Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

The NYC Neighborhoods Leading, and Lagging, on Affordable Housing

1 Comment

  • Maggie Clarke
    Posted July 8, 2024 at 10:24 am

    I know that the City’s intention has been to increase its population despite environmental and health impacts of doing that and therefore to increase the amount of affordable housing. The MIH program ensures that you only get a small percentage of affordable housing now with the rest being luxury units. How many luxury units can we get for all the oligarchs from across the seas to buy for investment purposes?

    Perhaps the biggest omission in City policy and this article is a failure to notice that the rent stabilized and controlled apartment base is shrinking fast thanks to laws that allowed landlords to gut and then rehab at Great cost newly vacant apartments forever removing from the affordable housing base and turning these into market rate apartments. Furthermore many of the rent stabilized apartments are nearing or over 100 years old now and the landlords do not keep them up. I’ve lived in one for 45 years and my building is that old and I can’t tell you the number of leaks that the landlord delayed in fixing and even had to be brought to court to fix, meanwhile mold growing everywhere . Mysterious partial building collapses are not investigated to see whether bad maintenance practices could be to blame. Multiply this these issues across the old affordable housing stock and realize as they all get older we can either maintain them or let them go. HPD violations do not typically result in any fines at all. They are not a deterrent to bad maintenance . The system is broken and does not prioritize getting leaks fixed, only mold remediation , and it would be great if this paper would investigate. Preservation of affordable housing should be at least as important as building new. But as it is big real estate companies are in charge and drive policy to build build and build. They have no interest in preserving building stock.

Leave a comment

0/5

To better help City Limits know and serve our community, please select all that apply: