The de Blasio administration financed an all-time high 24,356 units of affordable housing last year, the mayor announced today.
That number included the construction of 7,177 apartments and the preservation of 17,359 that might have otherwise become market-rate dwellings. Half of the total will be available for residents making less than $33,400 a year, or $43,000 for a family of three, though it was unclear from the announcement what the lowest incomes served will be.
Can someone explain how only adding ~7K "affordable" apartments to the inventory is a victory? We need hundreds of thousands of affordable apartments and the city's response to this is to upzone areas that are currently "low density" and relatively affordable so that developers move in and build market rate housing. Throwing more money at landlords year after year so they keep rents stable also seems like a plan destined for future failure.
31 comments:
If they don't upzone, how is more cheaper housing supposed to get built? Simple economics: land cost $X per square food. You want to keep apartments at no more than $Y per month. You need at least Z apartments such that Z * Y earns a sufficient return on X, after all the costs of building and maintaining. If you fix Y, Z has to go up.
Look, NYC and its boroughs are tightly bound coastal islands. There's not much more undeveloped land. deBlasio sucks, but his position on this is consistent. Demand for NYC real estate outstrips supply. Just admit already that if you don't want to upzone, that there is no chance of building hundreds of thousands of units of more affordable housing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many cities around the country could surely the overflow. But if you're against upzoning, please share at least the outline of the alternative master plan.
There is no such thing a "cheaper housing" in NYC. There is no incentive for developers to build if they aren't going to get market rates. Somebody is going to lose. And it won't be the developer.
"But if you're against upzoning, please share at least the outline of the alternative master plan."... Deportation of illegal immigrants would free up thousands of apartments. The truth hurts but you asked for it.
What is the actual ratio of affordable housing to the market rate housing that got built to add to this obvious on it's face fabricated claims by the inveterate liar mayor? Going by the 80-20 standard, there might be 85,000 market rate apts that have been created that are out of reach of the majority of working poor earners in the 4 boroughs.
Has for preservation, there's not much bragging about NYCHA coming from the confederacy of dunces in city hall. Ceilings collapsing, lead still present, no heat all winter, somehow the real affordable housing that has always been here doesn't count.
Of course there's the ever-pressing, though you wouldn't know it because of the dearth of reportage from the newspapers and local tv news, issue of what is defined as affordable. Because the area median income has been going up along with the ballooning speculation/fabrication of market rate rents. I have seen recent lotteries for affordable housing towers where the rents are for $1500 to $2,000 and the lowest qualifications for the paltry amounts of units is for income around $30,000. Where the majority of low income workers make $5 to $10 less than that.
All the new tower pestilence development going up, and especially in Westchester which plays a HUGE factor in determining the AMI, is going to exacerbate this horrendous situation and will further skew the redefinition of affordability in this goddamn town.
This affordable housing program is a ruse and a farce. This may be a stretch but to paraphrase James Bond, I smelled this bullshit before and both times I smelled a rat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZHq64Ze9HA
The only way to get 100,000 new affordable units (which we do need) is for the government to just pay to build them and up zone all of NYC...and maybe let people have basement apartments for christ sake.
That would be very difficult to get support for.
The economy needs service level jobs, music teachers, drivers, etc. I'm not sure how these people survive. Well, I do actually, a bunch of people in one house.
