Mayor de Blasio today brings up for City Council consideration a plan to create affordable housing by requiring real estate developers to offer up to 30% of their units to the poor and middle class.
No city in America has ever gone so far. No piece of the mayor’s plan to build 80,000 new affordable units would do more to advance the cause.
Under the plan, builders are to charge reduced rents on some of their units. The more you force down those rents, the harder you make it for a landlord to set apartments aside.
LOW-WAGE WORKERS RIP DE BLASIO’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN
The Council’s 19-member Progressive Caucus, which includes Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, is about to test those laws of economics by pushing regulations requiring buildings to lease more apartments for less money than de Blasio seeks.
By overreaching, they threaten to curtail de Blasio’s affordable housing goals, which are already threatened by the death of a tax break because the Legislature and Gov. Cuomo heedlessly intervened to boost wages for construction workers.
Analyses shared by City Hall offer no grounds to doubt that the plan before the Council pushes affordable housing mandates as far as dollars allow.
Although de Blasio offers billions to subsidize lower rents, the Council progressives say he must write promises into law.
They’re playing with dynamite. Demand too much and projects become financially infeasible. Then will come lawsuits to end the affordable housing mandates outright.
Struggling to pay rent, New Yorkers in crying need of housing can’t afford this wild-eyed purist political posturing.
