City Will Spend $250M To Save 15,000 Affordable Apartments

NEW YORK CITY — Officials will spend $150 million to keep rents low for the next 20 years in 15,000 middle-class apartments around the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday. The money will help landlords pay to repair aging Mitchell-Lama Housing Development buildings over the next eight years, officials said.

The cash infusion, dubbed the Mitchell-Lama Reinvestment Program, is part of the mayor's recently revised goal of creating or preserving 300,000 affordable housing units by 2026. Nearly 20,000 apartments in the 92 city-supervised buildings have opted out of the subsidy program since 1989, the city said.

"We cannot afford to lose one more of these homes," de Blasio said in a statement. "We’re investing to protect them for the seniors and families who helped build our neighborhoods, and for generations to come."

The Mitchell-Lama program, started in 1955, offers subsidized apartments to middle-income families making roughly 80 to 125 percent of the area median income for a family of three, depending on the apartment. About two thirds of the 45,000 apartments in city-supervised buildings are affordable co-ops, while the rest are affordable rentals, officials said.

The city will dole out money to owners of Mitchell-Lama co-ops and rental buildings to fund fixes in exchange for a pledge that those buildings will stay affordable for at least 20 more years, city officials said.

De Blasio's office did not specify how many buildings will get the money or where they are located.

The program is the second piece of de Blasio's plan, announced Tuesday, to build or protect 25,000 affordable homes annually for the next nine years, spending an extra $150 million a year.

The mayor announced the plan at the Ryerson Houses, a 326-unit Mitchell-Lama co-op in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. It drew praise from city and state officials as well as co-op leaders and owners.

"Middle income families have been struggling for decades especially with the opt-out of so many developments from the program," Aleta LaFargue, president of the Manhattan Tenants Association, said in a city news release. "We applaud the Mayor's action as it demonstrates commitment to affordable housing in New York."

But others were not so pleased. A group of protesters opposing the now-stagnant Bedford-Union Armory development in Crown Heights interrupted the mayor, shouting "House the homeless! Kill the deal!"

"All right, get it out of your system," de Blasio told the protesters before they were taken outside, where they continued protesting, according to tweets from the scene.

(Lead image from NYC Housing Connect)