Mayor De Blasio Reveals $41B Affordable Housing Plan
It may be early into the De Blasio administration, but we already know that affordable housing will be one of the central tenants of his mayorship. Yesterday afternoon, the mayor held a press conference in Fort Greene announcing the details of a $41 billion dollar plan to exponentially increase affordable housing throughout the city over the next ten years. Here are the details:
The crux of the plan is to create or preserve at least 200,000 affordable homes between now and 2024. How? Mayor De Blasio will try to implement mandatory inclusionary zoning, which would require developers to include a certain amount of affordable housing units in large buildings before they’re approved for construction. On top of that, the mayor wants to “legalize some illegal basement apartments, fight Albany for more rent-controlled apartments and direct $1 billion of city pension funds to building lower-rent units,” according to CBS NY.
The plan will be based on 50/30/20 formula, wherein 50 percent of apartments would go at market-rate, 30 percent would be set aside for middle-income households and another 20 percent would be set aside for low-income households. You’ll remember that this is the exact same formula Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams is putting forward for a proposed rezoning of Brooklyn’s Broadway.
As for funding: $8.2 billion dollars will come directly from the city while De Blasio will look to New York State and the federal government to foot the rest of the massive bill.
“We have a crisis of affordability on our hands. It touches everyone from the bottom of the economic ladder, all the way up to the middle class. And so we are marshaling every corner of government and the private sector in an unprecedented response,” Mayor de Blasio said at the press conference. “This plan thinks big – because it has to.”
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