New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has proposed a $500 million initiative to realign the city's affordable housing plan.
His
Stringer also called for eliminating the mortgage recording tax while converting the real property transfer tax to a graduated levy. The tax changes, which would need state legislative approval, could raise up to $400 million annually.
Mayor Bill de Blasio's Housing New York plan "is not aligned with the need," Stringer told reporters Thursday at the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan.
A message seeking comment was left with de Blasio's press office.
"Our proposal not only provides new units for some of the lowest income households and sets aside more housing for homeless families, it funds it through a new and progressive tax overhaul that makes it easier for middle-class families to purchase a home," he said.
Stringer renewed his call to create a land bank for city-owned properties for Permanently Affordable Housing. He proposed such a move in a February 2016 report,
According to Stringer, about 25 land banks statewide take control and develop abandoned properties. Enabling bills have sat before the City Council for three years.
Stringer also called for tripling the homeless set-aside to 15% from 5%, citing the increase in homeless people sleeping on city streets and in commercial hotels.
He also said new affordable units could ease the waiting-list of roughly 200,000 people at New York Housing Authority units.
"We've just watched an unfolding NYCHA crisis [over] the notion that we were not essentially preserving the very units that we built and had, and now we've sort of all come acropper because we've left and deferred maintenance for much too long," said David Jones, executive director of the antipoverty nonprofit Community Service Society.
NYCHA has been embroiled in its own crisis related to accusations of mismanagement and corruption. The latest NYCHA shoe to drop came Wednesday when Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s office unsealed indictments alleging three top officials with falsely certifying that elevators were inspected.
"One thing I don't want to do is pit one group of struggling New Yorkers against another," said Stringer. "NYCHA does need revenue, NYCHA does need a real plan, but right now we are in the midst of a 10-year affordable plan that needs to be shifted."
De Blasio announced last week that 62,000 NYCHA units would receive comprehensive repairs.
The tax-law change may be an easier lift after Democrats won control of the state Senate Nov. 6, but the graduated real property transfer tax amounts to a de-facto millionaire's tax, which could fight for attention with a similar de Blasio initiative designed to help fund mass transit.
And despite the post-election change in Albany, raising taxes still poses a challenge.
"We are beginning conversations with legislators, and they are going well," Stringer said. "The state of play has fundamentally changed. Obviously there are priorities like renewing and strengthening the rent laws, and they have a lot on their plate, but this can get done now because we have like-minded people who understand the housing crisis.
"This is not dead on arrival. This proposal will be a welcome solution to the biggest crisis we have in our state, which is unaffordability in so many of our communities."
