It took nearly two years, but Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday reached an agreement with the New York State Legislature to put back together a long-running affordable housing program, known as 421-a, that gives developers a city tax break in return for building lower-price rental units.
Just do not call it 421-a.
The newly named Affordable New York Housing Program, announced at a news conference in Albany, will annually generate 2,500 units of housing affordable to poor, working-class and middle-class New Yorkers, Mr. Cuomo said. In a change to the nearly 50-year-old program, developers will be required to pay a “fair wage” to construction workers to qualify for the city tax benefits.
At a time when housing costs have escalated well beyond the means of many New Yorkers, the program was a subject of contention between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Cuomo. Both have made affordable housing a hallmark of their administrations.
But some housing groups and budget watchdogs said that the new version of the program will be more expensive than past versions and that it was overly generous to developers.
The city plan, the result of long negotiations with the Real Estate Board of New York, the development industry’s powerful lobbying arm, was scuttled by the governor, in part because it did not have a requirement to pay union wages.
6 comments:
Yea sure. I looked into one of these "affordable housing lotteries" and the only two places I qualified for with a two bedroom apartment earning 65k/year was in Jamaica and the other in some terrible neighborhood in the rockaways which was three blocks away from the projects. Why would anyone want to raise their teenage child around those areas? I ended up moving out to a nice neighborhood in Suffolk county! Before they start with all these affordable houses, they need to clean up the neighborhood with all the garbage walking around on the streets there. The only people who get the apartments in the nice areas are the really upper middle class people who make over 90k/year! And if you're making 90k/year then I think you can afford to live in most areas of the city! Even the apartment building going up in flushing, you can only have if you make like 45k-55k/year. I'd rather live in flushing then live in those other two neighborhoods that I seemed to "qualify" for! This whole program is discriminatory! Plus I should have first pick on where I want to live because I was born and raised in NYC!
And what exactly is a "fair wage"? Sounds like a boon to REBNY. The Home Depot parking lot crews are gonna be busy.
The "lottery winners" are most likely politically connected.
SAME BIZARRE CIRCUS—SAME LETHALLY DANGEROUS CLOWNS. Turn yourself in already, Andy. New York State can't take any more of your never ending spree of corruption, graft and greed. How scary that the same kind of senseless abuse and corruption existed back in the Roman Empire that we still have in Albany and City Hall of modern day times, where the criminal enterprise within purported public service is far worse than ever before—and, only getting worse by the hour!
❝The Earth is not dying, it is being killed. And, the people who are killing it have names and addresses.❞ —Utah Phillips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q!!
Now, I no longer worry about what is illegal (here in the 'LAND OF THE FEE, and the HOME OF THE SLAVE')—I have always worried instead about what is STILL LEGAL (and why it was ever so in the FIRST PLACE)!
This is not an affordable housing plan, for it only earmarks 20 too 30 percent. It's a luxury housing and real estate, private equity and venture capital portfolio enhancing plan.
The 10 year mission, supposedly, is to provide and preserve 200,000 affordable units and it can only be done if it's to provide and escalate 800,000 market rate units.
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