Now, officials have secured federal stimulus funds for rehabilitation work on the 21 city and state housing authority properties. The State Legislature passed a law Feb. 26 to authorize this process, allowing the developments to immediately receive $400 million, plus $75 million a year for operating expenses.

Tenants hope to fix the foundation of the Amsterdam Addition with a new influx of federal funds. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“Now we have that revenue stream to help us run the largest public housing authority in the country,” said Earl Andrews, the housing authority’s vice-chairman, at a March 24 Amsterdam Addition tenants meeting.

Amsterdam Addition, which spans the area between West 64th and 65th streets from Amsterdam to West End avenues, will get $4.9 million for rehabilitation construction. The money will go toward concrete parapets, brickwork and a roof replacement project. Work will start within the next few weeks and the money must be used by March 2012.

The funding will also be used to clean up scaffolding, which many Amsterdam Addition tenants say is an eyesore and has been treated as a garbage receptacle. Also, per federal guidelines, all apartments must be brought up to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s code. This will be the first time in decades that such upgrades will be made.

“It’s about damn time,” beamed Pat Ryan, the tenant association president, after the recent tenant meeting in the building lobby.

Many tenants who showed up to the housing authority’s presentation hoped the money would be used to address other problems in their apartments.

“It’s a good thing to try to fix up the neighborhood, but what we really need is our apartments fixed up,” said tenant Janet Robinson.

Ryan initially agreed that complaints about faulty appliances, elevators and long waits for repairs needed attention. But housing authority officials stressed that the building’s foundation should take priority.

“At first, to be honest, I said ‘They got to be kidding me,’” said Ryan, the tenant association president. “But the foundation has got to be fixed before you fix anything in the people’s apartments.”

The funding, however, did come with certain conditions. To federalize these 21 city and state housing authority properties, the buildings had to be transferred to a third party. In this case, that is the Housing Partnership Development Corporation, which facilitates partnerships with the government and private organizations to develop affordable housing. The housing authority still owns the land and will manage day-to-day operations.

Also, the housing authority was required to work with a private company, Citi Community Capital, a division of financial firm Citigroup, to raise funds for physical improvements.

State Sen. Tom Duane, who represents the Amsterdam Addition and one other property affected by the change, said the money will help the cash-strapped housing authority avoid service cuts and improve maintenance.

“The legislation,” Duane said, “will eliminate a large portion of NYCHA’s annual budget gap and enable the authority to preserve programs and services that are essential not only for residents, but for all New Yorkers who wish to ensure affordable public housing for generations to come.” 

REchirp.com works with a similar concept: Interested buyers or renters go to the website, browse the listings and make a bid or a “chirp.” If your chirp is accepted by the owner, you get to start negotiations.

REchirp creators Marc Blum and Andrew Green came up with the idea after years of living in New York and moving from apartment to apartment.

Upper East Sider Marc Blum came up with the website REchirp with partner Andrew Green. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“It was always a tedious process to find an apartment—dealing with brokers, Craigslist, the New York Times. And we thought there should be an easier process of finding real estate in the city,” said Blum, who has a background in both online and traditional advertising.

The childhood buddies were raised on the Upper East Side and currently live at Normandie Court, on East 95th Street, with their families. Figuring that people bid to get the best rates on insurance, hotel and car prices, the duo guessed that people would probably also be willing to bid to buy or rent an apartment. Combining Blum’s background in advertising with Green’s previous work in technology and consulting, they came up with the idea for the real estate website. After working on the start-up for almost two years, REchirp went live a few months ago. The site, now Green and Blum’s primary endeavor, has four full-time employees and is run out of an Eighth Avenue office.

“The biggest differentiator of www.rechirp.com is that when a user searches for a property, they do not search by price,” Blum said. “The idea behind the site is that when a user sees a property they are interested in, they submit a ‘chirp,’ which is a dollar amount they would be willing to pay for that apartment.”

The creators hope that users can submit chirps anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent below the listed price. This would give the broker an incentive to work with the bidder and start negotiations at the chirp amount.

Unlike Bid on the City, the bids at REchirp are non-binding, and people can make as many bids as they want on different apartments. Thirty days after the property is listed, the site holds an auction—the first of which took place this month—in which buyers have to make a winning bid in half an hour. The bidding increments increase from $50,000 to $250,000 and the site gives the winning bidder 48 hours to make a down payment in escrow. Bid on the City also positions itself more as a high-end marketing firm for properties, rather than an auction house, and it is geared toward foreign buyers.

REchirp, meanwhile, hopes to cater exclusively to New Yorkers.

“I think the true distinction between us and them is that our chirps are not binding,” Blum said. “Moreover, we have thousands of listings that a home seeker can submit a chirp on, while there are never more than just a handful at a time with Bid on the City.”

So far, REchirp has almost 4,000 listings, mostly from Manhattan, and Green and Blum hope to add properties from across the city as the business grows. They are already working with nine brokerage firms.

Real estate brokers, meanwhile, are eyeing the new service with some skepticism.

“If people are putting bids without any financial commitment,” said real estate broker Joel Maskovitz, “they are not locked in. If thousands of people bid for fun, I am not going to pay to download false leads,” he said.

Brokers, he argued, already work to negotiate the best prices for owners.

“It would be bad for me to talk to anyone who is bidding low,” he said.

Michelle Araujo, a broker who works with NYC Vertical, pointed out that for the minimal fee of listing one property on Craigslist, she often gets hundreds of queries, many of which turn into customers or good leads. Without an in-depth knowledge of the city real estate market, she added, most bidders would be shooting in the dark on a site like REchirp.

Blum and Green, meanwhile, agree that their users have to have a certain sophistication to use the website. They say the service has been designed by New Yorkers for New Yorkers, and caters to savvier renters. They declined to specify exactly how many deals have been made through the site so far, but said that REchirp has helped a few home-seekers find an apartment of their liking.

“Our goal is not to replace Craigslist, New York Times or anyone,” Blum said. “Anyone who is online will go to a bunch of sites [while apartment hunting]. We are hoping REchirp is one of them.”