NYC Broke Affordable Housing Record In 2017, De Blasio Says

NEW YORK, NY — City officials spent more than $1.1 billion to create and preserve more than 24,000 homes last year, the most in a single year in nearly three decades, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

The city financed the construction of 7,177 new apartments and kept rents down in 17,359 others, officials said. About 48 percent of them house people making less than $33,400 a year or $43,000 for a family of three. Then-Mayor Ed Koch set the previous record in 1989, when the city built or preserved about 23,100 affordable units.

Including last year's numbers, the city funded more than 85,500 affordable homes in de Blasio's first term at a cost of $3.3 billion in city money and $6.2 billion more in borrowing. About two thirds of them have been existing apartments that the city has kept affordable through subsidies.

De Blasio, a Democrat now in his second term, has promised to build or preserve 300,000 affordable housing units by 2026. He upped that goal from 200,000 units last fall and has touted the city's faster-than-expected pace toward accomplishing it.

"Were doing a lot more than just putting shovels in the ground," de Blasio said Tuesday at a news conference in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. "We are putting keys in the hands of New Yorkers who need affordable housing. We're making sure they can keep that affordable housing for the long term."

The city also launched a new online portal Tuesday that puts a variety of affordable housing resources in one place. The portal, dubbed Long Live NY, lets New Yorkers apply to lotteries for affordable apartments, file housing complaints, get help paying rent and access other services.

The Bronx is home to about a third, or 29,158, of the affordable apartments the city has built or preserved in the last four years, according to city housing data posted online. Manhattan is home to about 25,100 and Brooklyn is has about 22,600.

While the city ramped up efforts to house the poorest New Yorkers last year, nearly half the apartments built or protected under de Blasio's affordable housing scheme — 41,659 units — have gone to people making 51 to 80 percent of the area median income, or $42,950 to $68,720 for a family of three.

About 15 percent of the units have gone to the lowest-income New Yorkers making $25,770 or less each year. Some 26 percent of the city's households make $25,000 or less annually, according to the most recent available U.S. Census data.

To measure affordability, the city uses the median income of the New York metropolitan area as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That area includes more affluent suburban counties in the Hudson Valley, which makes the area median income higher than the city's median income — about $55,200, according to Census data.

Some advoacates and lawmakers have argued for using a neighborhood median income, which they say would more accurately measure affordability.

De Blasio has announced several efforts in recent months aimed at protecting more affordable housing. Among them is a plan to turn controversial "cluster" homeless shelters into permanently affordable apartments.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at a World AIDS Day event at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn in December 2017. Photo by Gary Gershoff/Getty Images for Housing Works, Inc. )