IBO: affordable units more likely to be low- or moderate-income (though that's not the case with AY)

The devil's in the details, as I like to say.

From the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO), WHAT’S THE RENT? A SNAPSHOT OF THE RENTS FOR NEW AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN NEW YORK CITY (or in PDF form, screenshot below):

Most new housing built under the Mayor’s affordable housing plan is marketed to prospective tenants through NYC Housing Connect. To be eligible for an apartment, a tenant’s gross income must fall within a specific range. Income ranges are set based on the income group for which an apartment is reserved (from “extremely low” to “middle income”), with the upper limit of the range increasing with household size. Rents for each apartment, however, are generally a fixed dollar amount. Because rents are generally fixed, different households within each income range pay different shares of their income towards rent. This is different from the federal Section 8 program and public housing, which set rents at 30 percent of a qualified renter’s gross income. IBO reviewed 131 NYC Housing Connect listings for 3,605 new affordable apartments over a recent six-month period, surveying the distribution of rents by income group and by apartment size, as well as rent-to-income ratios.

Note that the units skew toward low- and moderate-income households, which is not the same (so far) with Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park affordable housing. Rather, despite promises of balance, the units so far are disproportionately middle-income.