When Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, he introduced a $41 billion plan to build and protect 200,000 affordable apartments by 2024. And that project seems to be moving right along, with the 2017 fiscal year (which began July 1, 2016, and ended on June 30) being the most successful period yet, according to the mayor’s office.
Per a press release, the de Blasio administration has secured (meaning either preserved or built from the ground-up) more than 24,000 units of affordable housing; that number is the highest overall production the city has seen since 1989.
Of the units financed, more than 40 percent are for families earning less than $43,000 a year, and more than 16 percent are for families of three earning less that $26,000 a year. Production of housing for formerly homeless families was also at an all-time high, with 2,571 new units, breaking the previous 2016 record of 1,907, and bringing the total up to 6,533. And finally, there were also 929 new affordable senior apartments in the city, bringing the total to 4,627, or a third of the way to the administration’s goal of 15,000.
The mayor’s housing plan—which is, so far, “on budget and ahead of schedule,” the release points out—has brought a total of 77,651 affordable homes and apartments to the city over the last three years, the most (again) for any three-year period in HPD’s history.
“These apartments aren’t just expanding the housing supply; they directly address the affordability problem with tightly regulated rents governed by the city, tied to the incomes of their tenants,” the mayor wrote in a Daily News op-ed heralding the numbers. “[W]e build for everyone, because we want to remain a city for everyone.”
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