The Hon. Bruce J. Gould, a retired judge of the New York Housing Court and a former senior official of the city’s Housing Preservation and Development Department, is a graduate of Columbia Law School, and a nationally known authority on urban issues.

Q. How would you characterize New York City’s housing industry?

A. One cannot speak of the housing industry as a single unity, just as the marketplace provides a huge variety of mechanisms for banking, financial markets, and retail and wholesale commence. With housing, those who develop new and rehabilitated housing often are separate and distinct from the great variety of those who manage that housing stock. The Housing Court is inundated by nonpayment proceedings with over 250,000 cases commenced annually. The overwhelming number is not pursued likely as the rent has been paid. But finding housing only opens the question as to how to pay for that housing, the earning capacity of the tenant consumers. Housing is a unique product, the tenant or the condominium/cooperator is in possession of the commodity without having paid the ongoing costs, the monthly charges.

What role can the business community play in improving housing stock – especially affordable housing?

The mayor, other officials, and groups are examining the broadest array of issues focused on bringing down the costs of housing construction and renovation from zoning, to building code revamping. Those that own as well as those that manage the housing stock, need to raise their participation in the critical role of their tenants having sufficient earning capacity that entails an adequate education, work opportunity, and family supports. For those without those resources cannot afford to cover the cost of housing. It was recently reported that an hourly wage of $18.18 for a 40-hour week is needed to afford a two-bedroom unit in our area’s “fair market” rent. Minimum wages don’t cover those costs, nor does a shelter rent public assistance allocation of not more than $400 for a family of three. An overlooked aspect is the instruction of the tenant as housing consumer; there is no effort to educate the tenant to the actual monthly cost of maintaining their living quarters. Magical dollars don’t exist.

What about New York City’s policy makers and their role in streamlining the housing industry?

Without the workforce to pump prime our tourist attractions, our businesses, our transportation system, all New Yorkers will be the losers. It is in the existing housing, not the newly built or renovated, that obviously the vast majority will continue to reside in. The proper maintenance of the existing housing stock doesn’t provide mayoral ribbon-cutting photo opportunities, but we all know too well at times of calamity, of overheated extension cords or blocked fire escape windows, how critical housing code inspection and enforcement is. All owners, not just so-called slumlords, should experience the pressure of enforcement.