speaking of dopes, a bit off topic but had to share this gem:
Dear Friend,
[blah-blah] It’s been a disappointing, gut-wrenching year. We’ve watched President Trump and congressional Republicans squander every opportunity to fight for the middle class to instead advance divisive policies that lay bare just how little compassion they have for everyday Americans.[blah-blah] There are no excuses left—President Trump clearly lacks the necessary vision, moral authority, and skills to lead this incredible nation.As I write, the government is once again on the cusp of a shutdown. [blah-blah]Millions of government employees, members of our military, and Americans who rely on government services are at risk of seeing their lives severely disrupted.[blah-blah] Republican leaders have set the bar so low they don’t even meet the basic responsibilities of governing. [blah-blah]This is all made worse by President Trump’s erratic behavior that has jettisoned the country from crisis to crisis.[blah-blah] He derailed a potential bipartisan immigration deal when he called a group of predominantly black countries "s***holes."[blah-blah] He is refusing to work with Democrats to keep the government open—putting 9 million children at risk of losing their health insurance. And he’s putting our economy on a downward path by advocating for a “good shutdown.”[blah-blah] When I heard the weak, half-hearted explanations and lies coming from the White House and the GOP, I knew I had to take a stand.[blah-blah] Republicans have tried explaining away President Trump’s bad behavior by blaming his Queens upbringing, the media, or Democrats. [blah-blah]But we know the truth. [blah-blah]President Trump and the Republicans who enable him are the only ones to blame. I won't accept any more excuses, and neither should you.[blah-blah] We need to win back the majority in Congress because this country deserves more. America deserves sound and thoughtful leadership. America deserves progress and a vision for the future. America deserves a government that works.[blah-blah] Donate today and make sure President Trump and his enablers in Congress know just how strong the resistance is.
Thank you,
Congressman Joe Crowley
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how closely does his family living in Va match his words? why do people have liberal words but lead a conservative lifestyle? how much to most people of his economic status and political views pay to have their kids go to elite schools and live in exclusive communities?
Open borders makes infinite housing demands and infinitesimal wages. Somewhere, far far below what we a living is the median housing standard for the world, and somewhere far far below what we are earning is the median income standard of the world.
Expect it if you keep voting Democratic.
There goes the neighborhood. Any white Americans getting these goodies?
There goes the neighborhood. Any white Americans getting these goodies?
when hacks (who are very much trolling this blog) post garbage like this all you can think of another version of Godwin's Law only substituting Trump for Hitler.
I just don't understand why we need more people in the city. We hit our maximum number, thats it we are full. We shouldn't be required to supply housing for the whole world.
If you really want to open up more housing, get rid of the illegals and we will have thousands more apartments.
Why do we need more people.
We don't. I am happy without more. You are happy without more.
But the Democratic Party, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, need to move forward or it will fall apart, and moving forward are more people with needs, more people to fill agencies to take care of those needs, and more everyone in this game vote Democratic to keep the whole shebang in motion. The party has hijacked the state.
Sooner or later, through, anything that does not change its vector hits a wall. We are there.
Godwin's Law only substituting Trump for Hitler
No worries, we just substituted you for a pet monkey.
^Ding-Ding! Thank you Max-Number Anon!
The only comment here that adequately addresses first Anon's question. Official census puts City pop @ 8.55 mill, the reality is easily closer to or above 9 million people.
9 M I L L I O N P E O P L E
That's ENOUGH. That's MORE than enough. That's fucking plenty!
New arrivals can find PLENTY of space out on Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey, the Hudson Valley...without ever coming CLOSE to overwhelming those places with crowding, AND it would help their local economies, not that the dinosaurs living there would ever admit it.
You can't pass a law that no one can have anymore babies, or that people can't move elderly relatives close to them or that people can't move here legally from another State or for school..etc.
Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population. So, yes, there would be more housing if they were not here. But, the lack of affordable housing is not because of undocumented people.
Let developers build and stop putting all these requirements on them. They should be safe and up to code but other than that just build baby build.
>>I just don't understand why we need more people in the city. We hit our maximum number,
>> thats it we are full. We shouldn't be required to supply housing for the whole world.
If you can't afford to live in NYC, move out. I have an exit strategy, how come the ones in NYCHA don't?
Congressman Joe Crowley
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how closely does his family living in Va match his words? why do people have liberal words but lead a conservative lifestyle? how much to most people of his economic status and political views pay to have their kids go to elite schools and live in exclusive communities?
NUFF SAID IN MY BOOK.
