How to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. NYC is fighting for and winning desperately needed affordable housing, its citizens most often voiced priority. Yet, this article paints that as a negative.
Next, please tell us how terrible it is that the City spends money efficiently clearing the snow after each snow storm.
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It's not entirely clear to me how secrecy about the tax breaks developers receive helps the city in its negotiations.
From my perspective, taxpayers are entitled to, and better served by, transparency around what the city has negotiated in return for the numerous unprecedented and outsized development projects these last few years. Secrecy may help the city in its negotiations, but it also gives politicians carte-blanche to pursue political goals free from discovery that they are giving public assets and income away for far too little in return.
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I wish I could recommend this comment 10x.
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This article makes no sense. It claims the city spent $1.1 billion in 2017 to increase the number of units (and, implies that part of that money went to maintain the existing 180,000 units) and that it cost so much because of a new tax law that didn't even get signed until the very end of the year. How can the NYTimes (De Blasio) claim that the tax law that wasn't in existence caused this kind of outlandish spending?
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Apparently, "officials" are the only ones who see headwinds after Trump.
Everyone else knows it's a crime for New York to keep building luxury housing at the expense of the rest of its population.
It's also time to seriously take on the Rent Guidelines Board, because that's another significant part of the affordable housing problem.
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De Blasio is creating a city where it's affordable only for the top 10% and the bottom 20%. The middle 70% will have to move.
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The problems are much more complicated than just affordable housing. The real roots of the problem is income inequality, rampant real estate speculative development, the use of real estate for foreign billionaires to park their money, essentially the whole composition of our capitalist system.
New Yorkers can no longer live in their city. There are no improvements to infrastructure because the MTA, the unions, and the contractors are corrupt and take our tax money, spending billions more than necessary, as pointed out recently in a NYT exposé.
Everyone wants to come and live here, and our communities, history, architecture and livelihoods are either pushed out or completely destroyed.
The administration could start by not allowing more of those "luxury" supertalls from being built (and their similar counterparts all over the city), by passing laws prohibiting property owners from charging exorbitant rents (it comes down to greed really), taxing the 1% a great deal more, and vastly improving our infrastructure.
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I grew up in this city,I lived in zip codes with economic diversity prior to Bloomberg turned them,into elite zip codes. Currently we are so far down the road of injustice to regain real economic and diversity . This is a city,for the very rich who anyone in the middle doesn't matter. Truly pathetic how we worship the,mighty dollar and the elites. We build affordable housing and then ask,how are we paying for it? Make the mayor look stupid because he cares. However we build luxury housing overnight for the priveledged .We are indeed a fake Christian nation. Rather see the homeless on the streets with no medical care than do anything.
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It's hard for deBlasio to make a case for anything involving money, after Rechnitz accused him in court of taking a massive payoff.
It might be easy to ignore Rechnitz's accusation, except for the endless "pay to play" accusations that have been made against deBlasio by others.
Like Trump, anything deBlasio does, ends up being "about him"; and having the Governor of your state hate you, doesn't help either.
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The article mentions "transparency," but it's hardly a model of that concept itself. That is, whether it's poorly written of assuming expertise most readers lack, it's akin to a flashlight with weak batteries.
I'm (tentatively) willing to say that the Mayor's heart is in the right place - both by his lights and mine. HOWEVER, "affordable" has come to resemble "extra large" in terms of imprecision.
It's not just that however many $3700 apartments (it's worth asking how large they are!) wind up empty because they're over-priced. When "affordable" means that new tech-y or creative individuals arriving in NY have options IF AND ONLY IF their parents underwrite a hefty % of rent, we're back in the land of "if you don't move your offices and people to NJ, we'll slash your tax bill for 20 years." Anybody with a little common sense knows that this robs Peter to pay Paul. Maybe, it explains the state of the subways, say, because the City essentially begs annually in Albany at a time when the 2 men in charge are having a food fight.
Hard to believe that Bill seems to have written off the "working poor" almost to the same extent as Mike did during his terms as Mayor, but that's the way it looks to me. Universal pre-K and other fine programs are like treading water in the Atlantic if a single mother with one kid, say, needs $75K income to enter a housing lottery time and again.
Until/unless wealthy & often non-resident NY'ers pay more, it sounds to me like this is UNaffordable!
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'Affordable housing' is subsidized housing. Land in New York City is valuable and should be used to house those who can afford to live here and to pay for the benefits of a NYC life. Why should tax-payers provide housing in NYC, the world’s greatest city, for those who pay less (if any) in taxes than it costs to support them?
Think of it in terms of dining: We provide basic meals for the indigent, no more; we don't provide vouchers to Peter Lugar's or even Junior's. That is appropriate. We don’t provide a fine dining experience to someone just because the best they can afford is McD.
Affordable housing should be built in less expensive areas where land is cheap. Public transportation should be available so that those who have jobs can commute to work and earn enough to move somewhere better. The long commute is the price they pay for failing to get an adequate education and learn marketable skills.
