Cuomo Urged to Spend $4B on Affordable Housing

NEW YORK CITY—A 10-member affordable housing coalition is urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the State Legislature to increase its funding of affordable housing in New York State.

The group sent a letter to the governor today calling for a five-year, $4-billion budget plan that also proposes new policy priorities that will combat what the group calls a housing crisis in the state that has more than half of statewide renters paying more than 30% of income on housing costs, and more than 80,000 people who are homeless across the state.

In addition, the plan (2017-2021) offers recommended strategies to address the New York City Housing Authority capital funding gap and ways to provide additional senior housing to keep pace with a New York City senior population that will grow by 40% over the next 25 years. The affordable housing coalition includes: AARP New York, the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, the Community Preservation Corp., the Corp. for Supportive Housing, Enterprise Community Partners, LeadingAge NY, LISC New York City, the NYS Association for Affordable Housing, the New York Housing Conference and the Supportive Housing Network of New York.

Some of the recommendations include: allocating at least $1 billion in new funding for housing programs, using funds gained from legal settlements with banks; enacting and fund a statewide supportive housing agreement for 35,000 units over the next 10 years, including a total of 30,000 in New York City and 5,000 outside the city; providing annual financing of $175 million for capital repairs in public housing; earmarking $50 million annually to a new Senior Housing Plus Services program; increasing the annual State Low-Income Housing Tax Credit allocation to at least $25 million in order to create housing for seniors; encouraging more mixed income housing and help meet fair housing goals and spending $50 million annually to support affordable homeownership and preserve naturally occurring affordable housing.

"We can only solve New York State's unprecedented housing crisis if we create new strategies and implement aggressive new funding measures that target every population in need," says Jolie Milstein, president and CEO of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing. "Our coalition's five-year, $4 billion statewide proposal provides the state with a roadmap to quickly build and preserve the affordable homes that low- and middle-income New Yorkers so desperately need."

The coalition also recommends to the governor the establishment of a publicly available inventory of state-owned land suitable for affordable housing development, the creation of statewide goals, a statewide strategy to reduce homelessness, the refinement of NYS HCR's new middle income housing program and the continuation of the Mitchell-Lama program and other initiatives that create or preserve moderate- and middle-income housing.