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| Armando and Sandra Martinez inside their afforable home. |
NEW YORK — Sandra Martinez’s black and brown Dachshund, Frida, barked from an upstairs bathroom as she squeezed her husband Armando’s hand one cold January evening inside their Brooklyn home. She teared up a little as she recalled the dream they once thought they would never achieve.
“We cannot express how grateful we are and how this dream has to
go to another family just like us,” Sandra said as the orange glow from a lamp
in her living room warmed her face. “Another family who is dreaming … because
that makes a big difference in your life, in your self-esteem, in everything.”
This is Sandra and Armando’s home along Egan Street in
Brooklyn’s Nehemiah Spring Creek neighborhood in
East New York. It’s part of a multiphase affordable housing initiative of the
City of New York, and East Brooklyn Congregations it named
after the biblical character that
rebuilt the city of Jerusalem in 52 days.
On the first floor, there is a cozy open concept area featuring a
living room, a dining area and a special space near the back door that Armando
uses as his art studio. There’s also a bathroom and a kitchen.
Upstairs, where the couple confined Frida in a second bathroom
behind a gate, there are three bedrooms including one filled with stacks of
Armando’s paintings. Other paintings by Armando, who also writes poetry,
tastefully deck the walls throughout the home that features a modest crawl
basement too.
In
the backyard is an immaculately kept lawn where the grass is a refreshing
green. A lone, large decorative pine tree is rooted firmly in the ground
enclosed by a white fence and a black iron gate. A small but sleek family car
is parked on the concrete driveway.
You should see this
backyard in the summer. The couple waxed on proudly about gardening and family
barbecues as a canopy of clouds hanging over the neighborhood created a
dreamscape in the dusky half-light.
The Martinez family
are living their dream and they thank God for their blessing when they awake
every morning.
Just over 10 years
ago, however, after working hard and paying rent in New York City for 32 years,
their struggle to own a home had felt like a never-ending nightmare.
Back then, Sandra, 64, and her 76-year-old husband were stretched
by their approximately $1,600 a month rental bill in Cypress Hills. They were
also worried about how they would afford their modest lifestyle when they could
no longer work.
Retiring to their
native El Salvador like some of their friends had already resigned themselves
to do was increasingly beginning to seem like an option, but it was never a
real solution.
“I have friends who are retiring in two years and the only thing
they can figure out is to go back home. First, they spend 40 years here. They
don’t even know back home. All their friends are gone. They are brand new in
the community. They have no clue,” Sandra explained.
“It doesn’t matter
from which perspective you see it. It’s very hard,” she said. “It’s difficult
here and over there. They are still poor because they have to pay rent, they
have to get to know the community. They have to get medication. Healthcare is
expensive …”
Even though Sandra
worked as a teacher’s aide and Armando taught remedial education to adults for
the city, the couple saw no way of owning a comfortable market-rate home in the
city where they could live with dignity — not on their income and not in New
York City.
Still, they kept
praying and believing God for something more than the future they could see
until one Sunday when their priest at Saint
Rita’s Roman Catholic Church told them about the affordable
housing lottery for Nehemiah Spring Creek.
They did their
research and applied. After a lengthy process that lasted more than a year,
Sandra and Armando finally got the keys to their new home on May 9, 2009, at
approximately 11 a.m.
The house, which is
now valued at more than $600,000, cost the couple only $196,000, and their down
payment, including closing costs, was only $12,000. The city gave them a break
in property taxes for 10 years and barred them from selling the house without a
financial penalty until they have owned it for at least 15 years.
“When they gave us the
key and we entered the house, we just couldn’t believe it,” Sandra said.
The deal for them was
amazing because they know they could never dream of buying their home for what
it’s worth on the market today.
“I could not even
imagine $600,000 together. I cannot even imagine $40,000,” she said.
Since winning the
lottery and making their biggest investment ever, Sandra and Armando say their
lives have only gotten better.
Armando started making beautiful paintings even though he has had
no formal training in art. Shortly after he retired, he was also able to
fulfill a promise he made to Sandra when they first started life together
decades ago.
“He promised me when
we got married he’s going to take me to places. We didn’t have money. We were
poor people. He told me he’s going to bring me to Paris and he’s going to buy
me a cup of coffee. After we bought the house and he retired, we went there and
he bought me the coffee,” said Sandra as she enjoyed a nostalgic laugh with
Armando.
“We did it thanks to
this house,” she said. “It gave us a peace of mind, something inside I cannot
explain. It’s not how much the house is. It’s how much the house means to us.
“This is a true dream.
Thank God for the churches and the community that got together that made this
possible for all of us who live over here now. If the churches in the East New
York community didn’t get together and fight for it, I don’t know. It might be
other people, factories over here now. Who knows?”
Like Sandra and
Armando did, millions of Americans are still struggling to find affordable
housing due to a shortage driven by a confluence of policy, demographics, and market
forces that experts say have driven many to homelessness.
In a June 2018
presentation of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’
annual State of the Nation’s Housing report,
Daniel McCue, a senior research associate, highlighted that median rental
housing costs have been growing steadily for decades while median rental
incomes have remained relatively stagnant.
Nearly half of renters
across the nation (47.5%) are also classified as cost-burdened or spending more
than 30% of their income on housing as a result. The Department of Housing and
Urban Development also estimated that some
12 million renter and homeowner households are now paying more than 50% of
their annual incomes for housing while a family with one full-time worker
earning the minimum wage could not afford local fair-market rent for a
two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States.
In The State of Homelessness in America report
released by the White House last fall, experts also declared homelessness a
“serious problem” with more than half a million people going homeless each
night across America. Approximately 65% of the nation’s homeless were counted
in homeless shelters while the other 35% — just under 200,000 — could be found
on the streets.
“Homelessness almost
always involves people facing desperate situations and extreme hardship. They
must make choices among very limited options, often in the context of extreme
duress, substance abuse disorders, untreated mental illness, or unintended
consequences from well-intentioned policies,” the report said.
Almost half (47%) of
all unsheltered homeless people in the United States were counted in California
while three cities — Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. — were
found to have the three highest rates of sheltered homelessness. New York City
alone has over one-fifth of all sheltered homeless people in the nation.
The report summarized
the causes of homelessness as: the higher price of housing resulting from
overregulation of housing markets; the conditions for sleeping on the street
(outside of shelter or housing); the supply of homeless shelters; and the
characteristics of individuals in a community that make homelessness more
likely.
Last November, just
two days after a war of words erupted
between Democratic California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Housing and Urban
Development Secretary Ben Carson over the report, Democratic presidential
candidates sought to address two of the nation’s most pressing social ills
during the fifth Democratic presidential
debate, and a number of them called for the building of new housing
units in areas of opportunity.
Billionaire candidate
from California Tom Steyer called the lack of affordable housing one of the
biggest drivers of inequality in America.
“When I look at
inequality in the United States of America, you have to start with
housing. Where you put your head at night determines so many things
about your life. It determines where your kids go to
school. It determines the air you breathe, where you shop,
how long it takes you to get to work,” he said.
“What we’ve seen in
California is, as a result of policy, we have millions too few
housing units. And that affects everybody in California. It starts
with a homeless crisis that goes all through the state. But it also
includes skyrocketing rents, affecting every single working person in
the state of California. … We need to apply resources here
to make sure that we build literally millions of new units,” he said.
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