"I just don't understand why we need more people in the city. We hit our maximum number"
I couldn't agree more...we are pack to overflowing...you can see it on the subways, and the housing situation is just as bad... Somewhere out there, the wunderkinds have heard that this is the place where they can come and establish their startup, move into a gentrified neighborhood and live the New York dream. The reality is that this city is expensive. People who have worked and lived here all of their lives have to deal with crowded and inadequate transit, traffic jams, elected officials who do next to nothing to represent the working people of this city, and now we are dealing with the opioid crisis which almost every neighborhood seems to be dealing with in some fashion or another. It's hard to insure kids get a good education, the city is less safe crime statistics be damned, and the city is plagued by people who just don't want to take responsibility for themselves. People love to protest what's going on in the Middle East or Donald Trump's latest mean tweet, but when it comes to actually doing something, maybe attending a town hall, or getting together with neighbors to clean up the graffiti, the beer cans, the used condoms and syringes used by the zombies who have decided that the streets of your neighborhood are not their home, and the sidewalk is their toilet. But yet we go ahead and elect mediocre people such as Bill DeBlasio and Donald Trump and Joe Crowley and think they are going to do something about this. They won't. They are just padding their pockets and planning their next move so they can gain more We're totally screwed. We have allowed our city and our county to be run by troglodytes. They won't solve anything, they are not in solution mode. They're in enrichment mode.
@John: you can't legislate not-having babies, but you CAN educate to stop it. There's a reason there's a correlation between higher incomes, higher education, and smaller families. It's because the smarter you get, the more you realize how expensive it is. And generally because higher-income families' childcare costs are NOT subsidized, as with the working poor.
I have very few to no problems with undocumented immigrants by and large, just speaking for myself. Most of them just want to work hard, save and get by, without causing trouble for anyone.
I DO have a problem with the administration's sloppy handling of homelessness, give-aways to big developers (30 year tax abatements for low %'s of 421-a!), and pie-eyed notion of a Blade-Runner/Judge Dread type future where we all live in shitty MegaCity1 complexes.
Developers have almost no meaningful requirements made of them that they cannot squirm out of later or offset through clever legal wrangling.
The problem with affordable housing in and of itself is two fold -- one, the upper boundaries on what is reasonable have sky-rocketed due to hipsters, yuppies, gentrification, hi-rise glass boxes mushrooming everywhere.
Two, the lower-boundary is being held at an artificially low rate in some places by government fiat, and it creates perverse incentives leading to NYCHA issues, slumlords, or just people never, ever leaving their precious rent-stabilized units.
Prices are signals meant to inform people to make efficient decisions. With both the upper and lower boundaries so distorted, the message the City sends to the world is:
"IF YOU'RE RICH, MOVE HERE AND BUY A CONDO AS AN INVESTMENT, NO NEED TO BE HERE"
"IF YOU'RE POOR, MOVE HERE AND WE'LL FIND "SPACE" FOR YOU...SOMEWHERE"
"IF YOU'RE NEITHER, MOVE THE FUCK OUT AND MAKE ROOM FOR THE OTHER TWO"
"Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population"
i'd like to see the statistics that prove this (highly suspect) number as being true. Ride the 7 train any morning during the week and tell me that only .03% of this city is undocumented.
Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population
Maybe of the TOTAL U.S. population. They are 6% of NYC - conservatively speaking, because by the nature of courting risk by admitting their status and the mayor's obstructionism to getting the data they're hard to count.
The skewed housing in this country is directly a result of failed Democrat Party policies, on one hand, hollowing out the nation's mid-section with no jobs or opportunities for someone with any hint of ambition, on the other, an open door policy allowing unchecked flows of immigrants to concentrate on a tiny areas around places the party controls (perhaps, as in sad case of Flushing, in exchange for campaign donations from China.)
These policies jam a small number of people in a tiny area, which also benefits another donor to the Democratic Party, the developers. That is no accident.
Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population.
.03% of 9 million is 2,700 = equal to one building in LaFrak City.
hahahahahaha
hehehehehehe
hohohohohoho
Anon #23 said: "Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population.
