- Developed a 54 unit building at 29 East 2nd Street which opened in 2008, and houses low income people and persons with psychiatric disabilities.
- Administered façade and building improvement funds for five (5) buildings on East 4th Street, and leveraging over $300,000 in private funds. This renovation work has greatly improved the physical appearance of East 4th Street’s Cultural District, which is a destination for tens of thousands of people every year who come to see Off Off Broadway shows and dance performances on the block.
- Assisted tenants of 10 Stanton Street, a 146 unit building on the Bowery, in negotiating a 5 year renewal of their building’s Section 8 contract, to June, 2015. CSC is also helping the tenants and the owner in applying for hundreds of thousands of dollars in NYS weatherization funds.
- Counseled over 1,000 tenants, prevented dozens of evictions, and helped dozens of homeless or doubled up low income people to obtain permanent housing. Placing homeless people in permanent low income housing is more cost effective than putting homeless people in City run shelters.
These are just some examples of the Cooper Square Committee’s work. Each year, their tenant counseling and organizing work prompts private landlords to reinvest tens of thousands of dollars in their buildings to make numerous building-wide and apartment repairs.
NY State’s investment of roughly $75,000 in the Cooper Square Committee is money well spent given that CSC has a track record of results, and annually leverages more than 10 times that amount of money in public and private investments in the Lower East Side community. CSC is actively working to assist the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association to convert 20 buildings to low income cooperatives, and is working with other organizations to break through a longstanding impasse on the development of Seward Park, the largest vacant city-owned site in Lower Manhattan.
CSC needs to be able to sustain its staffing capacity. I urge you not to make cuts to their NPP contract. Thank you.
