Slowpoke Blaz
Advocates rip him for delay in senior housing
They stood on the steps of City Hall on a beautiful blue June morning, smiles all around.
There was Mayor de Blasio, right next to his frequent critics, members of Metro Industrial Area Foundation, the housing advocacy group.
With a broad grin, the mayor announced he’d committed half a billion taxpayer dollars to pay for the group’s pet project — construction of thousands of units of senior citizen housing on vacant NYCHA lots. The group exploded in applause.
That was then. Nearly six months later, not a dime has been spent.
Because of that, millions of dollars in tax credits Gov. Cuomo committed to boost the project also remain in a state of suspended animation.
On Monday Metro IAF plans to hold a rally and release a report showing how many seniors have been struggling to make ends meet during the time de Blasio has been sitting on his hands.
“Everything is lined up, but Mayor de Blasio refuses to act,” said the Rev. David Brawley of Metro IAF. “Until the mayor stops delaying the senior housing program, lowincome seniors will be stuck in units with broken elevators, dark stairwells, mold and other hazards that are even more dangerous for the elderly.”
Metro IAF’s plan calls for building up to 4,000 apartments for seniors on available lots within NYCHA’s 320 developments.
NYCHA, which has a waiting list of 250,000 applicants, has tried to free up space by asking seniors to move to smaller apartments after their children leave but has had little success, usually because seniors want to stay in their current developments.
Metro’s plan might make the transfer easier by offering newly built apartments in the same development.
After de Blasio and the City Council committed $500 million to the plan, Gov. Cuomo announced $15 million in low-income housing tax credits that reduce developers’ costs as long as 100% of the units they build are affordable.
But as of last week, no requests for proposals had gone out, no developer had been picked, and no tax credits had been awarded. None of the $500 million put into the fiscal 2019 budget that began July 1 has been spent.
Mayoral spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie defended City Hall’s response by pointing out prior efforts to fund senior housing and insisting the mayor fully supports the $500 million plan put forth by Metro IAF.
“We are absolutely delivering on the agreement,” she said. “New buildings don’t get built in six months — pretending otherwise is just playing games. Three NYCHA sites are now underway for new senior housing, with the six new sites promised in June moving forward on schedule. Senior affordable housing is a priority and we are delivering.”
On Monday, Metro IAF plans to release a report with specific locations for senior housing based on its success building more than 5,400 units of affordable apartments under the muchpraised Nehemiah program that started in the 1980s.
In its new report, the group pinpoints more than 100 empty lots it found across 40 NYCHA developments, including parking lots and open spaces at the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side; the Roosevelt Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; the Albany Houses in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; the Bushwick II CDA in Brooklyn; the Howard Houses in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and the Melrose Houses in the Bronx. The senior population at these six developments ranges between 7.5% and 17%.