De Blasio's housing goals unlikely to change

Nearly three years after then-mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio first mentioned Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (or Zoning) as the linchpin of his affordable housing plan, the debate on this policy has reached a fever pitch.

Supporters of the policy (the details of which you can read about here) have hailed Mandatory Inclusionary as the single most effective tool for creating affordable housing en masse. Detractors, which include nearly every city community board, a host of housing advocates and several City Council members, counter that the mandated Area Median Income levels are not nearly deep enough for low-income New Yorkers who need housing and who fear being priced out of their neighborhoods.

Mandatory Inclusionary, at least as currently designed, is not the panacea for affordable housing development that the administration would have you think. In fact, one city housing official already knows that.

Vicki Been, the commissioner of the city Department of Housing and Preservation, was one of the authors of a 2008 Furman Center study on Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning. The study examined the policy in three different cities – Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. – and found that Inclusionary Zoning policies have had varied success in producing affordable units on a grand scale.

The most successful Inclusionary Zoning policies, such as in San Francisco, also have the most flexibility baked in, especially regarding how densely housing developers can build. If the city wanted to get past the Mandatory Inclusionary impasse, especially in predominantly low-income neighborhoods like East New York, why not allow developers to double the amount of density in return for double the amount of city subsidies? Rents in East New York would be significantly more affordable, and developers regardless will be hard-pressed to find families willing to pay market rate to live in a neighborhood situated so deep in Brooklyn, toward the end of the L train line.

The answer is that the city has foolishly locked itself into its 200,000 affordable-unit goal over 10 years, going against the advice of many housing experts and advocates. If de Blasio, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and his housing team set a more realistic goal – closer to the 165,000-plus affordable units built during the Bloomberg administration – the city would have more flexibility to add subsidies to certain developments and reach deeper levels of affordability in the low-income neighborhoods being rezoned. The 200,000-unit goal limits the amount of subsidy to spread across the city.

To the extent that Mandatory Inclusionary Housing will likely only generate a fraction of the 80,000 affordable units the mayor wants to build, it makes sense to maximize the affordability under that policy, and stave off fears of gentrification in the process. Building 30,000 fewer new affordable units in exchange for lower rents seems like more than a fair trade.

But de Blasio is fond of setting hard benchmarks, and it seems unlikely that he will back off the 200,000-unit number just to satisfy some angry community boards. Instead, look for the administration to soften some of their AMI targets to placate Council members who have to sign off on the plan, and move forward with the plan more or less unchanged.