The final fiscal 2021 spending plan staved off cuts to smaller housing programs, but retained a shift of roughly a billion dollars in capital spending on the mayor’s affordability plan.
Resisting budget cuts is just part of the plan, they say. Changing how the housing market works is the deeper goal.
Reacting to the drastic drop in city revenue, Mayor de Blasio has proposed shifting $1 billion in capital spending on his housing plan from this fiscal year and next to later years.
Residents, community groups and the borough president’s office are voicing their concerns over whether benefits promised to the neighborhood are being delivered–and how the COVID-19 budget crunch might affect the city’s ability to make good on the rest of the to-do list.
‘The COVID 19 pandemic boldly underscores the need for housing and health to be coordinated at the front end of planning a development project.’
‘Now is the time to double down on affordable housing, and build on the progress already made under the mayor’s ambitious housing plan. It is not the time to retreat.’
The program aimed to test ways to legalize basement apartments as a way to create new, sanctioned affordable housing units for tenants and help the moderate-income homeowners who might rent some of the spaces out.
De Blasio’s executive budget proposes large shifts in capital funding for his 300,000-unit housing plan—essentially backloading hundreds of millions in capital expenditures to future years, most of which fall beyond his term.
Affordable housing developers, tenant advocacy groups and real-estate operators are grappling with the unprecedented impact of COVID-19 on the economy.
Nearly four years after it was created, with the city having started construction on more than 43,000 housing units under the mayor’s housing plan, only some 2,000 units have been created through the MIH requirement.