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UNHP 15th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION We’ve been publicizing our 15th anniversary in these pages for the first 4 issues. To mark the occasion, we decided at the beginning of the year to try to raise money for our work along with awareness about affordable housing issues. As we reach the halfway mark for the year, the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year have not yet been achieved. We’re on schedule, but not there yet. Our fundraising celebration is over. Our two affordable housing forums were held. (Summaries appear on our web site.) All three events received very positive reviews. Now we want to build on that momentum. We will expand on the celebration and the follow-up in the next issue of Notes.
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Information Please!
By John M. ReillyThe repeated question "Is it safe?" resulted in terror from Dustin Hoffman when a Nazi dentist sought information from him in "The Marathon Man." At a time when we can often obtain more information than we can use on CD’s and over the Internet, getting certain information from the City of New York can still be as difficult as pulling teeth. Housing information is particularly important to organizations seeking to prevent building abandonment and deterioration, but many records, while technically public, are still much too difficult to obtain.
Take Code Violations for example. These are violations of the city’s Housing Maintenance Code recorded by inspectors from the Department of Housing Preservation & Development. They code the violations as A, B or C with C being those that are Immediately Hazardous. Failure to comply in the specified time can lead the city to contract for the work itself through its Emergency Repair Bureau or to begin a court action against the owner through its Housing Litigation Bureau. The tremendous number of violations currently outstanding means, however, that the city will actually enforce very few of them and some will sit uncorrected for years and even decades.
Obtaining access to these recorded violations is becoming increasingly difficult, even as advances in technology should make them available to anyone who needs them. The Housing Department (HPD) has only one office in the Bronx on Longwood Avenue that can provide a written record, and requests for more than one building can take a while. While they are also available at the Dept. of Finance Office on Arthur Avenue, they are not available to the general public at the new Bronx Housing Court! And incredibly they are available in some supermarkets (on a screen, no printouts) in information kiosks designed to let you pay your traffic tickets and real estate taxes with a credit card.
Why would community groups, landlords, tenants and even other government agencies need to get copies of the Code Violations? Tenants, obviously, would like to see if there are existing violations on the record. They can use a printed record to pressure the landlord and the city to take action to resolve them. Tenants can begin their own case in Housing Court to correct outstanding violations and can also use them as documentation of hazardous conditions with mortgage holders or with other city agencies such as the Department of Health for Lead Paint and window guard violations. Landlords need to be able to get copies in order to correct them and also to have them removed. Many times violations are old, were corrected years ago but remain on the record. This can prevent an owner from obtaining city financing or a real estate tax exemption. Some banks and mortgage companies want to see all violations removed before they’ll make a loan.
The violation records are most needed, however, to coordinate efforts to combat housing deterioration and abandonment and to plan community redevelopment and reinvestment efforts. In this area the city’s HPD has been attempting to initiate an Anti-Abandonment Program for several years. This program would combine information on outstanding property taxes and other city liens with code violations to pinpoint buildings in danger of abandonment. It is to be used in coordination with the city’s Tax Lien Sales and their new 3rd Party Transfer Program for dealing with properties delinquent in real estate taxes and other city liens and charges. The city’s objective here is not only to collect more taxes, but also to avoid the costly step of taking title to occupied, tax delinquent properties.
HPD wants community groups to help, particularly those with Neighborhood Preservation and Community Consultant Contracts. Many community groups have long used code violations and tax arrears along with direct contact with tenants and property owners as indicators of buildings in crisis. The city’s "new" approach will not be new, but rather an attempt at improving coordination of information.
Now, back to those "kiosks". The NYC Dept. of Information and Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) last year contracted with a private company to establish CityAccess, an information kiosk demonstration program. These kiosks provide all sorts of city data including housing code violations, real estate tax balances and, "most importantly", fines for outstanding traffic tickets. The kiosks are really mini collection agencies where you can pay your fines, taxes and tickets by credit card. You can get a receipt for payment but a tenant can’t get a copy of the code violations to use in court. The records only appear on screen.
The Kiosks are found in an odd assortment of places: supermarkets, check cashing joints, Bellevue Hospital and some government buildings (but not Housing Court). When I contacted DoITT about the possibility of community groups getting direct access to city records through City Access I heard from Daniel K. Moy, Special Assistant to the Commissioner. He informed me that the city was very excited with the project and that it was receiving 14,000 weekly visits from New York City’s citizenry. I assume this includes the kids I’ve seen playing with the buttons in the supermarket, as well. As for the information we’re looking for, the responsibility for those systems still remains with HPD, even though DoITT has managed to provide it to a private company to locate somewhat haphazardly at scattered locations around the city.
Moy concluded by saying that in the longer term, they are investigating accesses to the City’s data from the Internet.
What’s to investigate? Everyone we’ve talked to agrees this is information that needs to be made more available. The city will collect more taxes, tenants will be able to get more repairs, property owners can remove old violations from the public record and communities can prevent abandonment.
How to get it done? The information people at the city’s HPD, DOF, DEP and DoITT need to make a joint decision to go forward and provide their information to the general public on-line, as it should be. The information is available and the technology is available. They simply need to be put together. It can be as easy as dialing a number from our desks and requesting, "Information, please."
