Mayor de Blasio’s new housing plan is merely building on Bloomberg’s plan of inclusionary zoning. Mayor de Blasio is setting up a plan that basically slightly addresses the major criticisms of the plan before it, by making more developers build inclusionary housing and creating better income targets. But how successful will his plan be? In his article “De Blasio’s Doomed Housing Plan,” Samuel Stein makes it clear that inclusionary zoning is not the best way to create affordable housing in the city. Instead of truly making a change to benefit those who need more affordable housing, de Blasio’s plan seems to focus more on keeping the capitalists happy while performing little improvements. Stein offers alternatives to inclusionary housing, such as building or obtaining public housing and maintaining it, making rent controlled apartments, or even community land trusts. Yet, Stein feels like these ideas are being pushed aside for the sake of politics.

Ritchie Torres and David R. Jones also bring up problems that already exist within the system, such as how the federal budget has been decreasing because of decisions made in Washington, how the NYCHA does not have to comply with the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which allows for the community to take part in development decisions and how the NYCHA is exempt from any of the listings of local housing and building code violates.

Yes, the plan tries to answer the question of what to do about affordable housing, but there should be more of an emphasis on finding the best solution and not merely one that works.