In less than a month, Zohran Mamdani will become the mayor of New York City, and we will need to work with his administration to pass the Jackson-Taylor bill, which extends the DAMP tax benefit for HDFCs, ensuring that our buildings will remain our homes, without crippling regulatory agreements or market-rate taxes being imposed on them.
The HDFC Coalition will be organizing a letter-writing campaign in January and holding more public meetings, so we need your help to mobilize fellow HDFC shareholders and make the campaign succeed:
Sign up – Please make sure everyone in your building — and any other HDFC shareholders you know — is signed up for our mailing list and follow us on social media:
Share your HDFC stories — it’s vital that politicians and New Yorkers of all stripes know the stories of our HDFCs. Send us pictures, send us stories, send us videos, send all three if you’ve got them. We’ll be using them on our website and in our social media feeds.
Pictures – We’d love shots of the exterior of your HDFC with shareholders in front of it. If you have any historic pictures from when your HDFC was first formed, those are even better. Photos with local elected officials at your building are also helpful.
Videos – Use your smartphone to take a one-minute video of yourself or other shareholders in front of your building, explaining why you want your affordable, stable, and self-governed HDFC home to remain your HDFC home. See below for some very simple guidelines on making a video. Then you can upload it to YouTube or social media, or just email it to us at info@savehdfcs.org.
Stories – Tell the story of your HDFC in a page or two, and insert some photos. We’ll post it on our website in a dedicated space for HDFC stories.
Donate – Can you give $25 to help us cover the costs of our meetings, website, printing, and mailings? Can your HDFC donate $10 per apartment, or even make a donation of $500? This money goes straight to our campaign, not to consultants, not to any of our members. Please give through our GoFundMe page, or contact us at info@savehdfcs.org for our bank details.
Share your skills – We’re looking for people with skills that can help us make our case: Social media managers, photographers and videographers, data analysts, lawyers, accountants, writers and journalists, organizers and rabble rousers. Please reach out to us at info@savehdfcs.org or on our signup page and let us know how you can help. And please, send us any questions and we’ll get back to you and post answers on the website.
Finally, a legislative update: At the request of our legislative sponsors, we’ve just made some slight revisions to the bill. We’ll be sharing them as soon as they are finalized.
Thanks for reading, and stay warm –
The HDFC Coalition
How to make a short video:
A one-minute video shared on social media can have a tremendous impact on our campaign. Here’s a simple way to make one:
1 – Write a short script or a few key points you want to make about why your HDFC is important to you, and how you feel about the City forcing us to adopt a new regulatory agreement. About 1,000 characters is a good length for a one-minute video.
2 – Stand outside your HDFC to make the video. Selfies are great, or interview a neighbor and hold the camera yourself.
3 – Make sure that the background noise is minimal. Place the camera close to the person being recorded so that the microphone pickup is clear.
4 – Post it to your own social media feed with the hashtag #HDFC and tag @savehdfcs on all your social media accounts. Then email us a link to your video at info@saveHDFCs.org