Friday, February 26, 2010

Push to preserve more affordable housing

From the NY Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has changed the blueprint of his affordable housing plan to preserve more such homes but build fewer of them, a shift that nonetheless will still cost the city $1 billion more than originally anticipated.

The revamped New Housing Marketplace Plan, as the initiative is called, will now cost $8.5 billion to create or preserve 165,000 affordable homes by 2014, city officials said. Most of the extra funds will come from the city’s Housing Development Corporation, which issues bonds for the housing.

The city plans to ensure that an additional 32,000 units stay affordable for the next 30 years or so, protecting vulnerable lower-income New Yorkers from the next housing boom. In 2005, the city said it would build 92,000 units and preserve 73,000 by 2014. Now, it expects to build 60,000 and preserve 105,000.

The city’s definition of preserving affordable apartments means that its housing agencies refinance and renovate buildings in return for keeping rents locked in for long periods, usually decades, as opposed to letting the units rent or sell at market rates.

Most of the affordable units that the city plans to concentrate on will be occupied by New Yorkers who earn less than 80 percent of the area’s median income. Affordability means that 30 percent or less of their wages would go to rent. Rafael E. Cestero, the city’s housing commissioner, said that mortgages of many of the affordable rental buildings built in the 1980s were coming due, giving the city a chance to issue new ones with long-term affordability as a condition.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You want affordable housing? Cut taxes and stop pissing it away on developers.

Cutting taxes means that millions find housing more affordable.

Building housing means that rent breaks are eaten up by infrastructure costs and tax subsidies to developers.

Anonymous said...

Stopping illegal immigration is the only way you can make housing more affordable for moderate income.

Why should someone rent $1000 apartment to me when they can collect $500 each from 8 Mexicans?

Anonymous said...

this is major crap.
Don't buy the pretty lies wrapped up in a package to get you hoping then slam you down to reality.

got to housing court, sit in on the HPD actions, that's Housing Preservation & Development.
watch as tenants with mold, leaks, no heat, no hot water, broken front doors, ceilings falling on their heads, filthy hallways, broken mailboxes ask for repairs under existing HPD & DOB codes. When the slumlords have code violations, the City (DOOMBERG)allows them to settle for pennies on the dollar. they don't get as much as a slap on the wrist. Tenant is verbally abused by judge, court officers, clerks and slumlord attorneys. Slumlords wage harassment campaigns against any tenant who calls 311 to report violations.

it comes down from the top, meaning Bloomberg. that's why it is so difficult for tenants to get repairs. the way it's supposed to work if the landlord doesn't do repairs, eventually the building can go in rem, meaning the tenants can buy the building or the city will seize it. this rarely happens.

Bloomberg is full of crap, he's responsible for most of the homeless now. He has made sure there is no help and no money for tenants facing eviction. Bloomberg could have put on the section 8 vouchers and built truly affordable housing. He doesn't want to. this is what is called paying lip service.
Bloomberg is lying through his teeth on this.

Anonymous said...

to the last "anonymous" - I agree. There are laws to protect tenants, but when you actually get into court, the judge says you didn't fill out the right form, but it's the form the "clerk" forced you to fill out, and I mean -forced. If you speak up and say, "I don't think that's the right form according to law, the clerk gets nasty and won't help you.

There is also a law that a landlord can't harass a tennat for complaining, but the law is not followed.

Bloomberg is an elitist pig.