Name: Can The Next Mayor Turn Around NYC's Affordable Housing Crisis?
Brand: gothamist.com
SKU: gothamist-com-255
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Can The Next Mayor Turn Around NYC's Affordable Housing Crisis?

preview

AdvertisementThe ease by which New Yorkers are able to find—and hold on to—an affordable apartment has long been one of the benchmarks by which New York City mayors have been judged. The same will be true, if not more true, with the mayoral candidates in the upcoming primary as hundreds of thousands of residents, who have been forced out of work because of the pandemic, now find themselves struggling to pay rent. That, coupled with record levels of homelessness, the growing financial distress of the city's aging public housing developments, and strong community opposition to large-scale rezonings means that the next mayor will face one of the biggest housing challenges in decades.As they campaign, the candidates are navigating a progressive moment in New York City politics: issues of racial and economic justice have moved further to the fore, making affordable housing no longer purely a numbers game in the eyes of many. Since the start of his first term in 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio has built or preserved 167,300 affordable apartments to date, putting him within reach of Ed Koch's record of 190,000 during his three terms. But the total output has been eclipsed by criticism that the administration has failed to serve the very poorest New Yorkers. A recent Community Service Society found that around 72 percent of low-income tenants were rent-burdened—defined as those who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing—over the course of the de Blasio administration."Just saying you want to build a bunch of units doesn’t have enough traction because people want to know, 'Affordable for whom?'" said Nicholas Dagen Bloom, an urban planning professor at Hunter College who has written extensively about the city's affordable housing history. "I think the voting public is aware that they can now ask harder questions about what these goals really will mean, not just citywide quantitative, but will this affordable housing program really address the needs of the poorest New Yorkers?"In another staggering statistic that reflects the outsized demand, under the city's affordable housing lottery competed for roughly 40,000 units since 2013.Sam Stein, a housing policy analyst who authored the Community Service Society report, argued that in contrast to de Blasio, the next mayor must also offer a holistic housing plan that takes into account the $32 billion capital repair needs of public housing developments as well as the homelessness crisis.In what homeless advocates have frequently pointed to as a disconnect in de Blasio’s approach towards solving homelessness, out of the total affordable units created or preserved, only 8% () were designated for homeless people."We need a comprehensive plan rather than having these kinds of goals competing against each other," Stein argued. Ending homelessness and providing good housing for all, including those in public housing, he said, needs to "be the point of housing policy."During the string of recent virtual forums and in interviews with Gothamist, all of the leading Democratic contenders, from progressives to moderates, have been nearly unanimous in their criticism of the de Blasio administration as having blindspots when it comes to affordable housing."We have to be ready to help those who are fast food employees, as well as the teacher and the accountant that's married," Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, told Gothamist. "The volume of what was created is not matching the needs that are on the ground."Similarly, Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner said, "So you built a lot of housing, but somehow we have the same number of people in need, which seems like we're not changing the game."Both Adams and Garcia are considered centrists, particularly when it comes to being upfront about taking real estate donations and their willingness to work with the industry."You have some candidates that state they're not taking contributions from real estate," Adams said, in an apparent dig at City Comptroller Scott Stringer, whose were reported Sunday by Politico. "That's the level of dishonesty that you don't need to have as a mayor."Noting that more than half of the city's revenue is generated through property taxes, Adams added: "What oil is to Texas, real estate is to New York."Shaun Donovan, who served as housing secretary and budget director under President Barack Obama, has said that if elected he would create 30,000 affordable housing units annually, exceeding de Blasio's record of 25,000 below-market units in 2019. But he has assured voters that they would be spread across all income levels.Where the candidates diverge on the affordable housing question is in the how. Mayor de Blasio has largely relied on incentivizing the private sector to build affordable units. The city's mandatory inclusionary housing rule, passed in 2016, permits developers to access more density in rezoned neighborhoods as long as they set aside a certain share of units for affordable housing.Farthest to the left, Dianne Morales has proposed the most radical departure by backing a model of government-built housing, also known as "social housing," . "We can move toward a whole different structure that does not center developers and their profits," she said during a Sunday forum hosted by the Downtown Independent Democrats.It is unclear what kind of funding structure she envisions. Under a rule known as the , the federal government caps the funding for public housing units for each housing authority. New York City has already maxed out at 178,001 units.Ray McGuire, the former Wall Street executive who was drafted by business leaders to run, has yet to issue a detailed housing plan. "We haven't built enough housing to keep up with demand, and what we have built&nbsp;isn't truly&nbsp;affordable," McGuire said in a statement, citing a need for more affordable senior housing.Meanwhile, Stringer, who is expected to release his full housing policy soon, during his campaign launch a plan for "universal affordable housing," which would require 25% of housing in any new development with 10 or more units to be affordable, regardless of whether there is a rezoning. It would be used as a replacement for mandatory inclusionary housing. The proposal also seeks to restrict rents so that those making an average of 60% of Area Median Income—which comes out to roughly $61,000 a year for a family of three—would not pay more than 30% of their income in rent.Many of the candidates have also pledged to expand rental subsidies both at the local, state and federal level; Donovan, for example, has said he planned to work with President Joe Biden on his proposal to any family that qualifies.Stringer, Morales, and former de Blasio counsel Maya Wiley have also each mentioned their support of , which would put the building and control of affordable housing in the hands of nonprofit organizations. Several candidates, including Stringer, have also said they are in favor of overhauling a state affordable housing program often known as 421-a that gives developers local tax breaks in exchange for affordable housing. The program is set to expire in the summer of 2022.Most of the candidates have said they would make New York City Housing Authority a priority, but they have differed on how to finance its $32 billion capital shortfall.Wiley has carved out a $10 billion capital spending plan, of which $2 billion would go toward NYCHA. Most of the $10 billion would , she has said. Without providing specifics, McGuire has pledged to make "the biggest investment&nbsp;in NYCHA in generations."Several candidates, including Donovan, Morales, City Councilmember Carlos Menchaca and Andrew Yang, have called for making public housing buildings more energy efficient, borrowing on the Green New Deal backed by the progressive New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.On Friday, Yang launched his version of a Green New Deal for the city's 302 public housing developments, promising to secure $48 billion in funding from the federal government and making substantial reductions in their carbon footprint by ending gas in all NYCHA developments, speeding up energy-efficient retrofits, and adding solar panels to every roof by 2030.