HOW TO MAKE HOMES FOR ALL
MAYORAL HOPEFULS OFFER THEIR IDEAS
Homelessness in New York City remains stubbornly high. The city’s vast public housing network is crumbling and in need of cash. And with affordable housing tough to come by, many New Yorkers who owe rent fear they could be out on the street if more relief doesn’t come soon.
This is the housing landscape the next mayor will inherit when sworn in on Jan. 1, 2022, and it’s a situation experts say should be a top priority for whoever wins this year’s mayor’s race.
“It is the No. 1 household expense for most New Yorkers, and we are facing an unprecedented housing crisis,” said Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for the advocacy group Housing Justice for All. “The crisis is bad and getting worse.”
The COVID pandemic has made it even harder for renters, many of whom were already struggling to pay their bills. For the first time in the city’s history, the number of single adults who are homeless has surpassed 20,000. And about half of the city’s low-income residents are using 50% or more of their income to pay rent.
Christine Quinn, who served as City Council speaker before taking over the homeless nonprofit Win, said the next mayor’s handling of the housing crisis will have profound and far-reaching implications for the city’s future.
“If we elect a mayor who doesn’t make housing and homelessness a priority, we will see homelessness skyrocket,” she said. “We will see welfare hotels. We will see more homeless shelters in residential neighborhoods, and we will see middle-class and working-class New Yorkers flee the city.”
Altering housing policy will almost certainly mean the next mayor will have to deal with the governor, whoever it is, as well as Albany legislators. But some of what they can do will be completely within their control as mayor.
The Daily News asked several candidates running for mayor what they plan to do to tackle housing and homelessness if elected. Here’s what they had to say:
Maya Wiley
Wiley, who served as Mayor de Blasio’s legal counsel, wants to transform vacant hotels and commercial space — much of it now empty due to COVID — into supportive housing for homeless people struggling with drugs and mental health problems.
Right now, the city is spending about $3 billion annually to address homelessness. Wiley suggests spending that money differently and said she would “explore ways” to acquire dozens of hotels likely to go bankrupt and repurpose them to house the homeless. She supports converting dorm-style homeless shelters into supportive housing and moving the homeless into vacant New York City Housing Authority apartments.
Wiley plans to devote $2 billion “to repair and revamp” NYCHA buildings as well.
She also said she’d press the federal government to provide more cash and wouldn’t rely on private businesses for support.
“We must ensure that any plan does not trade in stability for privatization, weakened tenant protections for NYCHA residents, or the risk of displacement,” she said. “I will give residents of NYCHA more of a voice in governance to reshape NYCHA.”
The Housing Authority is currently being overseen by a federal monitor after it mishandled the presence of dangerous lead and mold for decades, and NYCHA needs a whopping $40 billion for its buildings to be fully rehabilitated.
Andrew Yang
Yang, who ran for president in last year’s Democratic primary and leads Dems in the most recent mayoral poll, supports the controversial federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program, or RAD, in which private entities assume control of NYCHA developments, fund upkeep and get to turn a profit.
The program has taken heat from activists as a foot-in-the-door attempt to privatize NYCHA, but others see it as an effective way to mitigate the authority’s dire funding needs.
Yang is also vowing to fight for NYCHA funding in Washington D.C., and touted a plan he described as a “green revolution at NYCHA,” which would end carbon pollution and accelerate deep energy retrofits.
“The plan would create up to 325,000 jobs in NYC over 10 years with priority for installation training and jobs given to NYCHA residents,” he said.
Hotels and “obsolete” office buildings would be converted into affordable apartments under another Yang plan that would “provide regulatory relief and forgivable grants” to landlords deemed eligible by the city.
“By providing larger forgivable
“We must ensure that any plan does not trade in stability for privatization, weakened tenant protections for NYCHA residents, or the risk of displacement”
MAYA WILEY
grants to owners who agree to convert their buildings into supportive housing and deeply affordable housing targeted toward the formerly homeless, we can take advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create affordable housing for the New Yorkers who need it most,” he said.
Eric Adams
Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, aims to build more densely in wealthy enclaves to provide housing for the poor and middle class. His plan, if successful, could make strides toward integrating neighborhoods — and schools — that now tend to be mostly white.
“For years, our rezonings focused on adding apartments in lower-income areas — which often just led to higher-income people moving in, making communities less affordable and often forcing out longtime residents,” he said. “Instead, we will build in wealthier areas with a high quality of life, allowing lower-and middle-income New Yorkers to move in by adding affordable housing and eliminating the community preference rule in those areas.”
That rule gives people residing within a community board first dibs on 50% of units in newly built government-subsidized housing developments in the area.
Adams supports increasing the value of city housing vouchers and backs RAD in NYCHA, but said it should only be used with the consent of tenants, who the city would in turn provide “with free, independent legal counsel” so they can make a determination. He would order NYCHA to cease charging rent to tenants whose apartments are infested with lead or mold.
