MFJ in the News

MFY Adds Its Voice to Call for Supportive Housing for Those Re-entering Society

MFY Legal Services has worked with a coalition of 17 organizations led by CSH to develop recommendations that help to improve access to supportive, affordable, public, and market rate housing for individuals leaving incarceration. If adopted, these policy reforms would end reliance on unstable and unsafe housing; improve access to supportive and other affordable housing …

Advocates Denounce Airbnb’s Proposed Home Sharing Rules for NY

Housing advocates in New York City denounced Airbnb’s proposed Home Sharing Rules for New York in a statement released October 21, 2016, arguing that the rules are unenforceable and will legitimize Airbnb’s illegal business practices, which contribute to the loss of affordable housing, create unlivable conditions for tenants in residential buildings, and make unsuspecting tenants …

Three-Quarter House Residents Demand Basic Right to Choose their Own Health Care

Tenants of three-quarter houses, along with MFY Legal Services, Neighbors Together, VOCAL-NY and other organizations supporting tenants’ rights rallied at City Hall today to support five bills to improve the lives of these tenants. Holding signs reading “Dear Landlord: My Health Is None of Your Business!,” tenants urged passage of Intro. 1168, which would make …

VOCAL-NY Joins MFY in Three-Quarter House Campaign

Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY), a statewide grassroots membership organization dedicated to empowering low-income people, has joined MFY and Neighbors Together in our campaign to organize three-quarter house tenants and advocate for greater protections for these residents. On Thursday, October 6, we will rally at City Hall at 12:30 pm to support five …

MFY Comments on New Housing Lottery Guidelines

MFY Supervising Attorney Justin LaMort commented in an AM-NY article on New York City’s new guidelines for affordable housing lotteries, noting that many changes are long overdue. The new process eliminates home visits and decisions based on credit scores, and recognizes that the tenant blacklist is a problem by providing that a previous housing court …

New Reports Call for Changes in Access-A-Ride

MFY Staff Attorney Nahid Sarooshyari commented in an article in AM New York on recommendations in changes to Access-A-Ride to make service easier and more efficient. MFY recently settled a class action lawsuit with New York City Transit requiring the agency to provide the reasons for denying services and to continue services during the appeals …

MFY Aids Tenants Suing Slumlord for Creating Illegal SRO

MFY is representing a group of tenants at 80 New York Avenue in Brooklyn who are suing their landlord for renting out individual rooms in apartments, alleging illegal deregulation and rent overcharges. In a scheme proliferating in many gentrifying neighborhoods, landlords convince single adults desperate for an affordable place to live to co-sign a lease. …

HUD’s Discriminatory Mortgage Sales Are Topic on BRIC-TV

In this video from BRIC-TV, Elizabeth Lynch, Supervising Attorney at MFY Legal Services, and David Quart, Deputy Commission of Strategy, Research and Communications at NYC’s Depaertment of Housing Preservation & Development speak on how homeowners with mortgages in private hands are more likely to be foreclosed, and why the homeowners most affected by HUD’s mortgage …

The Theft of Affordable Housing

MFY Supervising Attorney Justin La Mort explores how rent-stabilized apartments are disappearing as a result of fraudulent individual apartment improvements in the current issue of the NYU Review of Law & Social Change. The article shows how these phony improvements are are exacerbating the city’s affordable housing crisis and recommends several legal and policy changes …

SRO Hotel Fined for Illegal Rentals

An upper West Side Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel was fined $65,000 for continuing to offer short-term stays to tourists in violation of a March court ruling that forbade it. Under the law, SROs cannot rent rooms for less than 30 days. MFY Legal Services has taken a leading role in the fight against illegal …

map