Healthy Housing for All
Make the Road New York drafted and is leading a coalition effort to pass legislation that will promote real accountability for negligent landlords who fail to repair housing code violations that the City of New York deems “immediately hazardous.” The organization has already won the support for this legislative initiative from over fifty community and housing organizations and over two-thirds of the New York City Council.

Make the Road New York has been a leader in the fight to improve housing code enforcement in New York City. Working in coalition, we won a commitment from the Bloomberg Administration to implement a rigorous home inspection program called T-CEP (the Targeted Cyclical Enforcement Program). T-CEP offers regular, recurring, cellar-to-roof city inspections that target the most in-need buildings citywide, and guarantees follow-up litigation by the city if repairs are not made. The T-CEP program will result in 7,200 apartments being repaired each year—and will have a measurable, positive impact on the lives of low-income New York families.

Make the Road New York’s Healthy Homes Campaign was initiated and is now led by our low-income, primarily immigrant membership base. The campaign will improve dangerous living conditions for tens of thousands of neglected tenants by promoting a higher functioning and more accountable New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. In building support for this campaign, dozens of the organization’s members have developed their own leadership and community organizing skills, engaging in activities such as door-knocking, petitioning , conducting outreach at local check cashers and day care centers, planning and facilitating weekly meetings, engaging in protests and other types of direct action, and hosting accountability meetings with policy-makers.

The Power of Tenant Organizing
Make the Road New York member Irania Sanchez had been living with mold, spotty heat and hot water, and “rats as big as cats’ for the last five years. Irania and other family members living in her building suffered from severe asthma -- a direct result of these dangerous housing conditions. Her landlord repeatedly refused to make repairs.

Make the Road New York’s Environmental Justice member committee, ¡BASTA!, organized a rally that garnered front page and prime-time coverage, and worked with HPD to threaten legal action. The landlord promptly began to make repairs.

Housing Legal Advocacy
Make the Road’s attorneys provide targeted advocacy, education and representation in housing court and landlord-tenant cases, and work closely with our tenant organizing efforts to maximize impact. We provide free consultations and advice at our weekly open legal clinic, held every Monday night. And we regularly advocate for tenants like Silvia:

Silvia Cardenas’ landlady was trying to evict her, together with her sister and infant son, without a court order. The landlady misunderstood the law and believed that this was her right. Because she worked as a crossing guard, she had developed friendly relationships with several police officers, whom she asked to visit Sylvia’s building, in order to intimidate Sylvia. Early one morning, Sylvia received a visit from a uniformed officer, who yelled at her and told her that she was required to leave her apartment within 24 hours. As soon as Silvia reported the situation to us, a staff attorney went to the apartment to talk to the landlady, who promptly summoned the police again. The attorney, through vigorous advocacy, was able to convince them that Silvia had rights to the apartment that could not be violated at the whim of a landlord with police connections. We negotiated a favorable agreement allowing Ms. Cardenas time and moving assistance to relocate from an apartment she was eager to leave. Since then she has become a community trainer within the Make the Road New York tenant meetings, using her own experience to educate other tenants about their rights and how to enforce them, often without the need of going to court.

Expanding Civil Rights | Promoting Health | Improving Housing | Winning Workplace Justice | Improving Public Education