“That,” he said, “will incentivize NYCHA managers to speed up remediation.”
Exactly how NYCHA would balance its books under such a scenario remains unclear, but Adams said he would raise revenue by selling off development rights to landowners near NYCHA developments by granting them the ability to build higher. Adams estimates the city could rake in up to $8 billion by doing so.
Scott Stringer
Stringer, the city’s comptroller, noted that at the current rate, the city is producing about 8,000 new units of affordable housing per year, but that too many of those units are too expensive for New Yorkers.
To remedy that and to speed the construction of new, low-income housing, Stringer wants to focus on vacant land the city controls.
“We need to unlock and leverage city-owned vacant lots and start building thousands of 100% permanently affordable units,” he said. “That’s how we begin to realign our housing plan to build more low-income housing for the New Yorkers most in need.”
“By providing larger forgivable grants to owners … we can take advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create affordable housing.’
ANDREW YANG
“Those who are closest to the challenges need to be closest to the solution. Centering residents in these positions gives them that power and is the beginning of the radical shift of dignity and autonomy for NYCHA residents.”
DIANNE MORALES
Stringer, who has audited NYCHA on several occasions as comptroller, opposes RAD in favor of pressing the feds for more cash through an infrastructure bill and by taking excess cash from Battery Park City and using it to raise $450 million through bonds. But he stressed that it’s not just a dearth of funding that plagues NYCHA.
“It’s also a management issue. We need modern inventory systems and we need better ways to track maintenance and repair,” he said.
Stringer has long decried the price tag attached to de Blasio’s record on addressing homelessness and said he intends to divert money away from temporary housing and put it to supportive and permanently affordable housing.
Shaun Donovan
Donovan, who served as President Barack Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development and as Mayor Bloomberg’s housing commissioner, has laid out an ambitious plan that would put $4 billion a year into building and preserving affordable housing, $2 billion of which would go to NYCHA.
“While production has been at peak levels over the last several years, in order to meet demand and address the need for deeply affordable housing, overall production goals should be 30,000plus units per year,” he said.
He aims to use underused hotels to help create 2,000 units of supportive housing a year for people dealing with disabilities, substance abuse and mental health issues.
Donovan fully supports NYCHA’s Blueprint for Change, which would rely on rental vouchers to cover additional financing and the creation of a public benefit corporation to assume control of thousands of apartments. He has promised to “overhaul NYCHA’s governance structure to improve performance,” use NYCHA apartments to house the homeless and tap connections in the federal government to push for more funding.
To prevent homelessness, he plans to create a rental assistance program that “could serve 200,000 low-income households per year.”
Kathryn Garcia
Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner who also served as the interim head of NYCHA under de Blasio, expressed confidence in the housing authority’s blueprint and said it’s now a matter of executing it effectively.
The funding, she said, is already baked into the plan through a housing trust for units not covered by the RAD program and federal housing vouchers.
“You can leverage Section 8 funding,” she said. “We don’t have to get Congress to do anything new. It’s already there for us to use, just like basically every other city in the U.S.”
She described the city’s current homeless policies as a “band-aid” approach and said she’d focus on more effective and less expensive long-term solutions in the form of building more permanent housing.
Garcia has an ambitious plan to create 50,000 units of affordable housing and 10,000 units of supportive housing within four years and would do it using cityowned land, rezoning to build more densely and converting failing hotels.
“We just don’t build enough to support our population, and we haven’t for years and we need to make sure we’re doing that moving forward,” she said. “We’re almost on like a gerbil wheel. We don’t go anywhere, And I’d like to see us really go somewhere.”
Ray McGuire
McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, wants to drive construction costs down through the use of “innovative building materials” so the city can produce more affordable housing for what it spends.
He supports using RAD in NYCHA developments, but said tenants would be given the ability to choose which private operator takes control of their development.
“We cannot leave any federal money on the table,” he said.
“Given my background in finance, I would be best positioned to identify and secure every possible federal and state funding stream.”
He also vowed to “simplify” the bureaucracy around providing homeless services and would shorten the amount of time people spend in shelters by expanding rental assistance programs and the city’s affordable housing stock.
Dianne Morales
Morales, a former nonprofit executive, opposes RAD and NYCHA’s blueprint for change and said she would mount a push to secure $35 billion for NYCHA through the state and federal government.
She aims to convert now-vacant hotels into affordable housing and would select a resident of NYCHA to act as the authority’s hesd and recruit residents to occupy a majority of its board seats.
“Those who are closest to the challenges need to be closest to the solution,” she said. “Centering residents in these positions gives them that power and is the beginning of the radical shift of dignity and autonomy for NYCHA residents.”