Testimony: Gregory Lobo Jost, UNHP

At the apartment tenants' Invited Group Testimony before the RGB, University Neighborhood Housing Program Deputy Director Gregory Lobo Jost presented some extremely important information gathered and presented in UNHP's new report, Nowhere to Go: A Crises of Affordability in the Bronx. UNHP's testimony and report take a comprehensive look at the housing affordability crises in the Bronx, and ask how it is that in many neighborhoods, more than half the renters spend in excess of 50% of their income on rent. Nowhere to Go looks at numerous factors, including changes in the regional economy, immigration patterns, historic ebbs and flows of population, rates of eviction in Bronx housing court, and more. One thing is certain: with Bronx tenants suffering through outrages rent burdens, a high RGB rent increase will be a severe hardship for many tenants.