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Medicaid Moves to Managed Care Since 1965 Medicaid has provided millions of people access to health by providing free health insurance. NYC hopes to ensure that all eligible Medicaid recipients will have joined a Medicaid managed care plan with an HMO (health maintenance organizations) by the year 2001. In July 1997, the federal government granted New York State a "waiver" permitting the state to require that all Medicaid beneficiaries (with some limited exceptions) join a Medicaid managed care plan. This plan wipes out the traditional fee for service health insurance, which puts medical choices completely in the hands of doctors and patients. If an individual receives Aid in the following categories, s/he will be required to join a plan unless eligible for an exemption:
TANF recipients; Home Relief recipients and Home relief related beneficiaries up to age 21; HR beneficiaries 21 and older (including HR Medicaid Only beneficiaries.); Transitional Medical Assistance beneficiaries; Pregnant women (up to 185% of the Federal Poverty Level and their children up to one year; Children up to 6 years old and up to 133% of FPL and children born after Sept. 30, 1983 up to 100% FPL; The State plans on requiring individuals who are on SSI or SSA to enroll in Medicaid managed care plans in the second year of Mandatory Care. At some point in time in the future, NYS will create Special Needs Plans(SNP’s) to take care of individuals who have severe mental illnesses and persons HIV+.
Medicaid Managed Care is a special health program that changes how Medicaid health care is provided. Like other health maintenance programs, a Primary Care Provider will be in charge of the Medicaid patient’s care. As with most managed care programs, members must be referred to specialists by their Primary Care Provider. Medicaid will only pay for care if they see the doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and other health care providers which are a part of their plan. Medicaid recipients in Managed Care will be entitled to primary care providers who speak their language. If none of the plans can provide a PCP who speaks the language of the recipient , she or he may be entitled to an exemption from Mandatory managed care.
Until Medicaid recipients receive a package/letter from the city telling them that they are required to enroll in a Medicaid managed care plan, they may enroll in managed care programs voluntarily. Mandatory enrollment will be phased in over a period of three years depending upon where Medicaid recipients live and whether they have a disability. Certain zipcodes will be enrolled at different times in the year. When mandatory managed care comes to a specific neighborhood, Medicaid recipients will receive a special notice from the Medicaid program telling them that they are required to enroll in a Managed Care Plan. Approximately every four months , the City will send letters to recipients in different areas of the city. The first neighborhoods to go mandatory will be in Southern Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn and all of Staten Island. From the day recipients receive this notice, they have 60 days to choose a plan. The enrollment packet must include the following: information about the managed care plans to choose from including the list of the plan’s providers; how to get health care once a person is enrolled; and the rights of Medicaid recipients in managed care.
If Medicaid beneficiaries have not chosen a plan within 30 days of the time they received their enrollment package, the City will send a reminder about the time limit for choosing a plan. If they do not enroll within 60 days of receiving the package, the City will assign them to a plan.
There are 23 Medicaid Managed Care plans operating in New York City. Medicaid recipients should be encouraged to investigate each of the plans offered in their neighborhood and to consider which is best for them and their families. Once an individual is in a plan on a mandatory basis, he/she will only be able to switch plans once a year. The City is required to provide Medicaid recipients entering the mandatory program with face to face counseling. The benefits counselor that the city hired (called Maximus) will be conducting the counseling. They are required to have counselors who speak different languages. Also, there is a Medicaid Managed Care Helpline for people to call- (800) 505-5678 if they have questions or want more information.
Managed Care has become a national issue with legislation pending in Congress and various state legislatures that would force HMO’s to pay for more care, to expand patient choice and to require health plans to document how well they treat patients. The New York City Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers is collecting information about consumer and provider experiences with managed care. The information is being gathered using a Critical Incident Report form. This form collects data about the problems of managed health and dental care under commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare plans. Recorded data is crucial in efforts to promote the right to accessible quality health, mental health, and dental care for all New Yorkers. Results of the project will be distributed to city, state, federal officials and managed care organizations. To obtain copies of this form in English and Spanish call 212-577-5000. If you are interested in setting up a workshop about Medicaid managed care, call UNHP at 933-3101.
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Promising Parts of State Legislature’s Budget for Children Vetoed All of the following items were included in the Governor’s vetoes of parts of the State Legislature’s budget: A) an unprecedented $22 million investment to improve the quality of child care choices available to New York’s families. The money was intended to ensure that more child care programs have skilled and professionally prepared adults working with children, that these adults were better compensated, and that parents had the information they need to make informed child care choices for their children; B) An additional $110 million made available for various child care purposes through a transfer of funds from the new welfare block grant to the Child Care Block Grant. C) An $8 million capital Child Care Facilities Construction Program. This program would have provided funding for the badly needed construction of new child care centers as well as the expansion and renovation of existing centers.
There are ongoing discussions in Albany about restoration of various budget items. In light of the child care needs in the City, there are a number of organizations pushing to get these items restored.
People interested in weighing in on this should contact: Governor Pataki, Capitol Building, Albany, NY 12224; Speaker Sheldon Silver, NYS Assembly, Albany, NY 12248; Senator Joseph Bruno, NYS Senate, Albany,NY 12247; and your local assemblyman and state senator.
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