New York’s city and state housing crisis is a fact at this point, especially with the influx of asylum seekers. The better question to ask is how leadership is addressing it when many of the proposed initiatives were left out of the state budget this year.
A coalition, including president of the NAACP New York State Conference Hazel Dukes and Mayor Eric Adams, formed to demand housing solutions before the legislative session ends in Albany this week on June 8. Its chances of being included are slim.
Dukes is beyond concerned that no housing legislation is being brought to the forefront. She said that spiked rents, inflation, and a lack of affordable housing options have already made the housing market tenuous for residents, without the additional strain of the asylum seeker crisis. She’s still unsure about why many of the bills centered around bolstering housing and tax incentives were taken out.
“If we don’t have legislation to assist people, we’re going to see homelessness like we’ve never seen before,” said Dukes. “Something’s going to have to give.”
Dukes is joined in the call for more affordable housing production by members of 32BJ SEIU, Mason Tenders District Council of Greater New York, and Laborers Local 79, as well as Senators Andrew Gounardes and Luis Sepúlveda, and Assemblymembers Alex Bores, Kenny Burgos, Brian Cunningham, Eddie Gibbs, Jenifer Rajkumar, and Tony Simone.
RELATED: What’s the plan: NYC & NYS volley asylum-seeker crisis
Dukes’s coalition is currently racing to find an assemblymember and senator who will introduce bills to renew 421-A, a complex tax incentive program for new residential development that expired in June 2022, said the mayor’s office. The city has seen a “significant decline in new housing creation” since then. They added that rents in some places have skyrocketed to pre-pandemic highs.
Adams is thoroughly in the boat for more housing. He has repeatedly spoken about the desperate situation the city is in with finding appropriate housing for newly arrived asylum seekers and the unhoused.
“Our administration won a critical victory for affordable housing and working people with emergency rent relief for NYCHA residents in this year’s state budget—but there is so much more we can and must do to create the affordable housing New Yorkers so desperately need,” said Adams in a statement. “For the last several months and going back to last year, our administration has put forward serious plans to tackle the city’s severe housing shortage. In close partnership with Governor Hochul, our legislative partners, community and labor leaders, and advocates, we will continue to go to bat for working-class New Yorkers in Albany to make these common-sense changes and create much-needed affordable housing.”
Adams’s agenda for action on housing this year included tax incentives to build (affordable housing), regulatory changes to convert unused office space more easily, and the elimination of a zoning cap for housing in midtown Manhattan, said the mayor’s office.
Both Adams and Dukes spoke about pushing back against this idea of NIMBYism (“You can build housing, just not in my neighborhood or backyard”).
“We always have that,” said Dukes. “We should not have people on the street, but when it comes to where we are going to build the houses, ‘not in my backyard’ and ‘how much it costs.’ Those are the battles we’ve been fighting, but this is a crucial time now. This is a crisis.”
According to Reverend Dr. Johnnie Melvin Green Jr., D. Min, CEO of Mobilizing Preachers and Communities (MPAC), the city needs more housing in every borough, but especially in Manhattan south of 96th Street, which is limited by the floor area ratio (FAR) cap. Green said this would be the key to “stopping the mass exodus of Black New Yorkers who are finding it harder and harder to live here.” He hopes that lawmakers upstate will help.
John Sanchez, executive director of the 5 Borough Housing Movement, also emphasized that lifting the FAR cap and expanding office-to-residential conversions would help jumpstart the production of new units. Sanchez said most of the proposed projects would be in neighborhoods that already have dense buildings in Manhattan, so it wouldn’t require bulldozing one- and two- family homes. He said, for instance, the garment district has many empty office buildings the city isn’t profiting from that can be converted into affordable housing if the state does its part.
“I think it would be a shame if the legislature gave itself a 30% raise and then oversaw a state where the homeless population increased by 50% and housing production decreased by 40%,” said Sanchez, referring to a bill Governor Kathy Hochul signed late last December. “One would hope that their work would warrant such an increase.”
The bill gave New York assemblymembers and senators a pay raise of $32,000 for a base salary of $142,000, reported CBS, making them the highest paid legislators in the nation.
Sanchez is also joining in reminding legislators that they need to lobby to get housing initiatives through.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.