§ 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; 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.