When it comes to Mayor de Blasio’s latest housing plan, one City Council member says, “The devil’s in the details.” Wrong, says another, “The devil’s in plain sight.”
They’re both right — as last week’s hearings on the plan made painfully clear.
Critics say the mayor’s proposed rules to promote “affordable housing” (and fix practically every other problem under the sun) fall short. Well, yeah: His promises are sky-high.
Plus, his ideas for delivering are so Rube-Goldberg complex that everyone sees things to gripe about.
And de Blasio’s “inequality” mantra only fuels the discontent.
The plan seeks to nudge developers to set aside some of any new apartments they build for low- or middle-income tenants. The builders would subsidize rents in these units; in return, they’d get to put up more market-rate units to help offset the costs.
But, oy, the details. The scheme features a mind-numbing range of variables, from the percentage of subsidized apartments to tenants’ income levels and even the neighborhood’s median earnings.
And Team de Blasio isn’t just trying to get “affordable housing” built. It also aims for greater “economic diversity” in neighborhoods — even as it (rightly) argues that middle-income folks, as well as the poor, can have trouble paying market-rate rents in some areas.
Never mind that, say some advocates, who want builders to offer more units and bigger subsidies for poorer tenants. Some even warn that de Blasio’s plan will speed gentrification and push up rents elsewhere in neighborhoods — a nutty flip on the idea of progress.
The Not-In-My-Back-Yard crowd also hisses at the plan. And construction unions see a chance to demand higher wages.
But builders eye the bottom line: If they can’t make a decent profit, they won’t build. “We are pushing as far as we can,” says de Blasio’s Housing Preservation and Development commissioner, Vicki Been. “If we push too far, we get zero housing.”
The mayor’s minions say they’ll negotiate with the council critics. But whatever numbers they hammer out to socially engineer city housing, they’re doomed to fail in their central goal: to provide below-market units to everyone who “needs” them — which is nearly everyone.
Face it, only the very rich can’t claim they “need” rent help.
Decades of city “affordable housing” efforts — with tools from rent regulation to Section 8 vouchers to tax breaks for developers — haven’t made a dent in the “crisis.”
Instead, celebrities and top earners make headlines hoarding subsidized units, insiders cut the line for the relatively few “affordable” units and the squeeze continues for everyone else.
De Blasio’s plan for 80,000 new subsidized units will yield the same result — assuming he can figure out how to get it passed.