Citizens Housing and Planning Council is a 501 non-profitresearch and education organization based in New York City focused on advancing public policies that support housing and neighborhoods.
Mission
Citizens Housing and Planning Council mission, since 1937, is to develop and advance practical public policies to support the housing stock of the city by better understanding New York’s most pressing housing and neighborhood needs. They undertake research that reveals New York's housing issues and write publications, develop web features, and hold events to educate people on the results of the research and recommendations for policy solutions. CHPC uses data analysis and data visualization to support housing.
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. 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 Jessica Katz. Previous Executive Directors have included Roger Starr and Clarence Stein.
Archives
Over the last seven decades, CHPC has amassed a vast archive of primary source documents, including:
