Tuesday, October 24, 2017

MAYOR DE BLASIO TO COMPLETE AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN 2 YEARS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE, ACCELERATE PACE AND EXPAND GOALS



City will boost production to 25,000 apartments annually, administration sets new goal of 300,000 apartments by 2026 

  Mayor Bill de Blasio today announced that his administration is now on track to build and protect 200,000 affordable homes by 2022, two years ahead of schedule. With the addition of new tools, programs and funding, the City will ramp up to securing 25,000 affordable apartments annually by 2021 and beyond—a pace it has never before reached. With that machinery in place, the City is taking on a new goal: 300,000 such apartments by 2026, enough for the entire population of Boston or Seattle.

In the coming days, the Mayor will unveil a battery of new programs designed to realize this new goal. Those efforts will target seniors, homeowners and tenants in existing affordable housing who need protection.  To accelerate, the plan will require an additional $150 million per year in the current 4-year financial plan. This will bring the City's investment in achieving 100,000 more homes to about $1.3 billion per year over nine years. Future financial plans will reflect the commitment.

“We’ve kept our promises to New Yorkers, and now it’s time to go farther and faster. Like Mayor Koch before us, we are building an engine that will keep families in safe, decent and affordable homes for decades to come. We will keep this a city for seniors, veterans, working families and the middle class,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

“Every year, we have pushed this plan deeper to reach more people in more neighborhoods. Completing this plan two years early means tens of thousands more families will come home sooner to homes they can afford. I am so proud of our agency teams and all our partners who are building an engine for affordable housing that will continue building and protecting homes for years to come,” said Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen.

Mayor de Blasio announced the first new program today. The “Neighborhood Pillars” program will deploy a $275 million public-private fund to target fast-changing neighborhoods where aggressive speculators threaten traditional rent regulated apartment buildings. Through the largest program of its kind in the United States, the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Housing Development Corporation will provide financing to non-profits and other mission-driven organizations to purchase older rent-regulated buildings to keep them affordable and keep current tenants in place. The program will secure an additional 1,000 affordable homes each year—7,500 total—putting those buildings in good hands before bad actors put tenants at risk of illegal rent hikes, harassment or eviction.

The program will help mission-driven non-profits grow and will take advantage of their ability to identify the buildings most at risk of speculation and rapid turnover. It will leverage funding from private-sector banking partners and philanthropic organizations.

Learn more about the new “Neighborhood Pillars” program here.

“The gains we have made to date through Housing New York are borne out not just in the numbers, but in the people we are reaching through the affordable housing we build and preserve. We are excited to act even more boldly and decisively by tackling this new, more aggressive goal and by deploying more tools to safeguard affordability,” said Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer.  “I want to thank the Mayor, my colleagues at HPD and HDC, and our many partners for their tireless work and commitment to ensuring New York is a more just and equitable city for generations to come.”
 
“We are proud to stand with the Mayor as he expands the City’s commitment to the people of New York with an accelerated housing plan,” said Housing Development Corporation President Eric Enderlin. “Together with our many dedicated partners we have set a solid course to reach the ambitious goals of Housing New York and are primed to amplify our production of affordable housing to reach even more New Yorkers in need.”

When the de Blasio administration took office, it inherited a strong foundation of affordable programs capable of building and protecting approximately 15,000 homes each year. Since 2014, the City has increased that pipeline to more than 20,000 per year. The new annual target of 25,000 per year represents a 66 percent jump from pre-2014 levels, and will represent a sustained level of production never before achieved by the City.

To date, the City has secured 77,651 affordable homes—enough for more than 200,000 New Yorkers. The City’s efforts to reform and accelerate affordable housing have included:

·  More housing for the lowest-income New Yorkers than ever before: Over 40 percent of all affordable homes secured last year served individuals making less than $33,500 or $43,000 for a family of three. New programs like ELLA (Extremely Low and Low Affordability) are now among the largest drivers of affordable housing in the city.

 ·     More protections to keep New Yorkers in their homes: Rent regulated tenants saw two consecutive years of rent freezes, the City is funding free legal services for all tenants facing eviction, a new Anti-Harassment Task Force is laying criminal charges against landlords who put tenants’ safety at risk, and targeted preservation efforts are keeping hundreds of buildings affordable.

 ·  A new paradigm for building: Permanent affordable housing is now mandatory in newly-rezoned residential buildings and neighborhoods, the City has passed reforms improving the quality and lowering the cost of affordable home construction, and tax incentive programs now require at least 25 percent of new apartments to be affordable—with no tax breaks at all for luxury condos.

 ·   A bigger network of housing providers: More partners than ever are building and protecting affordable housing in the city. Non-profit organizations are involved in a third of all affordable projects, the City is cultivating MWBE partners with special requests for proposals, and City worked with Enterprise to fund a number of emerging Community Land Trusts.        
         No stone left unturned: The City has added more affordable housing into existing projects like Lighthouse point on Staten Island and the Domino Sugar site in Williamsburg. The City has put two-thirds of its remaining public lots suitable for housing into production, and leveraged opportunities to add housing to City projects like the renovation and expansion of the Sunset Park library and at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The Mayor made today’s announced at CAMBA Gardens II, one of the first new affordable and supportive housing construction projects undertaken under the Mayor’s housing plan in 2014. Today, tenants are moving into 293 brand new homes in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

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