If they want a better life-style, let them earn it; otherwise, they should get used to having a less-than-middle-class life.
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You might as well have typed "Let them eat cake".
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because you landlords benefit from the idea of a "NYC life" but it was the immigrants, the artists, the poor and the creative that made people want to live here you are reaping the rewards for something you did not create, but you stand back and profit from while displacing the people who did create it. landlords created nothing.
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Seriously Allen. I have a good education and marketable skills, and a boss who knows he doesn't have to pay me a dime more than what I'm already making because no one else is going to pay more for my marketable skills than what he already is. My husband is educated and has marketable skills, and he's a consultant. And every project he gets nickeled and dimed on his rate, because he has to compete with foreigners who undercut his rate sometimes by as much as half.
And exactly how far should the working class residents of this city have to commute in order to come into the city to serve those who can still afford to live here? Who exactly is going to serve you your steak at Peter lugars? Who is going to pick up the garbage you create? Who is going to put out the fires? Teach the children? You know the teachers who have to get a bachelor's degree and a master's degree to be able to teach at schools where they get typically low pay and little respect.
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How many of those impoverished New Yorkers in need of affordable housing also rely on government assistance for their entire income? (ie: they are unable to work). For this group NYC should 'think outside the box"! Instead of paying $40,000+ PER YEAR for subsidies, NYC should purchase thousands of housing units that sit vacant in upstate New York's small cities, such as Utica, Amsterdam, Troy, etc. Rather than wasting money building new units on very expensive Manhattan-Brooklyn-Queens real estate, move the people to where the housing already exists at very affordable prices!
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Clueless comment. Most people are working. Why should working class people get shipped out to make room room for the very rich? Or the elderly and disabled who rely on the services available in a large city. A city is like an eco-system you need all types. Maybe the people who buy up apartments and don't live there should be taxed more. Maybe community should be more important than raw greed.
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New York City like my own community of Arlington VA is using a failed paradigm to address low income housing and homelessness of building a limited number of new expensive apartments that can never meet the housing needs of the many. NYC is spending about $3.4 billion in foregone property taxes, and $1 billion in direct funding to produce about 24,000 units of affordable housing , a per unit cost of $183,000. Most of this cost is absorbed by developers and builders and a low-income housing industrial complex, and relatively little is received by tenants in the form of lower rents.
The much better approach is to give out housing vouchers to needy families and individuals and let them find their own place to rent or share with others. Give each of about 25,000 households homeless each night in NYC a say $4,000 a month voucher to cover the entire rent somewhere. This would cost $1.2 billion or $48,000 per household per year, far less than the $183,000 per household building new units. Then the remaining $3.4 billion now spent on new subsidized units could be given out as an average $500 a month housing voucher (varying depending on income of the household) that would help 550,000 households a month, and help prevent more homeless.
So, most homelessness would be abolished and a half million households get a small subsidy to help pay their rent.
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your proposal prices assistance for one year to a household. by financing a housing unit, you provide assistance for the lifespan of the building, estimated at 30 years.
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Why should we subsidize anyone's rent? If they can't afford to live here, they should move.
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No, even accounting for a new unit lasting 30 years, a 2015 HUD study found that housing vouchers were about 75% cheaper than the same amount spent for a new unit. New unit rents are not all that cheap and mainly it is tenants making 60% area median income who live in them. Lowest income rents get nothing. Better to take this $4.5 billion and give it out in small monthly housing vouchers to benefit say a half million households--roughly 1 million people--than building slick new units.
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Has anyone considered solutions more along the lines of communal housing? Similar to the Scarcity developments in San Francisco where a 1 bedroom is $3-4K + per month, and single working middle income people are renting shared space for about $2k a month. It's basically long term dormitory style living for adults. This would be a feasible alternative for single people struggling to find affordable apartments with housing vouchers. Especially our increasingly elderly homeless population. The city could lower costs, and use the savings to provide additional rental assistance to families who need complete apartments.
Perhaps we could also consider relocation assistance for families to more affordable areas outside the city. Binghamton, NY for example has 2-3 bedroom apartments for $1k per month, with decent schools and low crime. Rather than building units from scratch for $46K average per unit, the city could cover rent for one year, moving costs, and even a car (maybe make a deal with the police auction for bulk deals) for 2 families at that price. And the local jobs pay decent for the cost of living.
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Nice comment. Please note that $46K per unit does not come close to building an apartment! That is the YEARLY subsidy per unit to real estate tycoons if they build affordable housing!
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I have to disagree with any idea that seeks to ship the poor to upstate, or anywhere else, I see it all the time when we talk about the housing crisis, but poor and working class people have not created the hosing crisis, landlord greed and corruption has, people are not objects you cannot decide that it's more practical for them to live elsewhere, especially when the reason people of color live in NYC to begin with is because we were not allowed to live in the suburbs, so now it's practical to ship us there no thank you.
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No landlord should be required to accept anything less than market value. If landlords were charging too much, they would have to pay taxes on vacant apartments and lose money.
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