David Yassky for New York City Comptroller
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June 24, 2008

Affordable Housing

On the Council, I have made it a priority to find new and innovative ways to expand the supply of affordable housing in New York City.  We were successful in pushing for reforms that reward developers who actually create affordable housing as they develop market-rate or luxury housing, but there is far more to be done.

We need to continue our efforts to require that all new large-scale housing construction includes affordable homes for middle and working class families.  With real estate all over the city being rezoned into residential property, it is critical that we make sure that some of the newly developed housing be affordable for the hardworking men and women who build it.  As part of this effort, I joined with a number of City Council members, faith leaders, housing groups, development corporations, and community organizations to demand that the Mayor implement an inclusionary zoning requirement in the rezoning process.

Further, on the Council, I successfully advocated for a groundbreaking “421-a” legislation that eliminated tax loopholes for luxury developers who were ignoring the City’s need for affordable housing. This same legislation created tax incentives for developers who set aside significant portions of their buildings for low-income families, creating thousands of new units of affordable housing and saving City taxpayers an estimated $5 billion.

However, we also need to remember that the nation’s largest single developer of affordable housing is the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).  In the past two years, Comptroller Thompson has issued audits showing that HPD was not doing enough to ensure that Mitchell-Lama apartments were being fairly awarded to prospective tenants, and that HPD was not doing an adequate job in its administration of the J-51 Tax Program, which is supposed to provide tax incentives for new housing through rehabilitation of existing housing or conversion from non-residential properties.

On the Council, I led an investigation into HPD’s HomeWorks and StoreWorks programs, which were designed to rehabilitate abandoned commercial and residential properties, which found gross mismanagement of these programs [Link to:  http://www.nysun.com/opinion/wasting-new-yorkers-tax-dollars/51805/ ]. With housing nearing a crisis point in New York City, we need to increase our oversight of this critical agency to make sure that every dollar is spent wisely, effectively, and efficiently.

I will also continue Comptroller’s Thompson’s work to look for new ways to invest pension funds in affordable housing projects – in recent years we’ve made significant investments that not only increase the amount of affordable housing, but also provide a good return for the pension funds.  This is important for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that when cities lose their middle class, they become economically unsustainable.  Working in partnership with labor unions and other institutional investors, we can develop the housing that will keep New York City strong by making sure our middle class families can afford to live here.