“It’s pretty dreadful,” one housing advocate said. “The governor decided to-go drinks and a stadium in Buffalo were more important than housing the homeless and marginalized New Yorkers.”
There’s no question 421a has fueled development—nearly 117,00 units built since 2010 have qualified for the abatement. But over the past two years, the vast majority of income-restricted units were priced for people earning far more than the city median income.
“The governor’s bill maintains many of the core aspects of 421-a that have been vital to our city’s economic success and is a positive first step.”
In her State of the State plan, the governor pitched “a different kind of abatement program” to replace 421-a, which critics see as a developer-friendly policy that siphons nearly $2 billion per year from the municipal property tax pool.
To sell 550 Vanderbilt luxury condos, they’d piggyback onto affordable building well down the block.
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While I applaud the larger conversation taking place around homelessness in New York City and how to prevent it, we need to broaden the discussion to include citizens who are living paycheck to paycheck.’
It’s just one parcel in a city undergoing dramatic development. But here is the view from the Lower East Side on what the departure of a neighborhood supermarket means.
Er, we mean the ‘Affordable New York Housing Program,’ of course.
Legislators largely from outside the city are about to spend our local tax dollars on a plan hatched by developers and unions. And that’s not the weirdest part.
Plus, talk of the landlord crackdown, new money for public housing, smoking and the latest on proposed rezonings.