New York City rent-stabilized apartment owners group launches podcast

A trade group for New York City’s rent-stabilized landlords has launched a podcast to discuss the latest news on housing. The Community Housing Improvement Program’s executive director Jay Martin is the host of the program, “Housing New York with Jay Martin,” which launched this month and is now available on Spotify. 

The weekly program, already into its second episode, has tackled subjects like the city’s housing crisis, the expired 421-a tax incentive for building affordable housing and the record-low vacancy rate for habitable apartment units. It’s described by a spokesperson as an “In the Papers” style show, borrowing the format of the popular segment on Spectrum’s NY1 morning news broadcast. 

In a press release about the new podcast, the Community Housing Improvement Program wrote that each episode will highlight the top news stories impacting housing and politics in the city and “put them into perspective for housing providers, renters, and elected officials” before ending “with Martin’s political take.”

“Housing has never been as important as it is right now,” Martin said in the press release. “New York City is in the middle of the worst housing crisis in half a century. Many renters can’t find any housing, while others can’t find housing they can afford or that fits their needs. Solving these problems are not that complicated, but they require people to have a better understanding of what’s going on and what options are available to create a better system.”

The podcast is also a direct way to get the concerns and interests of rent-stabilized landlords out to those in power. The organization, popularly known as CHIP, represents 4,000 “responsible owners and managers of over 400,000 rent-stabilized rental property across all five boroughs in New York City,” according to its website. 

“So much of how people consume their news is on-the-go, and from increasingly less traditional news media,” Martin said in the release. “This new weekly podcast is a natural extension of our ongoing efforts on social media to communicate and contextualize complex housing issues for New Yorkers. We are reaching hundreds of thousands of people per month across our channels, and are excited to see how ‘Housing New York’ helps grow the conversation.”