“For many nonprofit building owners like us, it is not a question of if we will be able to keep these buildings as supportive housing; rather, it is a question of how long we can afford to.”
The so-called Fair Housing Framework, sponsored by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and passed unanimously by the Council Thursday, will task city agencies with creating a housing plan every five years that includes production targets for each of city’s 59 community districts—though stops short of mandating development.
Political calculus around a City Council race in the East Bronx has slowed the approval process for a plan to house seriously ill people leaving jail, and could cue up a test: whether the Council is willing to override opposition from one of their own.
A 2019 plan to expand the Justice Involved Supportive Housing program would satisfy a commitment in former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Points of Agreement to close the city’s notorious jail on Rikers Island. The existing operators aren’t biting.
While the Department of Social Services says more people were accepted into supportive housing last year than the year prior, a new report shows persistent barriers and rejections, including some that violate the city’s own guidance.
After dropping the year before, affordable housing production was up again during the 12-month span that ended June 30, officials said Thursday—what advocates say is a welcomed boost but still a far cry from what’s needed as the city struggles to address record-high levels of homelessness.
An inaugural city report groups together shelter headcounts from five municipal systems, revealing a truer—and larger—picture of the homelessness crisis than the often-cited Department of Homeless Services count.
City Limits received Merit Awards in two categories, investigative and environmental journalism, for reporting that revealed substandard conditions and other problems in the city’s supportive housing network, and another story that mapped the neighborhoods with the most persistent heat and hot water complaints among tenants.
“For decades, the government agencies that oversee and fund the supportive housing systems have disregarded the voices and needs of applicants and tenants, and instead prioritized the needs of providers, landlords, and developers.”
It’s been an eventful year in New York City housing. Mayor Eric Adams launched a new plan for housing production and a controversial approach to street homelessness. At the same time, the city’s homeless shelter population reached historic highs this year, fueled in part by an increase in migrants from the southern border and by soaring rent costs, including the biggest price hike for rent-stabilized apartments in nearly a decade.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
