How do you plan to address the issue of affordable housing?

Nearly 30 percent of people are spending half their income on rent. How do you define affordable housing?

Shaun Donovan

We will make an unprecedented investment in New York City neighborhoods by increasing the supply of affordable housing, equitably and inclusively, across all five boroughs.

As commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), I crafted and carried out the largest and most ambitious affordable housing plan in the nation. I boosted the housing plan from a 65,000-unit program to 165,000 units and spurred the revitalization of neighborhoods that had long struggled to recover from the blight and abandonment of the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated an affordable housing crisis in our city that primarily impacts low-income, underserved communities of color. Prior to the pandemic, these communities were already facing systemic disparities that affected their opportunities for fair and affordable housing and economic growth and prosperity. The economic impacts of COVID-19 are serving to destabilize an already at-risk population, and have shown the need for prioritization to ensure these New Yorkers don’t fall through the cracks.

We are committing to the following policies and programs:

• Expand capital funding for affordable housing
• Ensure regulatory agreements match the public investment and need
• Adopt United for Housing’s recommendation to implement a city-state housing partnership for affordable and supportive housing
• Create good-paying jobs for hardworking New Yorkers
• Convert distressed properties into affordable housing
• Implement United for Housing’s recommendation to lead an inter-agency effort to innovate new models, create efficiencies in process, modernize building codes, and streamline approval processes

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Kathryn Garcia

We will focus City investment where it’s needed most and create 50,000 units of deeply affordable  housing (<30% AMI). We will also make it easier, faster, and legal for private partners to build more housing. We have added 500k New Yorkers over the last decade, but only 100k units of new housing – we cannot reduce the housing prices without increasing supply. We will end apartment bans and  discriminatory zoning, and allow duplexes and triplexes to create more options for families. We will  legalize basement apartments, accessory dwelling units, and single-room occupancy (SRO) apartments  as a safe, sustainable and efficient means of providing housing to single-adult households–approximately  one-third of households in New York City. Finally, we will accelerate approvals for new housing  construction, streamline the ULURP and environmental review process as well as permit applications and  inspections at the Buildings Department and sister agencies.

Ray McGuire

My plan would increase the amount of housing in NYC by 10 percent – or 350,000 units – over the next eight years. This will include new rent-regulated housing that will be affordable to New Yorkers at a range of incomes; market-rate housing that will help meet demand and drive down prices, including in neighborhoods where market rents are accessible to middle-income New Yorkers; and existing space that can be activated for affordable residential dwellings.

To reach this 10 percent target, I will deploy a number of coordinated tactics that include: 

• More than doubling the amount of city capital funds being spent on affordable housing construction and focusing the majority of that $2.5B each year on building housing that is affordable for people at 50% or less of Area Median Income.
• Leveraging the market to build more middle and moderate-income housing, including by offering zoning bonuses through a citywide planning process.
• Expanding parameters for legal basement apartments and other accessory dwelling units, such as garage apartments, and expanding no-interest loans to help property owners bring these units up to code.
• Changing zoning requirements and housing regulations to prioritize construction of housing on existing undeveloped and underdeveloped city-owned properties.

Dianne Morales

The Morales Administration would declare housing a right. In the midst of an unprecedented health crisis, high unemployment and our city’s failure to address chronic homelessness, it is imperative to our collective safety and security that every New Yorker has a place to call home—and that home must be dignified, peaceful and safe. But having a roof over one’s head is not where the crisis ends. New York City has been in the middle of a housing and rent affordability crisis for decades. The status quo prioritizes speculation and powerful private interests and has led to displacement, homelessness and exorbitantly high burdens on renters and the city’s working class. This is unacceptable and will change under a Morales administration.

Within the first 100 days of taking office, my administration will provide more secure and guaranteed pathways toward permanent housing for homeless New Yorkers, including the prompt conversion of hotels into permanent support housing and services for families of our 100,000 unhoused school-aged youth. I will also expand the city’s ability to purchase vacant apartments, hotels, commercial and office spaces facing foreclosures and turn them into housing, with a priority for permanent housing for homeless families and individuals. I will support utilizing eminent domain, when necessary, especially for buildings with significant OATH/ECB fines, to create more supportive housing. Further, my administration will prohibit the City from selling or leasing city-owned land to private developers and require the City to review all public land for social housing development purposes. Additionally, I will require the City’s development partnerships to favor nonprofit and mission-driven organizations, Community Development Corporations, and supportive housing, tenants groups and alliances.

I would also appoint a Deputy Mayor responsible for leading and coordinating a citywide, cross-sector effort addressing housing, opportunity and social mobility, including shifting the $3 billion annual shelter budget towards preventative measures, and implementing preventative models that effectively respond to housing displacement and vulnerability. I would bring together a commission tasked with providing a pathway to totally eliminate homelessness in New York City within a reasonable timeframe. We will work with the newly elected Super Majority at the state level to renew the Empire State Supportive Housing Program and integrate its services into our Housing for All policy platform. This consists of bringing a substantial part of housing development out of the speculative for profit market and instead centering mixed income social housing initiatives. I will also fight for adequate rent stabilization and tenant protections to avoid displacement. We will ensure that the city’s supportive housing works side by side with an expansion of public healthcare services including mental health and disability services for the displaced and former homeless. We must also work through economic development policy to support employment programs and a basic income program.

