The 400 income-restricted units at 5WTC, the only residential project planned for the World Trade Center site, mark an increase from prior proposals but fall short of the 100 percent affordability some advocates had sought.
Bills aimed at helping rent stabilized tenants dig deeper into their rent histories to challenge suspicious increases sailed through the State Assembly, capping off an anticlimactic year for housing policy in Albany. One bill also amends rent regulation rules, limiting how much landlords can charge when they combine, or “frankenstein” apartments.
While Albany leaders failed to pass a comprehensive package of housing legislation this week, some advocates and high-ranking lawmakers have been working on a pair of bills they say could strengthen protections for tenants across New York City’s stock of roughly 1 million rent stabilized apartments.
With six weeks left until the end of the legislative session, Hochul is already looking ahead, insisting that she will work with Senate and Assembly leaders to address New York’s shortage of affordable homes—a conversation that could carry over into next year.
A medida que se acerca la fecha límite del presupuesto del estado, los legisladores demócratas de Queens están en desacuerdo sobre si debe incluir una vía para legalizar los apartamentos en sótanos y subterráneos de la ciudad.
As the state’s budget deadline approaches, Queens democratic lawmakers are at odds over whether it should include a path for legalizing the city’s basement and cellar apartments.
While Gov. Kathy Hochul included a pathway to basement legalization in her February budget proposal, the word ‘cellar’ is absent from her plan. The two terms may be indistinguishable to most property owners, but they’re different under zoning and dwelling laws, and excluding cellars from the state’s plan would omit a significant swath of below-grade housing stock from potential conversion, advocates say.
The governor’s proposed budget did not include funding for the state-run Homeowner Protection Program, or HOPP, a network of legal service providers and counselors aimed at preventing foreclosures. Program supporters say the omission ‘makes no sense’ as New York grapples with a housing crisis, which Hochul’s administration has centered as a policy focus this year.
“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.”
The State Senate and Assembly included a quarter-billion dollars to fund the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), which would create a new rent voucher for New Yorkers experiencing or at-risk of homelessness—including immigrants without legal status—with values pegged to fair market rent levels.
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