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Similar Museum of the City of New York, Enterprise Community Partners, Local Initiatives Support Profiles | ||
Citizens Housing and Planning Council (CHPC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit education organization based in New York City. Its mission, since 1937, is to advance practical public policies by better understanding New York City’s most pressing housing and neighborhood needs across the five boroughs. It is a Council of leading professionals from every industry that shape the residential built environment who share the conviction that by working together we can promote solutions for the long-term progress of the city.
Contents
Work
Citizens Housing and Planning Council was founded in 1937 by a coalition of intellectuals and activists who worked closely with Senator Robert F. Wagner in crafting the Housing Act of 1937 and its advocacy helped to encourage NYC to maintain economically integrated public housing, well located in neighborhoods with access to services and transportation.
During the 1940s and 1950s, CHPC warned against the ghettoization of the city's growing minority populations and supported litigation and legislation opposing racial discrimination in housing, advocated for development of low-rent and racially integrated housing in the face of local opposition, and fought against attempts to place public housing in isolated areas of the city devoid of basic services. CHPC also stressed the need for preserving and renovating low-rent private housing long before that concept became conventional wisdom
CHPC's research helped to shape the City's policies regarding the large inventory of tax-foreclosed housing that was abandoned and left to decline in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, CHPC provided the analysis and advice when the City sought to rethink its policies regarding tax foreclosure and privatization. This led to the successful preservation of this critical housing resource. They also focused on the City's growth, the transformation of the old industrial landscape into mixed-use areas, inclusionary zoning policies, the critical need to address parking, the actual impact and effects of gentrification, tax policies to encourage housing construction and affordability, the importance and impact of regional housing strategy, global Best Practice in affordable housing, and intervention after the global economic crisis.
Most recently, CHPC's Making Room initiative has launched a new approach to housing policy. This initiative spawned an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York
Staff
CHPC's current Executive Director is Jerilyn Perine, former Housing Commissioner for the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Previous Executive Directors have included Roger Starr and Clarence Stein.
Board
CHPC has a huge board which includes practitioners and experts in the fields of urban planning, architecture, zoning and land use law, housing finance and development, and community development.
Archives
Over the last seven decades, CHPC has amassed a vast archive of primary source documents, including: