Housing and City Planning

1: Stop the Madness. Preserve our communities. Cancel debt.

The Moratorium. The Governor and the Legislature have bought previous time through an eviction and foreclosure moratorium through May 2021. This will need multiple extensions before there’s a real solution in place. And all the while, the unpaid rent and mortgage payments build up as debt for people least able to pay.

Boston, evicted. Over 200,000 eviction cases are pending in NYC courts — families who could be homeless as soon as the eviction moratorium is lifted. The size of the eviction crisis is equivalent to the entire population of Boston.

Cancel debt. Here’s my plan:

1. Extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums to March 31, 2022, for residential and small business renters and their landlords.

2. Lead a discussion with the banking industry to restructure mortgages and extend payments by 2 years.

3. Doing this would cancel accrued debt for landlords, making them able to cancel debt for their renters between now and 2022, without risking small landlords being foreclosed on.

4. I would also address property taxes, fees, and other costs through a similar mechanism for small landlords who have needed to take our loans to pay taxes and fees during the moratorium.

2: House the Homeless.

The homeless can be housed in a sensible, safe, rational, and humane manner. To do this, we will partner with the City’s many thought leaders and practitioners to:

1. First, creatively think about temporary emergency housing, and consider all possible resources to bring people to safe shelter swiftly, including providing broadband wifi for students in remote learning; 

2. Then, coordinate the delivery of services for the supportive housing essential to high-need populations; 

3. Finally, we need solutions for long-term housing; the only way to accomplish this is through a major initiative to plan a massive program to build truly affordable housing 

Homelessness is driven by conditions pre-existing the onset of COVID: nearly 50% of homeless families fled domestic violence, and nearly 50% of homeless teenagers fled gender violence in their own homes. We will start treating these as the public health crises they are. 

3: Build more housing. Lower the costs for everyone.

We view the eviction crisis as a proxy for the size of the true need for low-income housing. Increasing the housing supply will lower housing costs for everyone. We have the largest plan to increase housing construction since the Post-WWII era. By increasing the supply of housing across the board, we will achieve greater affordability for everyone.

1. First, increase the City’s portfolio of developable land:

   • Start with a creative approach to re-assessing City property ownership including underutilized property like parking lots, air rights including air rights over roads and rail yards. Seek use changes to increase density. The City’s 18 golf courses represent significant development opportunities, starting with the Trump course in the Bronx. Then, build a massive amount of low-income housing units.

     • How will we pay for it? Through my re-distribution of the City Budget, as described in my REBOOT CITY HALL policy.

     • Pursue creative approaches to lowering development costs, including the costs for construction

     • Give current NYCHA residents the first right to new housing

2. Collect and publish data to demonstrate performance on all issues related to housing.

3. Finally, facilitate the conversion of underutilized office space in commercial buildings to residential and other uses, including arts uses.

4. Address & Fix NYCHA

It seems obvious that the Federal government isn’t going to bless NYCHA with $41 billion needed for necessary repairs. RAD and Blueprint won’t solve NYCHA’s problems; I am opposed to proposals that turn over NYCHA to private control and as Mayor will press the “pause” button on RAD and Blueprint.

I believe we need to consider converting NYCHA to some form of tenant ownership, whether social ownership, limited cooperatives, or other structure that can give tenants more control and allow for debt financing to fund the essential repairs.

I would commit to meeting the demands of fixing the multilayered problems of NYCHA, with full data review, the use of green materials and green building methods. We need to start with assessing where we are at by Initiating data-driven programs to make maintenance issues transparent. We need to make maintenance accountable. Give NYCHA residents first right to new low-income housing as a way to incentivize vacancies to make repairs more efficient.

I am a supporter of the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which, as proposed, would give $48 billion to NYC to fix NYCHA in a green and sustainable way. The residents of New York City, and especially those who live in NYCHA, need mold remediation, rodent and insect extermination, and basic services.

We will look at models, such as Co-op City’s hydroelectric power plant, as an example on how to sustainably develop affordable housing, with green energy.

5. Support community-led rezoning plans against displacement and discriminatory land-use policies primarily intended to benefit the wealthy.

Currently, New York City’s zoning has disparate protections from neighborhood to neighborhood, often determined by socioeconomic status. This leaves communities with the least resources most vulnerable to predatory real estate decisions that displace not only families but also small businesses and their employees and organizations that support these communities.

We support community-led rezoning plans that are representative of the neighborhoods that they intend to serve. These plans, such as the Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan, are intended to expand protections to all New Yorkers and ensure truly affordable housing. Only when New York City neighborhoods are protected with ethical and equitable policies can we achieve this goal.

For more information about the Chinatown Working Group Plan, check out their op-ed, “City’s Backing of Four Luxury Super-Towers Cast Long Shadow Over Two Bridges Community.”