‘Affordable Housing’ at a Stiff Price

Mayor de Blasio’s 10-year, $41 billion plan to create or preserve 200,000 affordable-housing units is now an $82 billion plan for 300,000: Twice the price for just 50 percent more housing. And that doesn’t reflect the true costs.

To be fair, those figures include what the private sector is to spend on the plan, not just public monies. But to get for-profit builders on board, he’s bribing them with zoning changes or tax breaks. Zoning changes can alter a neighborhood’s character, a cost that goes uncounted. And tax breaks reduce future city revenues — but the city doesn’t say how much each de Blasio break costs.

As The New York Times noted last week, the Department of Finance says such property-tax breaks this year will lose the city nearly $3.4 billion. That figure includes deals struck before de Blasio took over, but he’s surely sending it much higher.

Meanwhile, the city’s per-unit costs are up from $29,000 to over $45,000 — and will rise thanks to state and federal tax changes, increasing real-estate costs and de Blasio’s decision to emphasize more units for the very lowest incomes.

All this, for units that benefit some people — while leaving those who don’t win the lottery (or use connections) no better off. And the city has taken to putting homeless families at the top of the list to get many new affordable units — a great mercy, but a move that means that the merely-low-income are increasingly shut out of a program that was sold as serving them.

Meanwhile, market rents keep on rising. Wouldn’t it be nice if the mayor focused on easing some of the burdens that drive up housing costs for everyone?