Affordable and Market-Rate Housing Needed

NEW YORK CITY—During this month's meeting of the B'nai Brith Real Estate division, multifamily developers paid rapt attention to keynote speaker Carl Weisbrod, chairman of the New York City Planning Commission. In a speech entitled “Planning Opportunities to Reduce Inequality,” he laid out just why the city needs more housing—both of the affordable and market rate variety—and what his office plans to do to address that need.

“We have 59,000 people in homeless shelters and 20,000 of those city residents are children,” he said. “For a modern society that's unacceptable.”

“So we're looking at areas of the city where we think we can develop in a healthy way and create more housing than what is currently allowed. We're eyeing East New York, Flushing West and Jamaica.”

He continued, “We will introduce a mandatory inclusionary housing program, whereby all new development in these rezoned areas will require a certain amount of affordable housing. We want to see neighborhoods that don't have market rate housing get it.”

However, Weisbrod asserted, “The mandatory program puts a special burden on us because we want to see housing production generally but if we demand too much, we get nothing; if we demand too little, we leave affordable housing on the table.”

Other programs likely are down the pike, he suggested, but only after careful study. “We are undertaking a financial analysis of housing in today's market, recognizing that there are hot markets, emerging markets and areas with no market, so it's going to have to be on a case-by-case basis, one size doesn't fit all. But we want to make this housing as of right, required and we want to make it work. Those are our three goals.”

And he reminded the audience that affordable housing isn't the only type of development that would be welcomed by the CPC. “It's a growing city so we have to provide for our workforce, not just for the poor.”