De Blasio’s affordable housing ‘road map’ includes tiny homes and micro-units

Calling it “Housing New York 2.0,” Mayor Bill de Blasio has just released a new road map to his goal of building and preserving 300,000 affordable New York City homes–100,000 more than his previous pledge. The plan accelerates and expands the production of new housing, fights tenant displacement, creates more housing for seniors and working families and provides new home ownership tools. Among the more technologically advanced strategies outlined are plans to use innovative smaller homes on vacant lots that are too small for traditional housing and the expansion of modular buildings and micro-units.

The new plan introduces initiatives that accelerate the creation of the promised 200,000 affordable homes by two years–by 2022 instead of its original date–and identify a new goal of 300,000 homes by 2026–40 percent of which will be new construction and 60 percent preserved. The new housing plan was announced at New Settlement Apartments in the Bronx, the site of nearly 900 affordable homes across 15 buildings. Built during the Koch Administration, the buildings are being rehabilitated and affordability will be extended for all 893 apartments for an additional 60 years.

Housing New York 2.0 will require the addition of $150 million a year to the current four-year financial plan, bringing the city’s investment in achieving the new and improved goal to about $1.3 billion a year over the next nine years.

Since the launch of Housing New York in 2014, the city has financed the creation or preservation of affordable homes for over 78,000 households, putting it on track to secure more affordable housing in the first four years of the current administration than in any comparable period since 1978. The city has also tripled the share of affordable housing for households earning less than $25,000 and doubled funding for housing construction and preservation.

The new Housing New York 2.0 road map will:

• Create more homes for seniors by setting aside underutilized public lots for new affordable senior housing, and make new and preserved affordable housing accessible to seniors and people with disabilities.
• Build a firewall against displacement in fast-changing neighborhoods by helping non-profits purchase as many as 7,500 traditional rent-stabilized apartment buildings and keep them affordable to current residents.
• Protect affordability at Mitchell-Lama buildings, which represent some of the last already existing affordable homeownership opportunities.
• Unlock affordable homeownership to help low- and moderate-income New Yorkers build equity, improve the quality of their homes, and stabilize New York City neighborhoods by financing construction of coops and condos for first-time home buyers and by offering home repair loans.
• Unlock the potential of vacant lots long considered too small or irregular for traditional housing with innovative smaller homes, and develop more affordable housing on lots long used for parking at existing Mitchell-Lama and federally regulated senior affordable housing complexes.
• Capitalize on advances in technology and innovative design to expand modular building and micro-units that can lower the cost of construction, build new homes faster, and respond to the city’s changing demographics.

The mayor said, “Building on the incredible affordable housing accomplishments of our first term, Housing New York 2.0 commits us to creating 25,000 affordable homes a year and 300,000 homes by 2026. Making New York a fairer city for today and for future generations depends on it.”

See Housing New York 2.0 in its entirety here.

RELATED:

• Mayor de Blasio doubles planned senior housing to 30,000 affordable apartments
• Mayor de Blasio announces new $250M program to keep Mitchell-Lama developments affordable
• De Blasio Ahead of Schedule on Ambitious Affordable Housing Plan
• All affordable housing coverage

All charts via Housing New York 2.0/Office of the Mayor