Developers of massive new city building projects would be obligated to set aside apartments for poor and working-class tenants under Mayor de Blasio’s 10-year, $41.1 billion affordable-housing program, the mayor announced Monday.
A key part of the plan is a policy requiring that all new housing developments that benefit from rezoning — which will effectively lift height restrictions — set aside a considerable portion of low- and moderate-income units.
Exactly how much affordable housing a developer will be required to include will depend on the neighborhood and its zoning, officials said.
“We are trying to get away from the model where there were eight floors of luxury housing, with two floors of affordable housing over a Duane Reade,” said one administration official. “There was too much of that type in the development in the city for too long.”
Under former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, developers received rezoning upgrades as an “incentive” to build more affordable housing. But in neighborhoods like Williamsburg many developers saw only the incentive for big profits, officials said.
De Blasio called his housing blueprint — which would create 80,000 new affordable housing units and preserve 120,000 existing residences — the “central pillar in the plan against inequality.”
The mayor wants to see a 200 percent jump in the number of “very-low income” housing, covering a four-person family earning $25,151 to $41,950. He also wants a 50 percent increase in “moderate-income” units where a family of four makes $67,121 to $100,680 a year.
To pay for all these apartments, de Blasio is counting on $30 billion from private investors, $8.2 billion from the city, and $2.9 billion in state and federal support, which has yet to be secured.