“City locks housing doors on Veterans”

New York State law mandates that qualified veterans are to be given preference over
other applicants on the waiting list for highly sought-after apartments Mitchell-Lama apartments. The
intent of the law was to welcome home New York vets by offering them an opportunity to have safe and
affordable housing. Unfortunately, studies by the New York State Comptroller
have found that Mitchell-Lama developments under the supervision of both the
NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the
NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR)  have
failed to observe and apply the veterans preference, causing veterans to be
illegally passed over for these apartments. A December 1st New York Post article highlights this issue, as well as the work that our
Veterans Justice Program is doing on behalf of veterans who are being
unlawfully denied their rights.

From the article:

Air Force vet Aaron Glover, 50, is suing the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development for failing to favor retired service
members applying for Mitchell-Lama developments.

Glover, who works for Manhattan’s VA medical center, applied for a
$600-a-month studio apartment at Manhattan’s Henry Phipps Plaza East
last summer after seeing a newspaper ad.

But HPD staff never sifted through the nearly 30,000 applications to pick out veterans, said Glover’s attorney, Pete Kempner.

By law, ex-military are to be put at the top of the waiting list,
ahead of other applicants who are placed on the list through a random
lottery. Instead, HPD has been applying the veteran’s preference only
after a lottery is conducted.

“They’re trying to lessen their workload at the expense of veterans —
it’s a bad deal,” said Glover, who served in the Air Force for seven
years and rose to the rank of senior airman. He lives with his sister in
Harlem and is struggling to find an apartment on his $50,000 salary.

“It’s much easier to put 20,000 applications in a hopper . . . than
to check if they belong to veterans,” said Kempner, who heads the
Veterans Justice Project at Legal Services NYC.

Last month, HPD proposed new rules that would weaken the veteran’s
preference — applying it only if vets are lucky enough to be picked out
of a lottery of thousands of applicants.

“They’re looking for shortcuts, but . . . the least our veterans deserve is some time and effort,” Kempner said.

Read the full story at NYPost.com.