Both organizations also work to strengthening the neighborhood's social fabric by assisting in the growth and success of local businesses, by assisting residents to enhance their lives and incomes, and by sponsoring community programs.
Hope owns over 1,300 affordable apartments in more than 78 buildings throughout Central and East Harlem (Community District 10 and 11). AND owns over 628 apartments in 28 buildings. During a meeting at the New School both Hope and AND expressed the need for evidence-based mapping to understand the exposure to flooding to their properties. Following a meeting with Hope, one of the main problems seems to be ‘blue sky flooding’, the type of flooding occurring without stormy weather and influenced by high tides at seas, high ground water table and surface elevation. There is evidence that this type of flooding affects basements, which are recurrently flooded, but for which Hope has very little funding for left over after what goes towards regular building maintenance. Moreover, Hope has been receiving a number of
violations from the ConEd, NYC's energy company, because as flooding affects basements, officers cannot access gas and water readings stored there. Because of these violations, Hope has been unable to close housing retrofitting deals with the for-profit-banks they partner with. At the same time Hope has been an early adopter of green rooftops thanks to funding made available by the city, however green rooftops address a different problem: they slow down excess rainfall but they do not slow down water coming from below.
An evidence-based small-scale mapping exercise for Hope would then need to make a case for the problems encountered by Hope by visualizing the hidden recurrent costs due to basement flooding as well as regular maintenance costs.