More Pricey Apartments To Be Built On NYCHA Land Under New Plan

NEW YORK — New York City officials hope building a greater number of pricey apartments on public land will help shore up the city's crumbling public housing stock.

As part of a grand plan to tackle $24 billion in repairs to New York City Housing Authority homes over the next decade, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration will let developers erect buildings on NYCHA-owned land in which about three-quarters of the apartments would go for market rates, officials said Wednesday.

The initiative is a shift from the administration's previous approach of requiring half the apartments in such developments to be affordable. The new construction is expected to fund $2 billion worth of repairs affecting 10,000 NYCHA apartments, with the proceeds helping the adjacent developement or others in the neighborhood, officials said.

"This initiative will start quickly," de Blasio, a Democrat, said at a news conference. "It will provide the kind of affordability we need both in terms of protecting NYCHA units, the number one source of affordable housing in New York City, but also creating those new affordable apartments."

NYCHA's previous strategic plan, known as NextGen NYCHA, called for private development on vacant land owned by the housing authority in which half the apartments would be affordable and the other half would be market rate.

The program was expected to generate up to $600 million for the beleaguered housing authority, whose tenants have faced heating failures, mold and myriad other problems. But it reportedly struggled to create enough revenue — Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen called it "a failure," according to Politico New York.

The projects will instead be subject to the city's mandatory inclusionary housing rules, Under the new turnaround plan, dubbed "NYCHA 2.0." Those require 25 or 30 percent of the units to be affordable while the rest can go for more expensive market rates.

"We want to maximize the amount of resources, but we're going to use the mandatory inclusionary housing model, which therefore guarantees a substantial amount of affordable housing at the same time," de Blasio said. "This, to me, is a plan that makes sense for the conditions of NYCHA now."

City officials did not say how many new developments will be built or where they will go. The city expects to move forward with "at least one or two" of the sites next year, Glen said.

The developments under the new scheme could draw heated opposition, as existing plans have. Members of an Upper East Side community board pledged two weeks ago to fight Fetner Properties's 500-foot project planned for the Holmes Towers.

But the projects won't have to go through the city's public land-use review process unless the local City Council member wants to change zoning provisions to allow for larger buildings, Glen said.

The city is also pressing on with its prior commitment to build 10,000 units of entirely affordable housing on NYCHA land, Glen said.

The changed development plan is one piece of NYCHA 2.0, which aims to address a significant portion but not all of the housing authority's nearly $32 billion list of capital needs.

NYCHA also plans to sell about 80 million square feet of development rights called air rights, which will provide for $1 billion in repairs at adjacent complexes, the mayor's office said. And the housing authority announced plans last month to address nearly $13 billion in fixes through an initiative that will hand over the management of 62,000 apartments to private companies.

Additionally, NYCHA announced an initiative to address maintenance issues that includes organizational changes and a program called NYCHA-Stat that will allow for a centralized management review.

The NYCHA 2.0 plan was unveiled two days ahead of a court appearance before the federal judge who rejected the housing authority's June settlement with federal prosecutors. De Blasio said city and federal officials are working on a statement to the judge, who ruled the settlement was not "consistent with the public interest."

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at a news conference about public housing on Wednesday in Brooklyn. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)