“The goal is to take this crushing negligence and turn it around into a massive opportunity,” Yang said during a press conference last Friday. “I will fight for those billions of dollars and I will invest it in NYCHA.”The plan was quickly slammed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who pointed to her own 2019 bill, “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act,” which was introduced to the House Financial Services Committee She noted that she wrote her plan alongside NYCHA residents and advocates.I wrote the original Green New Deal for Public Housing, which was written carefully w/ NYCHA residents, advocates, &amp; building trades to create over 30k jobs in the city and revamp public housing. This isn’t that plan.The original work is here: — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC)Yang by thanking her: “Will dig in and learn," he tweeted.The more significant debate over NYCHA has been whether to continue de Blasio's three-pronged strategy to generate revenue: handing over day-to-day management of the buildings to a private developers who would take on the repairs under a federal program known as Rental Assistance Demonstration program (RAD), selling unused air rights, and promoting infill developments on empty or underutilized parcels of NYCHA properties.Of these ideas, RAD has been the most controversial. Several progressive candidates, including Menchaca, Morales and Stringer, have expressed resistance to the program, which is already underway in the city, citing tenant objections and the argument that RAD amounts to the privatization of public housing.On the other side, Adams, Donovan, and Garcia have expressed support for RAD.Nearly all of the candidates have said they would seek to create more affordable housing through the development of vacant lots. Some, like Yang, have said the city should take advantage of real estate's downturn and convert empty hotel and office buildings to residential, a policy that has echoes of when the city seized abandoned properties during the 1970s fiscal crisis.But several housing experts, including Moses Gates of the Regional Plan Association, were doubtful about the number of available city-owned empty parcels and how much housing they could generate.If you mean vacant city-owned lots that are zoned residential (or at least plausibly could be) it's extremely little. I think I calculated ~7000 units back in 2012, and it was mostly in the Rockaways.— Moses Gates (@MosesNYC)Others have pointed out that offices are typically difficult to turn into housing units given their large floor plates. Experts say it's also unclear whether remote working will be a trend that lasts beyond the pandemic.Conventional planning wisdom holds that cities need to build housing in transit-rich neighborhoods. But rezonings have long been politically treacherous. Mayor Michael Bloomberg famously downzoned -- i.e. reduced housing density -- than the number of those in which he increased density, also known as upzoning. Those which were downzoned were predominately white and upper-income.At the outset of his tenure, de Blasio called for major rezonings in 15 neighborhoods across the city. But he has to date completely only six. Of those, the 2018 rezoning of Inwood was bitterly contested and seemed headed to becoming a cautionary tale. In 2019, the state Supreme Court voided the rezoning. The ruling, which said the city failed to weigh the full impact of the rezoning, seemed to validate neighborhood concerns about gentrification. By then, many housing activists were arguing that de Blasio's housing policies were discriminatory because they focused on low-income areas inhabited by mostly Black and Hispanic residents.But the victory turned out to be short-lived. In November, the state's highest court overturning the Supreme Court decision.Alicia Glen, the former deputy mayor of housing under de Blasio who flirted with a run for mayor, staunchly defended the administration's approach. Large-scale rezonings, she said, need to continue."We are in a complete shitstorm in New York City," she told Gothamist. "We don't need new big ideas, we need people to put their head down, work hand-in-hand with a friendly federal government finally, get resources and get going."She argued that candidates who were promising to house all of the city's homeless people in their first year and not emphasizing that the city needs to build housing for a broad spectrum of income levels were being either impractical or disingenuous. "That's just not the way the world works," she said, adding, "Anybody who says this isn't a numbers game is essentially saying they're either anti-growth or they don't care."In a sign of the times, most of the candidates have coalesced around one recent de Blasio affordable housing proposal: the rezoning of Soho and Noho, two of the wealthiest neighborhoods in New York City.Some candidates have suggested building on that idea. Adams said that he would look into rezoning other parts of Manhattan, in particular, areas south of 42nd Street. "I believe we should be upzoning in affluent areas and allowing poorer people to move into those areas," he said.Bloom, the Hunter College professor, said that it's possible that had de Blasio led with rezonings of some higher-income areas, he would have built up more political capital.Then again, he added, those neighborhoods "have a lot of lawyers, power and money." Do you know the scoop?below orWe rely on your support to make local news available to all."It puts more of a burden on New York — puts more of a burden on 49 other states."Read More In:

AdvertisementThe ease by which New Yorkers are able to find—and hold on to—an affordable apartment has long been one of the benchmarks by which New York City mayors have been judged. The same will be true, if not more true, with the mayoral candidates in the upcoming primary as hundreds of thousands of residents, who have been forced out of work because of the pandemic, now find themselves struggling to pay rent. That, coupled with record levels of homelessness, the growing financial distress of the city's aging public housing developments, and strong community opposition to large-scale...

Can The Next Mayor Turn Around NYC's Affordable Housing Crisis?

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS