1. (a) Commissioner shall mean the Commissioner of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal.
2. (b) Division or DHCR shall mean the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.
3. (c) Immediate family shall mean, with reference to an individual person, that person's parents, stepparents, spouse, brothers, stepbrothers, sisters, stepsisters, sons, stepsons, daughters and stepdaughters; and the spouses of each.
4. (d) Municipality shall mean any city, town or village within the State with a population in excess of 20,000.
5. (e) Neighborhood shall mean the identified geographic boundaries within which the company shall carry out its proposed activities.
6. (f) Neighborhood preservation company (NPC) or companyshall mean a corporation, organized under the provisions of the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, which has been engaged primarily in one or more neighborhood preservation activities.

7. (g) Neighborhood preservation activities or activitiesshall mean activities engaged in by a neighborhood preservation company within a geographically defined neighborhood of a municipality designed:

   1. (i) to construct, maintain, preserve, repair, renovate, upgrade, improve, modernize, rehabilitate or otherwise prolong the useful life, and to manage and coordinate the rehabilitation, of residential dwelling accommodations within such neighborhood;
   2. (ii) to restore abandoned and vacant as well as occupied housing accommodations to habitable condition;
   3. (iii) to demolish structurally unsound or unsafe or otherwise unsightly or unhealthy structures which no longer serve or can economically be made to serve a useful purpose consistent with stabilizing or improving a neighborhood;
   4. (iv) to seal and maintain vacant but structurally sound structures which are capable of being rehabilitated at a future time and used for housing purposes;
   5. (v) to acquire, where appropriate, buildings which contain housing accommodations;
   6. (vi) to facilitate the disposition of buildings containing housing accommodations to individual occupants thereof, or to cooperative groups whose members shall be occupants thereof;
   7. (vii) to assist owners, occupants and tenants of housing accommodations to obtain improvements in the physical conditions thereof and in the safety, maintenance and management thereof; and
   8. (viii) to manage housing accommodations as agents for the owners thereof or administrators or receivers appointed or designated pursuant to any law of the State;
   9. (2) to provide those ancillary services necessary to support neighborhood preservation, including but not limited to housing information and education, arson prevention, energy conservation; and
   10. (3) to accomplish similar purposes and meet similar needs with respect to retail and service establishments within such neighborhoods, in conjunction with and incidental to a program of housing-related activities.

   (1)

8. (h) Persons of low income shall mean individuals and families whose annual incomes do not exceed 90 percent of the median annual income for all residents of the municipality within which they reside.

As used in this Chapter: