With a budget lower than expected and staffing shortings, questions mount about Adams's housing plan

Eric Adams Faces Pressure on New York’s Housing Crisis as Rents Rise, the New York Times report 5/24/22, noting the delays in the mayor's plan to deliver more housing and more affordability. Rather than coming shortly after taking office, it's coming in June.

The City Council has proposed a larger allotment for building and preserving affordable housing than Adams has. As Gothamist summarized it 5/22/22

In the mayor’s executive budget proposal, made public in April, he said he wanted to spend roughly $22 billion on housing over the next 10 years, which housing advocates said worked out to be an average of about $2 billion a year, far short of the $4 billion a year the mayor promised on the campaign trail.

...Of the $4 billion addition to the city’s capital budget, the speaker said she wants to direct $2.5 billion to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and $1.5 billion to New York City Housing Authority...

And the crisis mounts. From the Times:

The survey of the city’s housing stock underscored a longstanding trend of dwindling affordability: Between 2017 and 2021, New York City lost almost 100,000 units that had rented for less than $1,500 per month, while it added 107,000 units that rent for at least $2,300 per month.

Of course spending is not the only tool. Another is a the 421-a tax subsidy, controlled by the state legislature, which likely will lapse. Another is rezonings, and the mayor has pointed to more affluent neighborhoods.

One problem: the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development is short on staff, so much so that, applicants for a certain tax credit program are warned they'd have to wait “up to a year” to get a project manager.

A key project in Harlem?

The Real Deal, which is generally supportive of the real estate industry, on 5/24/22 offered Erik Engquist's A make-or-break moment for NYC’s housing crisis, citing a Harlem project, One45, opposed by local Council Member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who says the rezoning should be 100% affordable rather than only 40% affordable.

Engquist calls "her acceptable number... unworkable, since, among other things, "lenders don’t finance unprofitable projects," and he may be right. But these disputes point to the need for an impartial entity--say, the Independent Budget Office--to analyze these projects, rather than have advocates, lobbyists, and developers trade barbs.

Engquist notes that Council Speaker Adrienne Adams won't try to override the informal policy of member deference, and "Adams has also not lifted a finger."

He criticizes the city’s rezoning process, because the "public review attracts mostly opponents, who browbeat the local Council member into shrinking or rejecting projects." 

But that ignores the huge upside for many rezonings, given the low cost of land, and the maximalist requests developers first make, knowing they have a fallback.

He notes:

Speaker Adams has to get out of her subsidy-only mindset and bring her 50 members along. Brooklyn member Crystal Hudson has shown that she can move beyond skepticism of developers and plan for more housing.

That's a reference to the 870-888 Atlantic Ave. and 1034-1042 Atlantic Ave. rezonings, which came with 35% affordable housing.

An update on the Harlem project

Regardless of how you view this deal, it’s not difficult to understand how a developer coming with these last minute inevitably leads people to believe that all the previous proposals where they plead hardship were just ploys. https://t.co/6xq3oOhJve

— Moses Gates (@MosesNYC) May 29, 2022