.03% of 9 million is 2,700 = equal to one building in LaFrak City."
--- - - - - - - - -
Not true. There are half a million illegals in NY City. See link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_New_York_City
I can't figure out if this blog is conservative or liberal. At first impression it seems the former, but then you read garbage like demanding hundreds of thousands of socialized apartments. Just doesn't make sense.
"Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population"... Where is this # coming from. Any census figure is useless as those who have illegal immigrants living in their buildings make sure to lie or not answer. Just open your eyes and it is painfully obvious that there are more illegals living in NYC.
"Undocumented people makeup .03% of the population"
One John Rocker #7 Express has more than that !
I can't figure out if this blog is conservative or liberal. At first impression it seems the former, but then you read garbage like demanding hundreds of thousands of socialized apartments. Just doesn't make sense.
++
This blog is just about the only place in Queens where you hear Vox Populi, the "voice of the people." Its crazy, its profound, its a party mouthpiece, its the ignored and forgotten, its the daring and thought provoking where the official leadership cult provides you a script to speak and an 'x' of tape to stand.
Its a window to Queens, a place of B List politicians and C List civic leaders, a place the size of Chicago, the secrecy of North Korea, and the civic spirit of Kazakhstan, an empty bin where most of its best and brightest fled long ago.
Its a beam of light in the primordial mist, the fog of the stupid, the haze of its officialdom and its media.
Its the hope that someday, sometime, somewhere the Sleeping Giant, after the better part of a century, will someday wake up.
They are not undocumented. They are illegal. Stop using bullshit liberal PC terms.
Efreeti: "not that the dinosaurs living there would ever admit it."
You're speaking of Long Islanders there. Dinosaurs? The prejudice and ignorance of social liberals is astounding.
Efreeti: "New arrivals ... would help their local economies"
Speaking of Long Island again, I assume you're not talking about baby dinosaurs.
So, the city gets an ever increasing surge of elitist white yuppies, mostly women, who for reasons I still can't fathom, are oppressed. Meanwhile, one minority neighborhood after the other gets steamrolled in favor of luxury boxes for whites (mostly women) in NYC. These same whites get lauded for their "tolerance" and "inclusivity".
Since there is no room left in Zootopia, you say send the "new arrivals" to the burbs, because, I guess, the dinosaurs had it coming, or something. You say it would help economies that really don't need any help in the first place. The hopeless, incurable racist dinosaurs from Ronkonkoma must learn a lesson, I suppose. Is that your point? Can you not see that its the liberal NYC whites who are shedding themselves of "new arrivals"?
This is liberal treachery at its best. All cities are socialist. Low population areas are conservative. A population surge in any town - even Salt Lake City, which favored Clinton in 2016 - become liberal/socialist. But no one, including you, calls out the fact that NYC's elite class is never taken to task on the largest mass displacement of minorities in US history: gentrification. NYC whites are infallible because they march, they whine, they protest - and above all they pretend to be inclusive. Bed Stuy was black only 15 years ago. Look at it now. And its all good, because the little white darlings slap up posters of Black Lives Matter in their co-op windows, and no one ever asks the name of the black family that she forced out...
Constant population increases from immigration will ensure the power of the democratic party. So long as the stream is steady the democrats no longer have to show up at union halls for votes. They no longer have to risk pissing off a financier with a pesky but necessary environmental law. They just have to open up the border, let the world in, and sit back. And if anyone complains? Well, that person is racist/sexist. It's a perfect system.
Teach us. Tell us why you have contempt for the dinosaurs. And who, exactly, are the dinosaurs? Do white grade school kids count as dinosaurs too?
We are out of space. We have no room. We are running out of natural resources. We are running out of intact ecosystems. We have to shut the border down eventually, or we're done. You can't just say "well, NYC is full, so send them to Long Island". You don't have that right. And we cannot continue absorbing the entire world into a country with finite size.
Thanks for the props and great observation Snake.
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