New Yorkers get a break

Who says Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo don’t get along? From the brink of ruin, the mayor and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie prevailed on a reluctant Cuomo to broker an end-of-legislative-session deal to strengthen a property tax break program, called 421-a, designed to spur badly needed housing development in New York City.

Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan had the good sense to accept.

Bottom line, thanks to de Blasio’s persistence: For the first time since 421-a launched in the 1970s, developers must include affordable housing in their projects in order to claim the tax relief, wherever in the city a project is located.

It’s a major stride forward, given the $1.1 billion a year in property taxes surrendered by the city.

And that’s not all. In the upscale neighborhoods where projects already had to include affordable apartments in order to get 421-a breaks, now they’ll need more. Future luxury condos and pieds-a-terre will be ineligible.

The program smartly lets developers choose from a menu of three financial formulas the one that best fits their project.

Even a contentious play by construction unions to blow up a deal unless it came with topdollar wages and benefits ended up in a potentially better place. Now, they will negotiate with developers on the final pay rates, with lower numbers acceptable for less-than-schmantzy areas. Therein lies a wild card. City Hall projects the new law will generate 24,000 units of affordable housing in a decade — nearly double the current pace. But that doesn’t factor in higher labor costs. It now falls to the Building Trades Council and the Real Estate Board of New York to seal a deal by mid-January — or, by law, 421-a self-destructs.

One must only hope, for now, that on de Blasio’s strong foundation rises all the affordable housing thus made possible.