§ 902. Definitions. As used in this article, the following words and
phrases shall have the following meanings:

1. "Commissioner" shall mean the commissioner of the state division of
housing and community renewal.

2. "Division" shall mean the state division of housing and community
renewal.

3. "Municipality" shall mean any city, town or village within the
state.

4. "Neighborhood preservation company" shall mean a corporation
organized under the provisions of the not-for-profit corporation law
which has been engaged primarily in one or more of the neighborhood
preservation activities specified in subdivision five of this section.

5. "Neighborhood preservation activities" shall mean activities
engaged in by a neighborhood preservation company within a
geographically defined neighborhood of a municipality, provided,
however, that the division may fund a neighborhood preservation company
to engage in such activities in unserved and underserved areas of the
municipality lying outside of its initially designated neighborhood
area, that are designed (a) 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, to restore
abandoned and vacant as well as occupied housing accommodations to
habitable condition; 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; to seal and maintain vacant but
structurally sound structures which are capable of being rehabilitated
at a future time and used for housing purposes; to acquire, where
appropriate, buildings which contain housing accommodations; to
facilitate the disposition of buildings containing housing
accommodations to individual occupants thereof or to cooperative groups
whose members shall be occupants thereof; to assist owners, occupants
and tenants of housing accommodations to obtain improvements in the
physical conditions thereof and in the maintenance and management
thereof; to administer landlord training classes; and to manage housing
accommodations as agents for the owners thereof or administrators or
receivers appointed or designated pursuant to any law of the state; and
(b) to accomplish similar purposes and meet similar needs with respect
to retail and service establishments within such neighborhoods when
carried out in connection with and incidental to a program of housing
related activities.

6. "Persons of low income" shall mean individuals and families whose
annual incomes do not exceed ninety per cent of the median annual income
for all residents of the municipality within which they reside.

7. "Merged company" shall mean a neighborhood preservation company
maintaining a contract pursuant to section nine hundred three of this
article that has undergone a merger with one or more other neighborhood
preservation companies, which is also maintaining a contract pursuant to
section nine hundred three of this article, that has led the merged
companies to reduce the number of contracts being maintained with the
division pursuant to section nine hundred three of this article to a
total of one.

8. "Unmerged company" shall mean a neighborhood preservation company
that is not a merged company.