At "City of Yes" info session, City Planning officials say they hope to reach deeper affordability, go below 80% of AMI. But state must deliver tax break.

So I watched some pieces of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity online presentation (video) last Wednesday from the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP).

One pending question, as I noted, concerns the affordable units unlocked by a proposed 20% density bonus, what's called a Universal Affordability Preference (UAP).

Upon unveiling the proposals, DCP Director Dan Garodnick said they hoped to target housing not at 80% of Area Median Income (AMI)--technically "low-income," given high regional AMI, but encompassing six-figure households--but would aim to go below that.

Emphasizing the goal

While he wasn't definitive, John Mangin, head of DCP's Housing Division, emphasized that goal.

"We recognize that AMIs have increased a lot in recent years," Mangin said at one point. "And so we are looking to ensure that where affordability is required in these proposals, that we're doing better than the current 80% AMI that exists in a lot of zoning requirements like inclusionary housing. Not only that, but we also want to enable income averaging to ensure that when new affordable units are created, they serve as broad a possible swath of New York City families, you know, including AMIs down to 30-40%.

"We definitely are working with our sister agency HPD [Department of Housing Preservation and Development] to try to ensure that any requirements in the zoning can do better than the existing 80% AMI," he said.

Later, the AMI issue was raised by a questioner. UAP development "will use income averaging," responded a female DCP colleague. (I didn't get her name.)

So that could include "very low AMIs and higher AMIs to balance that out," she said. That implies over 80% AMI. "We're still talking with our counterparts at HPD... but we think we can do a lot better than the current 80%" of AMI.

The return of 421-a?

Asked what would motivate developers to provide that additional 20% of bulk, required as affordable units, she said it "really underscores the necessity of a renewed tax benefit to support mixed-income multifamily housing."

In other words, this is all premised on the revival, in some form, of the now-expired 421-a tax break. Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a replacement but didn't get legislative approval.

"If and when that gets renewed, then UAP... can be tremendously powerful," she said, noting that, as  presented during the slideshow, had that program been in place since 2014, the city could have had 20,000 more income-restricted units.

"And so UAP will work for 100% affordable developments," she said. "But it's especially powerful if it can also work with mixed-income developments under a renewed tax benefit."