Affordable Housing Plan Shuts Out Poorest NYers, Comptroller Says

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio's affordable housing plan leaves a dearth of cheap apartments for New Yorkers who need them most, City Comptroller Scott Stringer argues. A report Stringer's office released Thursday shows a massive gap between the number of very poor families in the city and the number of homes being provided for them.

The mismatch indicates a need for a major shift in the city's approach to the housing crisis, which could be supported by a big change in how home sales are taxed, Stringer said.

"We talk a lot about closing the inequality gap in our city, but leaving households at the edge of homelessness to fend for themselves is not how we’re going to get there," said Stringer, a Democrat. "Instead we need to build more affordable units for our lowest income households."

More than 580,000 households in the city face severe housing pressure because they're putting more than half their income toward rent, living in crowded homes or can't escape homeless shelters, Stringer's report shows. The poorest households account for the bulk of those — more than 396,000 earn $28,170 a year or less.

But only 31,500 homes affordable to those people are included in de Blasio's "Housing New York 2.0" plan, which aims to create or preserve 300,000 affordable units by 2026, the report says. That's barely more than the 28,500 units available to households earning as much as $152,935 a year.

By contrast, more than 166,000 units are meant for families earning up to $75,120, but only about 40,000 households in that income bracket are most at risk of homelessness or displacement, according to the report.

The mayor "has recognized that the plan he originally put forth was not meeting the needs of the people who need this housing the most," Stringer said. "And he has said publicly that there has to be a shift. We have not seen that fundamental shift."

The report gives a bird's eye view of how skewed housing affordability often seems in New York City. For instance, renters needed incomes as high as $199,000 to snag some so-called affordable apartments in one Brooklyn Heights building.

Stringer called for the city to increase its investment in affordable housing by about $500 million to address the misalignment. That includes $370 million a year in additional capital money to build about 84,000 homes affordable to the two lowest income brackets, plus $125 million in operating subsidies to help keep buildings affordable.

The city should also increase the share of new affordable homes set aside for homeless people to 15 percent, Stringer said. Such a proposal reportedly has some support in the City Council. The comptroller also repeated his call to build affordable housing on the city's many vacant lots.

Stringer proposed a new real estate tax scheme to help fund his plans. He would abolish the city's mortgage recording tax, which is charged to anyone who buys a home using a loan. The tax penalizes middle-class New Yorkers who can't afford to make such big purchases with cash, Stringer said.

All buyers would instead only pay a real property transfer tax, which is currently charged on all home purchases. The tax rate would increase with the purchase price, topping out at 8 percent for sales over $10 million, meaning wealthy buyers would pay more while less affluent ones would bear less of a burden.

The proposal would have to be approved by state lawmakers. Stringer said there's a better chance of that happening now that the Democrats will control both houses of the state Legislature starting next year.

Advocates praised Stringer's plan as a bold, unique way to tackle the affordability and homelessness crises, which have not abated under de Blasio.

"If we don’t start making it possible for people like my clients and people like my homeless clients to live in the city, our homeless crisis is just going to get worse and worse," said Judith Goldiner, the attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society's Civil Law Reform Unit.

But a City Hall spokesperson said the Housing New York plan Stringer critiqued is not the entirety of de Blasio's affordable housing strategy. The administration also offers programs such as rental assistance and free legal help for tenants as part of a multi-pronged approach, the spokesperson said.

The city has so far financed more than 110,000 affordable homes, 40 percent of which serve the two poorest income brackets, the spokesperson said.

"Our city is in the grips of an affordability crisis, and the Mayor is confronting it head on," de Blasio spokeswoman Jane Meyer said in a statement. "From creating affordable housing at record levels, to rent freezes and providing free lawyers for tenants facing eviction, this administration is fighting this crisis with every available tool – not just the housing plan being looked at by the Comptroller."

(Lead image: Row houses are seen in Harlem in 2003. Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)