Maya Wiley

I will use the opportunity this crisis creates to leverage empty units into real affordable housing. My housing plan as a whole will be comprehensive, recognizing that keeping public housing public and the creation of more deeply affordable units and housing the homeless, utilizing all the power of government and increasing resources, like the capital construction budget, will be a central part of my citywide affordable housing plan. Rather than focus on unit count, we need to ensure that the housing we build is deeply and permanently affordable. I will focus new construction on majority extremely low income and very low income communities. This includes a focus on building new supportive housing and converting distressed hotels into permanent supportive housing and focusing on building community land trusts and other community ownership vehicles and tools for social housing possibilities.

We need to change the City’s approach to land use and rezonings in ways that are principled. That means land use and rezonings that create and maintain affordable housing, with a focus on deep and permanent affordability over simple unit production. All land use and housing plans should include a fair distribution of resources and development that takes into account community needs and corrects for historic disinvestment and displacement.

As Mayor, I will work for creative solutions to expand our affordable housing stock by purchasing distressed properties and stimulating more non-profit housing development. In addition, I will work with the state to ensure that all new city subsidized developments include deeply and permanently affordable housing.

Vacant luxury housing is the result of increased gentrification and displacement. My administration will protect and preserve our communities by ensuring longtime residents of New York City can remain residents of New York City. As Mayor, I will make it a priority to explore ways for the City to acquire vacant luxury units to convert them into permanently supportive housing. In addition, I support a pied-a-terre tax, which would tax vacant luxury apartments that are not being used as primary residences. This tax could raise over $500 million per year, which would be spent toward efforts to build, improve, and purchase affordable housing options in New York City. Repurposing luxury units and other vacant units in order to serve our homeless population is a critical piece of my commitment toward housing justice and equity.

Andrew Yang

Due to the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have a once in a generation opportunity to transform large swaths of New York City into affordable housing. My comprehensive affordable housing platform aims to capitalize on this opportunity to address New York City’s need for permanently affordable housing for New Yorkers, particularly those at 0-60% AMI. One of my administration’s first affordable housing initiatives would be to offer forgivable grants and regulatory relief to owners of Class B residential buildings and obsolete commercial office buildings who convert their properties to affordable housing and/or supportive housing. I estimate that we can create about 25,000 new units of affordable housing from this program by 2025.

In addition, I would use New York’s existing housing stock more creatively to expand supply. I would reform arcane laws that place arbitrary caps on the number of unrelated individuals who can share dwelling units in multi-family buildings and relax prohibitions on separate and independent living in dwelling units in multi-family builds. I would also ease the restrictions on the creation of rooming units. Reforming these parts of the City code will allow for the creation of more SRO-type residencies and legalize coliving, create thousands of new housing opportunities, much of it affordable. I’m also going to encourage the creation of microunits (also known as tiny homes and Small Efficiency Dwelling Units) by decreasing the Dwelling Unit Factor (the number of dwellings permitted on a lot depending on the allowable FAR) so that buildings with micro-units are permitted additional density and legalize accessory dwelling units (“ADUs”) so that basement occupancies, and additional dwellings built in the backyards of single family homes, are legal.

Finally, I support upzoning dense and transit rich communities and, through a Reformed MIH program in those upzoned areas, I’m going to give additional FAR bonus and density bonus to developers who commit to deep affordability (20% of units affordable to households earning less than 40% of AMI). Buildings using Reformed MIH would be allowed to contain micro-units and would be required to contain 25% three bedroom units, creating deeply affordable housing for New York’s lowest income working families. Expanding access to affordable housing for low income New Yorkers also requires revamping the way the City connects low income New Yorkers to suitable housing. That starts with rethinking “Housing Connect” (the website where income restricted units are marketed) as a mobile first platform accessible through a NYCApp, especially because the only internet connectivity low income New Yorkers often have is through their phones.

Eric Adams

My siblings and I grew up housing insecure to the point where I often brought a plastic bag of clothes to school with me because of fear of eviction. Housing security isn’t theoretical for me, it is real for me. To tackle this crisis, I would:

ADD HOUSING—FOR EVERYONE—IN WEALTHY NEIGHBORHOODS: For years, our rezonings focused on adding apartments in lower-income areas—which often just led to higher-income people moving in, making communities less affordable, and often forcing out longtime residents. Instead, we will build in wealthier areas with a high quality of life, allowing lower-and middle-income New Yorkers to move in

by adding affordable housing and eliminating the community preference rule in those areas, which prevents many New Yorkers from living in desirable neighborhoods.

REPURPOSE CITY OFFICE BUILDINGS: We will convert some City office buildings into 100% affordable housing by taking advantage of more City workers working from home and consolidating workers that will still be in-person to free up space.

ALLOW PRIVATE OFFICE BUILDINGS AND HOTELS TO BECOME HOUSING: The pandemic has unfortunately left many of our hotels and office buildings empty. In some cases, their owners want to convert the buildings to housing, but current City regulations make that either too expensive or too challenging. By making some zoning tweaks and other rule changes, we can facilitate conversions where appropriate and add desperately needed housing stock—particularly at hotels in the outer boroughs.

THINK BIG BY BUILDING SMALL: Outdated rules prevent New York developers from building the kind of small, cheaper micro-units that are common today around the world. Homeowners in single family zones are also prevented from legally leasing “accessory units” like “granny flats”. And single room

occupancy units, or SROs, and basement apartments are still illegal, despite their common use elsewhere. By allowing for all of these to be built or legally used, we will quickly add hundreds-of-thousands of affordable apartments.

GIVE FAITH-BASED INSTITUTIONS THE TOOLS TO PROVIDE HOUSING: Faith-based institutions have the social vision and local understanding to advance affordable and supportive housing projects with excess development rights on their own properties, but they also often do not have the financial or technical capacity to do so. We will partner with faith-based institutions across New York City to leverage these development rights for a public purpose.