NY Times: Council Must Move Fast on 421-a
While providing a decent summary of the three plans on the table for the 421-a program, The Times takes a Goldilocks stance on the issue. “What [New York City] needs most of all is housing that people can afford,” the paper wrote. “The law needs to be re-tailored to reflect that need.” Fair enough, but…
While providing a decent summary of the three plans on the table for the 421-a program, The Times takes a Goldilocks stance on the issue. “What [New York City] needs most of all is housing that people can afford,” the paper wrote. “The law needs to be re-tailored to reflect that need.” Fair enough, but what about the three plans? Bloomberg’s doesn’t have enough teeth, the paper figures, and the Yassky/Palma/James plan is too anti-development (it “frightens smaller developers and lenders who believe that requiring everyone everywhere in the city to provide housing for low-income residents would make it uneconomical to build housing for moderate-income people, who are also being increasingly frozen out of the market”). By default, Speaker Quinn’s plan is an acceptable compromise. “Although her bill might well be improved by the healthy debate now taking place in the council, it is more generous than the mayor’s original proposal and more flexible — and less threatening to the overall market — than the Palma-Yassky proposal.” More important than the nuances of the bill is the timing: the current law expires at the end of ’07 and given how disfunctional Albany is, The Times reckons that state lawmakers will need an entire year to get anything done.
A Push for Affordable Housing [NY Times]
To add to the deabate:
http://tinyurl.com/ygxlr3
Today’s NYDN article on 421-a
Via our fellow advocate, Phil DePaolo.
The 421-a game still continues to list and roll. I am still hopeful, that despite AM Vito’s power play that may be going on behind the scenes, the the more reasonable 421-a revise put forward by CM Palma (supported heavily by CM’s Yassky and James) will avail over the joke of a reform proposed by Mayor Mike and Speaker Quinn.
Wednesday’s D-Day. To put this all into perspective, AGAIN, here’s a very important stat from the NYDN’s article that shows why 421-a is currently NOT working:
“Changes in the 421-a abatement program are long overdue. It was created in 1971 to promote new housing at a time when the city was losing an average of 5,000 units a year, much of it from arson.
The program, which currently costs the city up to $400 million a year in abated property taxes, has been credited with fostering the construction of more than 110,000 apartments in its 25-year existence. But just 5,445 of those units were for affordable housing – meaning buyable or rentable by families currently earning $37,000 to $42,000 a year.”
Hmmm, that’s only 5% affordable in a program that’s supposed to promote at least 20% affordable housing. Something smell fishy to you?
The NYT really went weak on this topic. they HAD the ability to take a stance, as several of their op-eds and letters tot he editor’s did, but making any indication that a revision to 421-a will slow the housing market is 110% BS.