HDC approves the financing to fund 2,226 units of affordable housing. On June 16, 2014, the Board of Directors of the New York City Housing Development Corporation approved the financing for projects in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn which will consist of $2756 million in bonds and $88.7 million in subordinate financing for HDC. The money will be used to construct eleven new buildings with 1,259 affordable housing units and preserve and protect seven projects with 967 units of existing affordable housing.

Since taking office, Mayor Bill de Blasio has focused on implementing a strategy to provide New Yorkers with affordable housing. The Mayor mapped out his goal to create or preserve 200,000 affordable homes over the next ten years in his Housing New York plan. In his plan, Mayor de Blasio discussed how affordability is a “crisis in many ways built on New York City’s success. People from all over the world come to study, to work or to start a business here. And that success story has put pressure on our housing stock. Coupled with ever-rising economic inequality, it has created a painful reality where more and more New Yorkers are spending more and more to cover their housing costs, and entire neighborhoods have lost their affordability.”

HDC President Gary Rodney explained that the projects being financed “speak to the core principles and values of the Plan.” Vicki Been, the HDC Board Chair and Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, explained how important HDC is as a resource to the City. “The HDC provides access to capital that would otherwise be much more difficult and expensive to secure, and… they bring incredible expertise in creating and executing complex and enduring affordable housing transactions.”

Harlem Dowling is a ten-story residential building that will be one of the projects constructed using the funding. Harlem Dowling will contain 58 low-income units affordable to households making at or below 60% AMI. Harlem Dowling will also have studio apartments set aside for youth aging out of foster care. Two Mitchell-Llama developments in Brooklyn are part of the preservation projects that will be funded with HDC Corporate reserves. These aging properties will have their deteriorating conditions corrected while remaining in the Mitchell-Llama program for the term of the new mortgage.

Housing Development Corporation Bond and Subsidy Approval (June 16, 2014)

By: Jonathan Manfre (Jonathan is a CityLaw Summer Associate and a Student at New York Law School, Class of 2015).