Bronx Coalition for a Community Vision

In 2014 the NYC Department of City Planning announced plans to re-brand the Jerome Avenue corridor in the Bronx as “Cromwell-Jerome,” and to rezone a 92-block area occupied by auto repair shops and other small businesses, to promote new residential development under the de Blasio Administration’s housing plan. Residents were concerned that new units built under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing would be unaffordable to them, and that rising land values would accelerate displacement of both residents and workers. The Bronx Coalition for a Community Vision, led by CASA, organized to push back; with the support of their City Council representatives, they secured some changes in the rezoning plan, but more importantly, leveraged their power to win the first Right to Counsel law in the country in 2017.

Having legal representation in Housing Court, along with reforms of New York State’s rent laws in 2019, has dramatically reduced evictions since the law took effect.