New York City Mayor Looks for Answers to Affordable Housing Crisis

Daily News, New York

RISMEDIA, August 8 – (KRT) – Helen Chacon, a New York City teacher, never figured she and her husband would qualify for city subsidized housing.

After all, she makes $39,000 a year as a full-time teacher, and her handyman husband brings in another $56,000 for them and their two small children -- putting their combined income close to six figures.

But subsidized housing isn't what it used to be in New York, where most experts agree Mayor Bloomberg is undertaking the most vigorous affordable housing program since the mid-'80s -- much of it aimed at the middle-class.

Chacon and her husband, for instance, last year qualified for a brand new, two-bedroom apartment in the city-backed Yorkside Towers in Jamaica, Queens, where they pay $1,475 a month -- not cheap, but probably several hundred dollars less than what they would pay on the open market.

At Yorkside, the income cutoff for a family of four is a sizable $144,000 per year.

As the city's soaring real estate prices continue to squeeze the Big Apple -- including a growing number of working and middle-class families -- Chacon's story is a small window into both the problems and solutions being pursued by Mayor Bloomberg.

Yorkside Towers, where Chacon moved a year ago, was the first development to open under Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace initiative, the centerpiece of his $3 billion effort to build or preserve 65,000 units of affordable housing by 2008.

The initiative is widely considered to be the most comprehensive housing program in the city since the '80s, and already some 17,000 of the planned units are done, with another 9,000 in the pipeline, officials say.

But advocates, while generally praising Bloomberg for taking the city's housing crunch seriously, say there is more the city could be doing. And they worry that not enough attention is being paid to people at the lowest end of the economic pay scale.

Consider some of the starker facts facing the city today.

Last night, some 32,721 people -- including 13,003 children -- slept in city shelters, a near record.

Nearly a quarter of city renters now spend 50 percent or more of their incomes on rent, studies show.

The percentage of vacant rental apartments is now 2.9 percent, its lowest level in 15 years, making finding an apartment -- much less an affordable one -- a nearly impossible quest for most New Yorkers.

Bloomberg has confronted this landscape with an array of initiatives. In addition to the New Housing Marketplace, first unveiled in 2003, the mayor has:

Rezoned with the City Council the far West Side of Manhattan and the Williamsburg-Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn, where developers will be required to build some 8,700 units of affordable housing, or 29 percent of what's built.

Committed $130 million from the Battery Park City Authority to creating or preserving 3,000 units of additional housing, and to boosting subsidies for the city's poorest.

Increased by 62 percent the amount of bonds floated by the city's Housing Development Corp. to private developers for affordable housing projects.

But the mayor also has made a commitment -- more so than previous mayors -- that the city's middle-class should get a slice of the affordable housing pie.

Aides say it is partly an acknowledgment that politically, the issue of affordable housing is creeping up the economic ladder and is now a very real concern in middle-class homes.

Shaun Donovan, the head of the city's Housing Preservation and Development agency, makes no apologies for the shift, noting that federal subsidies are already geared largely toward helping the city's poorest.

Indeed, the federally backed New York City Housing Authority -- long a haven for the city's lowest income earners -- already houses some 418,810 residents, or more people than live in Atlanta.

"If we are going to do anything for teachers and cops and other critical middle-class workers in this city, we are only going to be able to do it with city funding," Donovan said.

"The question," added Donovan, "is do we have the right balance, and we think we do."

That balance right now projects that of the 65,000 units to be built under the New Housing Marketplace program, under 45 percent will be reserved for families of four making less than $50,250 a year, or what the city considers low-income.

Another 38 percent would go to families earning up to $62,800, while the top 16 percent would be available for middle-class families earning up to $144,000 a year, the city says.

Many housing advocates argue that more of those dollars need to be steered back to the city's poorest, and that the mayor's plan -- while sound -- doesn't go far enough.

"It's a good downpayment, but it won't solve the worsening crisis," said Ginny Shubert, coordinator of Housing First!, a coalition of some 300 churches, banks and housing groups.

The group yesterday released an exhaustive study of the city's housing crunch, "A Home for All New Yorkers," that called on the mayor to build 185,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years, more than double what is planned.

Others believe Bloomberg has a blind spot when it comes to another major source of affordable housing: the city's one million rent-stabilized apartments.

The city has lost some 20,000 rent-stablized apartments since 2002 alone, according to the city's Rent Guidelines Board, mostly because of rules allowing landlords to charge what they want once monthly rents edge above $2,000.

Bloomberg has done nothing to seek more control over those rules, now set by the state. And under his watch, the guidelines board has boosted rents more than at any other time since the early '90s.

"Unless we do something to fix that," said Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless, "adding 65,000 units of affordable housing is frankly a drop in the bucket."

But Bloomberg, for his part, says the city is making real progress.

"These aren't just press releases," he said yesterday, an apparent reference to the housing plans of his Democratic challengers. "We've gone out and we've been very creative in getting as much money as we can. And the housing is actually going up."


SEEKING A SOLUTION: New York City is facing a severe affordable housing crunch. Here are some facts, and some of the fixes Mayor Bloomberg is pushing:

THE FACTS:

--32,721 people -- including 13,003 children -- slept in city shelters last night, a near record.

--The percentage of vacant apartments is just 2.9 percent, the lowest rate in 15 years.

--149,789 households are currently waiting for public housing.

Nearly a quarter of tenants pay 50 percent or more of their income on rent.


THE FIXES:

--The Mayor's $3 billion New Housing Marketplace plan would create or preserve 65,000 units of affordable housing by 2008, the largest city commitment in 20 years.

--Rezonings of Manhattan's West Side and the Williamsburg-Greenpoint section of Brooklyn will add another 8,700 units.

--An additional 12,000 units of supportive housing for the formerly homeless are planned.

Sources: Housing First!; NYC Housing Development Corp.

Copyright © 2005, Daily News, New York

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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