More affordable housing but less affordability

From Crains:

The city is building and preserving more affordable housing than ever, but federal programs remain the most effective tool for supporting the poorest households, according to a report released Thursday.

The Citizens Budget Commission analyzed a recent housing survey and found that around 44% of households pay more than 30% of their income in rent—after accounting for government subsidies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Section 8 housing vouchers.

The 30% rule, the federal standard for being rent-burdened, is an imperfect measurement. High earners could spend a third of their income on rent and still have money left over for luxuries; but some low-income residents, who make up the lion's share of the rent-burdened, can be hard-pressed to pay for necessities if 30% of their earnings go toward rent.

As the report notes, many of the poorest residents spend an even higher percentage of income on housing. About 22% of city households, predominantly made up of low-income senior citizens and single parents, were found to be severely rent-burdened, meaning they devote more than half of every paycheck to rent.

Homeless woman is sick of De Blasio's BS

From PIX11:

Nathylin Flowers Adesegun says she organized the Friday protest with Vocal NYC, a homelessness advocacy group because she said they are fed up.

At 72 years old, Adesegun is herself homeless, living in a women’s shelter in Queens after being evicted from her rent stabilized apartment back in February 2015.

Adesegun said the group wants 24,000 units from new construction in our city to be used for homeless and low income people and cornering the mayor at the gym was the only way to get his attention.

Bill de Blasio was caught on camera on Thursday brushing off Adesegun, telling her “I’m in the middle of doing my workout. I’m sorry. I can’t do this now.”

The video then shows De Blasio’s security officers stepping in front of the woman as the Democratic mayor gets up and walks away, cell phone in hand.

Adesegun says it worked. She says the group received a call from city hall and was told a meeting would be arranged with the mayor.

However, when PIX11 called a city hall spokesperson to confirm those details, we were told VOCAL NYC will meet with city hall officials and not necessarily the mayor.

Adesegun said they’re not interested in being strung along any further. On October 24th the group plans to protest in front of Gracie Mansion.

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 Ivanhoé 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.

Developers exploit low-income housing loophole

From the Wall Street Journal:

Consider the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, created by the 1986 tax reform. This $9 billion credit masquerades as an antipoverty program, but it mainly subsidizes developers, investors and the financial industry.

To stimulate low-income housing construction, the federal government allots a share of tax credits to the states, which dole them out to selected developers. The credits cover part of the construction costs of multifamily housing projects. The developers must cap rents for a share of the units, so the benefits of the tax credit are meant to flow to tenants in the form of lower rents. Yet the developers usually sell the credits to banks and investors, often using syndication companies as intermediaries. The investors, developers and middlemen—not poor families—end up grabbing most of the benefits.

Crowley may support rezone of IBZ property for housing

From Crains:

The owner of an eight-acre industrial complex straddling train tracks in Maspeth, Queens, wants to propose a mixed-use project on the site.

The oddly-shaped property at 57-46 56th St. is currently home to a series of buildings used by various warehouse and industrial companies, and is bisected by a set of tracks used by the Long Island Railroad. The parcel is owned by Manhattan development firm the Chetrit Group, which said Wednesday that its plans are still in the early stages, but that it would like to propose something that fits in with the low-rise housing that flanks the property.

Winning approval for a rezoning could prove difficult, as the parcel lies within one of the city's Industrial Business Zones, which the de Blasio administration pledged to protect from residential development, in keeping with a 2015 commitment. But the Chetrit Group said that the site both lies at the edge of the district, and is across the street from existing housing, which would help make the case for redevelopment.

The site has been mentioned this year by City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley in connection with her critique of City Hall’s homeless policy.

In August, she sent a letter to the mayor encouraging him to proactively search for more opportunities to develop permanent, low-income housing, rather than rely on converting hotels to homeless shelters, which has led to vehement protests and lawsuits in her district.

"We need affordable housing, not another shelter-hotel," she wrote in the letter to the mayor. "In recent months, two real estate developers who are eager to build residential housing units in Maspeth and Woodside have approached me, looking to start a conversation about a zoning change."

DHS ok with making people homeless in order to house other homeless

From the Daily News:

A faith-based Queens nonprofit is trying to boot low-income renters into the street in the midst of the holiday season — in the hopes of converting their building into a homeless shelter, residents told the Daily News.

The New York School of Urban Ministries in Astoria wants tenants out of the 46th St. building as soon as possible and has been using underhanded methods to speed up the process, residents say.

Pastor Peter DeArruda, the executive vice president of the ministry, sent notices out last month informing tenants they must vacate the building by Dec. 31.

City officials said they were approached about using the site as a shelter but scuttled any plans when they realized that there were long-term tenants in the building.

“We’re absolutely, positively not using this place,” said Department of Homeless Services spokesman David Neustadt.

This DHS is something else. They lured a young couple to NYC with the promise of free lodging under "right-to-shelter" and ended up killing their young children. Now they're ok with evicting low income tenants so that they can stash their homeless there instead - until they get a phone call from a newspaper.

East Harlem tells City Planning to shove their rezoning plan

Protesters shut down East Harlem rezoning meeting, citing demands pic.twitter.com/InD1LdW7PU

— Dartunorro Clark (@DartDClark) November 18, 2016

From DNA Info:

Community activists shut down an East Harlem rezoning forum on Thursday in protest of an effort to dramatically redraw the neighborhood.

Residents packed the gymnasium at Taino Towers but, before speakers from the city Department of Planning could present their plan, protesters took to the floor with a bullhorn to oppose the rezoning.

Residents from Community Voices Heard demanded that the city first put $200 million towards repairs for existing New York City Housing Authority properties and lower levels of affordability for new developments.

"We're demanding that 30 percent of the new units built on public land are for low-income residents," said one woman from the organization. "And by low-income, we mean $23,000 and less."

The city laid out a rough rezoning proposal, which in some areas would include buildings as tall as 35 stories and development on NYCHA land.