ANHD 2016 Building the Community Development Movement
Crain’s poll: 69% of New Yorkers vote for more affordable housing.
But we haven’t been as good at incentivizing affordability. Even with
the New Housing Marketplace, most of the newly constructed units are
market-rate luxury housing. And of our affordable units, only 2/3
are actually unaffordable for the average person in the neighborhood
Click here for ANHD’s Real Affordability report.
One of the tools we have to incentivize both development and
affordability is our zoning authority. We spur development by upzoning
a neighborhood to let developers build taller and denser buildings.
We can also increase affordability by having affordable housing be part
of what’s developed in these newly rezoned neighborhoods.
In 2005, ANHD worked to institute a Voluntary Inclusionary Zoning program
to do just that – incentivize both affordability and development. But once
again, we’ve done a lot better with the “development” part. In fact,
less than 3% of the Multifamily housing developed since 2005 has been
affordable inclusionary housing. Clearly we need to do more.
By 2.23 to 1 margin in a Crain’s online poll that’s still accepting votes, New Yorkers supported the idea of guaranteeing the affordable housing in inclusionary
zones, saying that since an up-zoning increases profits for developers, they
in turn should have to include units for people with modest incomes.
New York now has one of the strongest housing markets in the country.
We no longer have to incentivize and subsidize development at all
costs, the way we did in 1970s and 80s – we now need to focus on the
affordable part of affordable housing development. Our ability to
guarantee the affordable housing we incentivize in newly upzoned areas
is one of the best tools at our disposal, and one New Yorkers think we
need to start using.
Blogger – Moses Gates
ANHD blog team: Benjamin Dulchin, Moses Gates, Ericka Stallings, Jaime Weisberg, Barika Williams. Anne Troy, editor.