What is the “Block by Block” housing plan?
Mayor Mamdani and his administration released a plan outlining how they would address ongoing housing shortages in New York City on May 25, just as the unofficial start of summer kicked off.
At 100 pages long, the plan packs a lot of detail. To distill a few key highlights, the plan includes:
- Building 200,000 new affordable, rent-stabilized homes and preserving another 200,000 existing homes over the next decade. Build 8,000 new affordable apartments in fiscal year 2027 and 2028 to start.
- Adding $5.6 to NYCHA capital funding to repair buildings in serious need of repair. Increase the partnership between NYCHA and private developers to get this work done.
- Use a new program called Fix the City to go after “bad actor” landlords who’ve routinely neglected their buildings.
Read more about the plan in City and State NY.
What are people saying about the Mayor’s Block by Block housing plan?
- Tenant power: Part of the plan addresses ways to make it easier for tenants to buy out buildings from bad landlords or take over ownership in other ways. If successful, these reforms could help increase tenant power—though such attempts to buy out buildings are quite rare. Read more in Gothamist.
- Serving high-need renters: Advocacy leaders appreciate the focus on extremely low-income renters: Thirty percent of those 16,000 apartments would be earmarked for “extremely low-income” residents — those that earn less than 30 percent of the Area Median Income. Twenty percent would be for “very low-income” New Yorkers, those with households earning between 31 and 50 percent of AMI. Open New York and the New York Housing Conference have both praised this part of the effort. https://www.multihousingnews.com/unpacking-mamdanis-new-housing-plan/
- Pathways to faster development: “The city also wants to cut the time it takes to get affordable housing built and has issued a set of reforms called Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development, or SPEED“, writes Gail Kalinoski for Multi-Housing News. Block by Block outlines plans to speed up environmental review and pre-certification processes. The administration’s plan also suggests assigning centralized project managers to guide buildings through the process.
- Concerns for rent-stabilized landlords: New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos warns the plan does not help landlords who own buildings with primarily rent-stabilized tenants. “Thousands of buildings are bankrupt. Yet the administration continues to propose half-measures and small fixes around the edges,” says Burgos, who points out that many affordable housing units are in deep disrepair and landlords lack the means to renovate.
- Innovative and detailed thinking: The New York Daily News praises the innovative thinking behind the plan. They write that thinking big and bold, like proposing a major housing development in Sunnyside Yards, is encouraging. They also mention some of the less flashy proposal elements, writing, “Putting city funding behind a new insurance program that could potentially help mitigate the enormous costs of necessary insurance might not sound quite as slick as the promise of raising a new neighborhood, but it is these more boring systemic issues — also including zoning and regulatory clunkiness — that often throw the biggest roadblocks against resolving the housing crisis.”
We will continue to look forward to parts of this plan becoming a reality, especially the building of new units and the repair of existing units. With an apartment vacancy rate of only 1.4%, bringing more apartments to market is the only way to stop the squeeze.