Gov. Cuomo’s $20 billion housing plan remains undefined, 421-a is still dead and proposals to alter rent regulations or repeal a cap on building height look unlikely to move.
Gotham Gazette and City Limits take a fair and balanced approach to running through the week’s biggest housing stories.
Gotham Gazette and City Limits review the week in housing policy news, from the Democratic candidates touring NYCHA buildings, to Mayor de Blasio winning another vote in favor of rezoning.
After failed talks between developers and labor unions, the real-estate tax break lapsed last month, threatening the mayor’s housing plan. Who will get to shape the next version of the costly exemption?
The state and city have cracked down on a number of landlords who get 421-a tax benefits but don’t follow rent-regulation rules. But some reports indicate a wider problem—one that a few tenants, like the ones at 125 Court Street in Brooklyn, say they are battling on their own.
Mayor de Blasio saw hopes for permanent mayoral control of schools dashed at the state capitol, while tenant leaders decried Gov. Cuomo’s lack of action on their behalf.
Ambitions to kill it are dashed. Hopes to reform it are faint. The smart money is now on legislators renewing 421-a as is for a very short spell. Here’s a preview of what we’ll be arguing about in, say, December.
Advocates disputed media reports that efforts to reform 421-a and repeal vacancy decontrol—two priorities of Mayor de Blasio—were dead, as a report found a huge loss of affordable apartments from 2002 to 2014.
The tax break now at the center of negotiations in Albany over essential city housing policies is really rather complicated. Here are the basics.
Depending on whom you ask, the 421-a tax exemption is an inexcusable boondoggle, an indispensable economic engine or a flawed but useful tool that can be salvaged. Let’s start simply: Who’s getting it?
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