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Tom Waters
Housing Policy AnalystPolicy, Advocacy and Strategic Planning Department
212.614.5366
twaters@cssny.org
Tom Waters’ areas of responsibility include research, advocacy, and coalition-building on affordable housing policy. His current projects at CSS include the “Closing the Door” report series on privately owned subsidized housing;
advocacy and coalition-building on Mitchell-Lama housing; advocacy and coalition-building on project-based Section 8 housing; analysis of impacts of the housing shortage on household budgets; real time response analysis on housing issues; analysis of housing conditions for immigrants.
WHY THIS WORK IS IMPORTANT TO ME:
“New York City’s permanent affordable housing shortage plays a central role in the experience of the city’s poor and working people, equal to the role of employment. In fact, in recent years, all of the gains that low-income New Yorkers have made through employment have been negated by rising rents – a decade of economic progress ultimately benefited low-income people’s landlords but not low-income people themselves. The city’s poor and working people understand this and, as a result, affordable housing issues have an almost unique ability to mobilize low-income people to take political action on their own behalf. But because affordable housing issues are complicated and have a large technical component, low-income people and the organizations that represent them need technical assistance to be effective on these issues.”
MENTORS/IMPORTANT FIGURES IN LIFE/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
I made the transition from journalism to full-time community activism under the influence of Jan Levine Thal, Chip Mitchell, and other people around community radio station WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin. I became a community organizer with the help of Danny Mayfield, Lissa MacLeod, Bob Becker, Cheryl Brown, and others in Knoxville, Tennessee, as well as Michael McKee of Tenants & Neighbors in New York. And I learned analytic techniques with the help and encouragement of Bill Troy, Barbara Elstein, Margaret Chin, and Vic Bach.
PRIOR EMPLOYMENT:
Interim executive director, New York State Tenants & Neighbors
Campaign organizer, Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS/COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT:
President, New York State Tenants & Neighbors
Former President, Knoxville Community Food Coop, Tennessee
Former Vice President, WORT-FM, Madison, Wisconsin
Member, National Organizers’ Alliance
PUBLISHED WORKS:
“Closing the Door: Accelerating Losses of New York City Subsidized Housing,” CSS, May 2006
“Closing the Door 2007: The Shape of Subsidized Housing Loss in New York City,” CSS, May 2007
SIGNIFICANT PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Preserving community broadcasting mission at WORT-FM in 1994-1995
Organizing community opposition to privatization of University of Tennessee Hospital, 1997
Leading New York State Tenants & Neighbors through executive transition and strategic reassessment, 2003-2005
Uniting Mitchell-Lama tenants around program to resist buy-outs, 2005 - present
BOOKS I WOULD RECOMMEND:
The Urban Experience by David Harvey
Dual City by John Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells
American Project by Sudhir Venkatesh
Brownsville, Brooklyn by Wendell Pritchett
Working Class New York by Joshua Freeman
To Stand and Fight by Martha Biondi
EDUCATION:
B.A., Philosophy, Yale College
Courses in social research methods, Hunter College
Training in organizing, popular education, and participatory research, Southern Empowerment Project and the
Commission on Religion in Appalachia
PLACE OF BIRTH: Far Rockaway. But I grew up suburban Boston.
Testimony before The New York City Rent Guidelines Board