How "Inclusionary" is de Blasio's Affordable Housing Plan?

In an affordable housing push that Mayor Bill de Blasio framed as a fight for the soul of New York City, the progressive said he would lead the charge by mandating affordable units for new housing developments in six areas targeted for rezoning.

But just how flexible the administration should be in wielding this requirement is still a matter of debate.

Housing advocates applauded the mayor’s emphasis on housing, but some urged the administration to set a standard benchmark for inclusionary zoning, calling for half of all units added in the rezoned areas be affordable to low-income residents. Other experts disagreed, saying that the more flexible approach proposed by city officials has proven effective.

De Blasio, who in his State of the City address Tuesday doubled down on his pledge to expand affordable housing across the five boroughs, cited Astoria Cove as a model for the mandate.

In that planned development, to be constructed on the Queens waterfront, the city reached an agreement this past fall that would classify 27 percent of the more than 1,700 units as affordable. The developer also agreed to make infrastructure investments in exchange for the upzoning and subsidies.

Housing advocates had called for half of the units to be affordable at Astoria Cove as well and criticized the final agreement at the time, while city officials touted the deal as a victory.  

“As a result of the mandatory inclusionary zoning framework adopted by this administration, and—I tip my hat—the City Council’s very tough negotiations, 465 units of affordable housing will be created on this one site alone,” de Blasio said Tuesday, noting it was on a site where prior zoning would not have required any affordable units. “There are many more rezonings like this coming to neighborhoods across the five boroughs.”

After the mayor stepped off the stage at Baruch College’s Mason Hall, Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said the Planning Commission aimed to release a draft of the inclusionary program this spring for targeted areas: East New York, Long Island City, Flushing West, the Jerome Avenue corridor, the Bay Street corridor and East Harlem.

“That will outline the administration’s approach to mandatory inclusionary, which as we’ve said before, will not be a one-size-fits-all approach,” Glen said. “There will be a menu of options that different neighbors and developers can take advantage of.”

But hours later, Real Affordability for All, a coalition of 50 groups seeking to bolster low-income housing, said the city should require half of the units in the projects in question be affordable. The coalition also said that more detailed criteria were needed to ensure units designated for struggling New Yorkers were affordable to low-income families in the vicinity of projects.

“We want to make sure that we get into the details and specifics,” Real Affordability for All spokeswoman Maritza Silva-Farrell said. “Astoria Cove has not proven to be a good model in terms of affordable housing. We are talking about 27 percent being affordable … and also the depth of affordability that we want to see is not happening there.”

Silva-Farrell said too many Astoria Cove units would be market rate and that even the affordable units would not benefit residents of Astoria, where the median income for a family of four was $51,540 in 2013. Under the agreement, 5 percent of the affordable apartments there would be available for those making 60 percent of the median income while 15 percent will go to renters making 80 percent of the median and 7 percent to “middle income” households making 125 percent.

But a blanket mandate for the city could be counterproductive, said Rachel Meltzer, assistant professor of urban policy at the Milano School at the New School. 

“It can be quite dangerous because it assumes all these submarkets are the same, which is not true,” Meltzer said.

More flexible inclusionary zoning programs have boded well for other cities such as San Francisco, while those with more rigid approaches, like Washington, D.C., have not had such success, she said.

“This is going to be a very neighborhood-based approach, which is exactly how inclusionary zoning is supposed to be,” Meltzer said of New York City’s plan.

Meltzer said she expected New York City to mandate the number of affordable units and the size of the subsidy for them based on the profit developers could reap given various projects’ sizes and locations.

De Blasio rounded out his housing policy push by saying the city would add 160,000 market rate homes, in addition to the 80,000 affordable units created and 120,000 preserved it committed to securing by 2024. The mayor said expanding the housing stock would ease the tight housing market and drive down demand.

The administration also plans to spend $36 million contracting lawyers to represent those in rezoned areas who are being harassed by landlords looking to lure in higher paying tenants.The mayor offered plans for 11,250 affordable units in a proposed housing development at Sunnyside Yards as well, although a spokeswoman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo quickly shot down that idea, noting that the MTA currently uses the land and that it would not be available "for any other use in the near term."

Other new proposals include studio apartments for artists on limited incomes, a five-line ferry service with stops in the Rockaway Peninsula and bus-rapid transit routes along Woodhaven Boulevard and Utica Avenue to offset growth. In addition, de Blasio called on Albany to renew and strengthen rent-control laws set to expire in June and allow the city to raise its minimum wage to $13 an hour by next year, with future increases pegged to inflation.