By Michael Lappin.

Published April 6, 2023

A detriment to building sufficient affordable housing is the long and laborious path projects must go through to reach completion. Projects built via the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a major source of affordable housing, have multiple sources of financing and long and complicated processing requirements. In New York City, from the time an application is accepted to a construction start, two to three years can elapse.

Add to that the building out of a project, followed by complicated rent up protocols, and the total process, from start to being fully leased and operational, can take six years or more. If a project requires rezoning and/or sites transferred from public to private ownership, the time period may be even longer, with no guarantee of success. Both Gov. Kathy Hochul’s housing initiative and Mayor Eric Adam’s  BLAST plan are designed to improve the latter processes. (MORE)

 

CITYLIMITS Opinion: A Slow But Accelerating Crisis—Preserving Affordable Housing for Up to 1.4 Million NYers

By Michael D. Lappin. Published February 8, 2022

Lost in New York City’s tempestuous legislative battles over rent regulation is the fact that the largest number of low- and moderate-income residents in the city live in privately owned rent-regulated housing. This often leads to a blind spot in city housing policy.

According to the last New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (HVS) published in 2017 (the 2020 HVS was delayed and will be available later this year), an estimated 1.4 million low- and moderate-income New Yorkers live in privately owned, rent-regulated housing. These tenants—retirees, service workers, new immigrants—live in households earning up to 80 percent of the area median income. (MORE)