Governor Cuomo Proposes Comprehensive Housing Plan to Tackle the City’s Housing Crisis
Key Highlights Include Constructing or Preserving 500,000 New Units in a Decade through Aggressive Development While Taking Steps to Keep People in Their Homes
If working people can’t afford to live here, then this won’t be New York anymore. We must stop talking and effectively address our housing crisis or we risk losing the soul of New York City.
- Andrew Cuomo
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, candidate for Mayor of New York City, today unveiled an ambitious plan to tackle New York City’s housing crisis. The plan proposes an extensive blueprint for how to build and preserve affordable housing, build workforce housing for the ‘missing middle', while pursuing policies that help people stay in their homes. Governor Cuomo plans to release a similarly ambitious agenda for the New York City Housing Authority.
"If working people can’t afford to live here, then this won’t be New York anymore. We must stop talking and effectively address our housing crisis or we risk losing the soul of New York City,” Governor Cuomo said. “This plan meets the scale of the crisis. We must build, preserve, and protect—at a pace and scale we’ve never done before.”
Key Components of Governor Cuomo’s Housing Plan:
Expand Affordable Housing Development
- Build or preserve 500,000 new homes over the next decade, two-thirds of which will be affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. Governor Cuomo’s strategies for accomplishing this include ensuring that the new 485-x tax abatement program sufficiently incentivizes affordable housing development – and work with stakeholders to fix the program if it does not. His plan also calls for increased public subsidies for affordable housing, including leveraging New York City pension funds as a source of capital.
Partner with Faith-Based Institutions
- There is also a significant opportunity to partner with faith-based institutions in the development of affordable housing on surplus land that they own, which will bypass bureaucratic barriers to develop affordable housing consistent with the character of their neighborhoods, and it would identify underused assets that can be repurposed for housing. Safeguards on maximum density can be negotiated, but meeting the combined needs of faith-based institutions and the many thousands of New Yorkers in need of housing is too good an opportunity to pass up.
Develop Workforce Opportunities While Addressing the “Missing Middle” in Housing Policy
- Support partnerships like the Cirrus–Trades Council initiative to build affordable and workforce housing. Governor Cuomo believes there is a ‘missing middle’ for households with up to 120% of AMI. This missing middle needs to be addressed as well.
Unlock Development Opportunities
- Accelerate development opportunities for targeted rezoning, including Midtown South and manufacturing zones. The plan would promote conversions of underused office space to housing supported by the new 467-m tax incentive program.
Address Vacant Units and Build Local Consensus for Development
- The plan would bring vacant rent-stabilized units back online through a combination of enforcement and repair subsidies, streamline the permitting process for faster, more efficient project approvals, and prioritize local residents for affordable housing built in their neighborhoods by restoring “community preference".
Establish a New $5 Billion State-City Program of Capital Subsidies for Affordable Housing
- Proposing a new joint State-City capital fund of $5 billion over five years for affordable housing, which would be funded equally by the State and the City over and above their current affordable housing capital commitments. These capital subsidies are more important than ever with the replacement of 421-a by the more costly and restrictive 485-x program, as well as increased costs from higher interest rates and threatened tariffs on lumber and other construction materials. Capital subsidies can bridge the gap in the economics of housing development.
Help Long-term Residents Stay in their Homes
Strengthen Tenant Protections
- Ensure representation by counsel in housing court by expanding income eligibility and outreach. Enforce rent regulations and Good Cause Eviction laws, enhancing HPD and state enforcement capabilities, and combat landlord harassment with stricter penalties and monitoring.
Expand and Streamline Rental Assistance
- Continue use of tenant vouchers like Section 8 and CityFHEPS, while managing financial sustainability. Improve CityFHEPS implementation, including faster landlord payments and combating discrimination.
Accountability and Oversight
Strengthen Citywide Housing Coordination
- Empower a strong Deputy Mayor for Housing cut through bureaucratic barriers and make sure all relevant agencies are aligned in accelerating housing approval and construction. Establish a “Compstat for Housing” to monitor and report on housing production, and policy implementation.
- Immediately address the backlog of thousands of languishing proposed projects by removing unnecessary red tape, and streamlining and expediting the operations of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Address understaffing at HPD, simplify processes, and improve transparency and interagency coordination. Create a one-stop-shop for housing development approvals to minimize delays and red tape.
As Governor, Andrew Cuomo had an ambitious housing agenda, spanning affordable housing development, tenant protection, and measures to combat homelessness. Cuomo entered office at a time of increasing its high rent burdens and rising homelessness in New York City. Over the next decade, the Cuomo administration launched major funding initiatives like “House NY” an initiative that injected $1 billion to preserve housing, championed an unprecedented $20 billion housing plan, negotiated Rent Law renewals in 2011 and 2015 that strengthened tenant protections, enacted the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative in 2016, signed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, and partnered with local governments and nonprofits to address homelessness.
Governor Cuomo’s commitment to housing and addressing homelessness dates back decades. In his 20s, he created the homelessness organization HELP, which continues to be one of the largest homelessness services providers in New York City. In 1991, then-Mayor David Dinkins appointed him as the chair of the Commission on the Homeless, which culminated in a 1992 report titled, "The Way Home: A New Direction in Social Policy." As Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development beginning in 1993, he developed the Continuum of Care strategy, a comprehensive approach designed to help homeless individuals achieve self-sufficiency, which received the prestigious Innovation in American Government award from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Business. As HUD Secretary under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001, focused on a range of housing, anti-poverty, and urban development initiatives.
Details on Cuomo’s Housing Plan Available Here
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