Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the financing of 17,300 units of affordable housing. Image credit: Mayoral Photography Office

17,300 units of affordable housing were created or preserved in 2014.  On January 15, 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio held a press conference to announce the financing of over 17,300 units of affordable housing during 2014.  These units, 11,185 preserved and 6,191 of new construction, were financed as a part of the Mayor’s Housing New York plan to preserve and build 200,000 units of affordable housing by the end of Fiscal Year 2024.  According to Mayor de Blasio, these units will be enough to provide housing for 42,000 New Yorkers.

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HPD adopted amendments to the rules governing Mitchell-Lama housing, such as this building in Manhattan. Image credit: NYC.gov

New rules address transferability of applications, preferences for veterans, and more.  On November 25, 2014 the Department of Housing Preservation and Development formally adopted amendments to the rules governing city-aided limited-profit housing companies, commonly referred to as the Mitchell-Lama program.  A public hearing on the proposed changes was held on November 6, 2013 and public comments were received by HPD through November 30, 2013. (read more…)

HPD Commissioner Vicki Been addresses the annual luncheon of Women in Housing and Finance. At right: WHF board member Arianna Sacks Rosenberg. Image credit: Women in Housing and Finance

HPD will permit architect self-certification and expand M/WBE developer opportunities. On October 7, 2014, Commissioner Vicki Been of the NYC Housing Preservation and Development gave the keynote address to the annual luncheon of Women in Housing and Finance. Commissioner Been elaborated on and announced new HPD initiatives to advance Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing plan.

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Comptroller found that HPD was successful in ensuring that the primary housing goals of the Cornerstone Program were met. In 2000, HPD established the Cornerstone Program, a new construction initiative designed to expand private housing and increase the City’s affordable unit housing stock. The primary goals of the Cornerstone Program are two-fold: sell City-owned land, usually for a small fee, to encourage private residential development, and create affordable rental and homeownership units in specific neighborhoods. The City Comptroller audited HPD to determine whether the agency had made sure the primary goals of the Cornerstone Program were met in FY 2008.

The Comptroller found that, through the Cornerstone Program, HPD had encouraged new residential development, and to a smaller degree, expanded affordable housing. As of March 2009, 2,191 units had been completed under the Cornerstone Program. Of those, 22 percent were designated for lowincome families, 47 percent were designated for middle-income families, and the remaining 31 percent of units were market-rate units or unspecified. The Comptroller, however, found that HPD was unable to adequately assess the effectiveness of the program because HPD’s Production Credit System, which tracks all new multi-family developments, did not distinguish Cornerstone developments from non-Cornerstone developments, and did not track the number of started, completed, and affordable units being developed. (read more…)

HPD reports that an additional 1,139 affordable units are in the pipeline. At the Trends in New York City Land Use and Development forum co-hosted by the Center for New York City Law, HPD reported a total of 536 affordable units in construction and an added 1,139 units in the application phase as a result of the expanded inclusionary housing provisions.

The inclusionary housing provisions allow developers to increase the floor area of a development with an agreement to build affordable housing on the site or within another development. When the City first enacted the provision in 1987, it applied only to R10 zones and led to the development of 1,300 units of affordable housing. With the Greenpoint- Williamsburg rezoning, the City expanded the bonus provision to apply to lower density districts, and later applied the plan to cover Hudson Yards, West Chelsea, Brooklyn’s South Park Slope and Maspeth and Woodside in Queens. A plan to expand it to the Upper West Side and Fort Green and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn is in the application stages. (read more…)