According to an NYU Furman Center report, most of NYC’s low-income households depend on low-rent unsubsidized buildings for housing. As the availability of these buildings continues to decline due to rising rents, it is unsurprising that providing affordable housing becomes a pressing need for the New York City government (NYU Furman Center 2015). The MIH/ZQA law was Mayor Bill de Blasio’s solution to the affordable housing issue. This plan would allow developers to build larger (and therefore more profitable) buildings in newly rezoned areas, as long as affordable units are also provided in these buildings. In this way, de Blasio planned to build and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing (Abello 2016).
Yet, in the winter of 2017, over 323,000 NYC public housing residents were left without heat and hot water because their boilers were unable to keep up with the particularly freezing season. Several efforts have been made to right this wrong, from an $82 million plan proposed by de Blasio to replace 39 boilers that provide heat to 104 New York City Housing Authority (Nycha) buildings, to the Legal Aid Society threatening legal action against the Nycha if the agency does not refund up $15 million in rent to the affected tenants (Mays 2018).
This recent crisis points out the hypocrisy of zoning-based plans for affordable housing. A common belief held by those who support these proposals is that not only would these developments and buildings provide more affordable housing, but the profits raised from those buildings would allow more funding to go to neighborhoods in need. There is this notion that this is a long-term solution that would benefit the greater public. However, it is difficult to accept this when those who most need affordable housing are not even getting working facilities. Why aren’t current and already established housing being given necessary improvements, before trying to create more housing units?
The term “affordable housing” is also somewhat misleading. Any residence is considered “affordable” when it comprises of less than 30 percent of the household monthly income. On the other hand, public housing is specifically focused on low-income households (Beaver). As Abello points out, “the most affordable level in the mayor’s plan… [are] for households earning 40 percent of NYC’s area median income (AMI), yet 40 percent of New Yorkers fall below that threshold. (Abello 2016) ” Not only are current low-income households living in public housing not getting the proper housing standard, but the same people would likely not be able to afford de Blasio’s “affordable housing” under his plan. As a result, this seems to support the belief that these developments are more for the purpose of gentrifying the neighborhoods, rather than for the altruistic goal of providing affordable housing.
Even if an argument can be made that such zoning/building plans would benefit the city when thinking long-term and may even provide funding to public housing through its profits, it’s difficult to trust that the profits would actually be used to develop the city the way the people desire it, rather than what would be most profitable to the developers and government.
Reference:
Abello, Oscar Pelly (2016) How East Harlem Wrote it’s Own Development Plan. https://nextcity.org/features/view/east-harlem-neighborhood-plan-upzoning-affordable-housing (last accessed 13 April 2018)
Beaver, Alex What is the Difference between Affordable Housing and Public Housing?. https://olympiamanagement.net/2017/08/difference-affordable-housing-public-housing/ (last accessed 13 April 2018)
Mays, Jeffery C. (2018) Putting a Price on Heat, Legal Aid Threatens to Sue Housing Authority. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/11/nyregion/legal-aid-heating-outages-lawsuit.html (last accessed 13 April 2018)
NYU Furman Center (2015) New York City Lost Over 330,000 Affordable Unsubsidized Rental Units Since 2002. http://furmancenter.org/news/press-release/report-new-york-city-lost-over-330000-affordable-unsubsidized-rental-units- (last accessed 13 April 2018)
