Email sent to every Manhattan Democratic Party District Leaders.
I need your help to investigate HPD (New York City Department of Housing)
Dear <Name of the District Leader>,
I am contacting you because I want to bring to your attention a rally I am planning on the steps of City Hall to ask for a federal, state and city investigation that would open the books for a real investigation into all HPD private-public partnerships with Neighborhood Restore (and non-profits) including the Third Party Transfer program, TIL-ANCP, and Inclusionary Zoning.
This about a city program that is so screwed up that HPD has been stealing deeds from rightful homeowners. Here is the testimony of one of them: https://youtu.be/LxCCHM9zGzU
I am sure you have heard of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board or UHAB. If you have not, you should. As you might have realized, I live at 640 Riverside Drive, and the building is owned by GP-UHAB HDFC, which they acquired through City Council Res 1005–2003.
The goal of the program is to take blighted buildings and turn them over the residents into HDFC CO-OP. UHAB and Settlement housing created a partnership called SHUHAB, owned us.
The goal of this email is not to assign blame but a cry for help. Help for myself but also the thousands of residents that are currently caught in the HPD inferno.
This email is not to assign blame but to untangle this mess.
Compared to what I have seen in my building for 20 years, our County Committee meeting was pretty mellow. Over 20 years, I have developed a very dry sense of humor, but people have killed themselves over HPD’s lack of oversight.
In my testimony, I said I would help and lead any investigation. I am available to lead the team wherever it takes.
I am not alone in my endeavor, but I need your help in untangling this mess.
I understand that there will be a lot of resistance because there is the potential of discovering a lot of improprieties that could lead to a lot of prosecutions.
The only solution to that is to follow what the FAA and Nelson Mandela have done: forgiveness.
To better understand mishaps in the Aviation industry, the FAA established a voluntary reporting system that would act as a Free Jail Card. The program is run by NASA to create a Chinese wall. If, in the course of an investigation, a pilot, a tower controller, a doctor, a mechanic created a situation that could be considered criminal, those people would be immune to prosecution as long as they reported the story to NASA.
This is the reason we have the SAFEST air system in the world — not because of technology but a system that doesn’t penalize the actors in case of good faith mistake.
At the end of Apartheid, Nelson Mandela set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help into the transition into democracy.
I believe that if we want to untangle all the problems with NYCHA and HPD, we need to apply those two principles, which will ensure anonymity, truth, and forgiveness.
Too many people might have illegally benefited from HPD’s behavior. With the advent of Open Data, these relationships will come to light, and I believe that is could be a reason many real estate developers are unwilling to come clean. They know that they have a lot of secrets to protect.
Without forgiveness, nothing will change.
The first step which is to analyze the problem on the complainant side, and for that, I created the Show The Book website at https://www.showthebooks.org/testimonial
We need your help in locating everyone affected — if you genuinely want to help contact me.
If you have access to journalists, please tell them to run stories to collect the information.
I have a meeting with Councilman Cornegy’s staff on Monday. If you can do something, please reach out to me. Or better yet, enter your information on this website: https://www.showthebooks.org/contact
If you read this email to the end, please tell the other District Leaders to read this email because I know many will ignore it. We need everyone on this one.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Yours truly, in solidarity
Theo Chino
