ANHD 2016 Building the Community Development Movement
With 421a and Rent Laws set to expire in June 2015, the City and the State are at critical moment. Will we put the public benefit of affordable housing before the private profit interests of real estate developers? Our government officials have the opportunity to send a clear message about our priorities by strengthening the rent laws and reforming 421a so that they serve and protect our communities’ local affordable housing needs.Today, ANHD released our 421a Policy Reform Proposal, posted online HERE. In this report, ANHD outlines the how the 421a Developer’s Tax Break could be completely revamped in order to become a true affordable housing tool that meets the needs of local neighborhoods instead of a billion dollar boondoggle for real estate developers.
ANHD calls to:
- Require that 421a developments make at least 25% of apartments affordable available at 30% AMI level, to serve the 1/3 of New Yorkers struggling the most with housing costs.
- Require on-site affordable apartments in every neighborhood.
- Make all affordable apartments permanently affordable.
- Prohibit double-dipping when 421a is used in conjunction with other affordable housing subsidies.
- Promote mixed-income communities by ensuring the fair and equal treatment of all tenants.
- Ensure that 421a rules are transparent and adhered to by creating a compliance fee to fund the enforcement of tenants’ rights and program rules.
It’s long past time to re-evaluate the 421a Developer’s Tax Break. The City and the State cannot allow such a flawed and outdated program to continue.
Either we Fix the 421a Developers’ Tax Break, remaking it into a true affordable housing program that meets the affordable housing needs of local New Yorkers… or we End it. The current 421a program’s paradigm cannot continue. We cannot afford to subsidize luxury real estate that is unaffordable to average New Yorkers.
Download the full 421a Tax Break: Fix it or End it.
Read more on 421a in ANHD’s 421a Developer’s Tax Break Analysis.
Blog team: Benjamin Dulchin, Barika Williams, Moses Gates, Jonathan Furlong, Emily Goldstein, Ericka Stallings, Jaime Weisberg. Editor, Anne Troy.
FIT IT, I’m a single parent workinf for the department of education. I am about to be evicted and i can’t find an apartment.!!! My community is almost gone, everyone that i was close to have left to Virginia, PA, Florida, Puerto Rico & many other plaCES. wHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT TRYING TO DO? we BUILT THIS CITY!!!
Fix it.
I have 3 grown children. They all live in the city, but are barely able to get by. My one daughter lives with 4 other roommates in order to afford her rent.
My husband and I own a home on Long Island, we love the city (Brooklyn) but cannot afford to retire there. The price we could sell our house at is way below what we could get for a place to live in the city.
Also we have a problem on the requirements for income for affordable housing. We make a little above the requirement but not enough to buy a place in the city. Excuse me but why do the developers get a tax break? I don’t understand? Aren’t they millionaires? It makes no sense at all. You have to change things!
so what I am saying is FIX IT!
This reminds me of Battery Park City when it was first constructed. The idea of more places to live where formally there was nothing was good use of space. Then it was announced that the owners could raise the rents to market rate after the lease was up. Since leases are generally two years at the most, that wouldn’t be good for permanency. People would be uprooted again in a brief period of time because the affordable housing is no longer affordable. It did not take much to realize that given such a break to move people into the city at that time could become a de facto bait and switch. As it turned out all these years later, that is what has happened. Developers claim use of the tax breaks are the only way they can build in the city. It does not just appear, but is the case that new construction for housing is no longer affordable when virtually all of one’s income must be spent on rent alone.
FIX IT!