Saturday, January 6, 2018

DeBlasio's affordable housing claims are overstated

From the Independent Budget Office:

Over the past decade, near-bankruptcy and efforts to deregulate rent-stabilized apartments at Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village have left many tenants of the twin complexes uneasy. When the mostly middle-income developments with more than 11,000 apartments were about to be sold in 2015, the de Blasio Administration negotiated a deal it said would keep 5,000 units affordable for 20 years—apartments that the Mayor’s office contended would otherwise have become market rate housing—in exchange for $220 million in city subsidies.

While the de Blasio Administration counts all 5,000 apartments towards its goal of preserving 180,000 affordable units through 2026, to estimate the true effect of the deal the benefits provided to tenants must be weighed against what would have happened without it. The duration of benefits must also be taken into account, particularly because not every apartment will receive the same protections for the same amount of time under the agreement. Accordingly, we examined the agreement in terms of “apartment-years;” the de Blasio Administration’s contention that 5,000 units would be preserved as affordable for 20 years translates into 100,000 apartment-years of affordability. Among our findings:

  • IBO estimates that 64,000 of the apartment-years of affordability the de Blasio Administration attributes to the agreement would have remained rent stabilized even without the deal. In other words, the deal can be credited with 36,000 apartment-years of additional affordability—not 100,000.
  • Only about 3 percent of the 100,000 apartment-years covered by the agreement will be reserved for low-income households. Twenty-seven percent of the 100,000 apartment-years will be targeted to middle-income households. The remaining 6 percent of apartment-years of affordability consists of units that will remain rent-stabilized longer than they would have absent the agreement. These units will not become income-tested because they never turn over tenancy during the regulatory period.
  • The agreement includes an intricate set of rules but has limited oversight and reporting requirements for Blackstone Property Advisors and IvanhoĆ© Cambridge, the new owners of the complexes.
The October 2015 agreement was the single largest housing preservation deal done by the city. In addition to the $220 million in tax breaks and loans that do not have to be repaid, the de Blasio Administration agreed to support the transfer of air rights from Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village to other properties. While not a cost to the city, from the perspective of the complexes’ owners, sales of air rights could become the most lucrative part of the deal.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"the de Blasio Administration agreed to support the transfer of air rights..."
What are "air rights?"

(sarc) said...

"Affordable housing" is UNAFFORDABLE!

Numerous and onerous government regulations!

Especially when one factors in the vandalism,destruction and neglect of the so called tenants...

JQ LLC said...

The real affordable housing in the boroughs five are shelters and hotel rooms used for shelter.

Anonymous said...

Overtstated? The man is a FRAUD!

Anonymous said...

Air rights are a legal transfer of the height permissions for one building to the allowable limit for another building. To the total number of stories / feet in height of all buildings involved is the same, they're simply redistributed. This is lucrative if it means the apartments in the buildings getting the net surplus are worth more at market rate than in the building taking the net loss in height to balance the equation.

Anonymous said...

He (de BLASS-hole), is not a man; he is an arrogant, corrupt, dishonest, dishonorable, disloyal, derelict, depraved, unaccountable, unrepentant, unapologetic, congenital, inveterate liar, cheater and thief——beholden to the same corporate obedience that continues to massacre flag, country and Constitution, with a vengeful impunity that is unprecedented, to date!

Worse, this voracious, predatory and rapacious thief continues to impoverish New York City's rank-and-file (as the once great City of New York is now a dystopian, hollow and nihilistic sphere of ugly architecture, nail salons and New Jersey style strip mall franchisees), while de BLASS-hole proudly exhorts his REAL allegiance to REBNY (and, likewise, as REBNY and his corporate scourge of kleptocratic, monetary locusts replies back in kind): 'Don't Blow MY Scam——And, I Won't Blow YOURS! Then, it's back to ignoring and dehumanizing We, the People (the ever languishing constituency), with a tried-and-true: 'Delay, Deny——And, Hope That You Die!——and, this terminal and his entirely corrupt and vastly overpaid city council (paid without public referendum, much less publicly authorized approval), can do it at WILL!

Man is the most insane species.
He worships an invisible God
and slaughters an invisible Nature...
without realizing that this Nature
he slaughters is this invisible God
he worships. ―Hubert Reeves

❝No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.❞ ―William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

❝Voting has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs pre-selected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices who perpetrate the countless violations of the people's natural rights.❞ ―Robert Higgs

❝Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician's ear: 'You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.'❞ ―Wendy McElroy

❝It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.❞ ―Thomas Sowell

❝It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.❞ ―Upton Sinclair

❝Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.❞ ―Robert LeFevre

Anonymous said...

No Fucking Shit !!