New York City

Affordable housing at forefront of de Blasio’s 2015 agenda

East New York studied for rezoning

February 3, 2015 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Affordable housing was the centerpiece of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s State of the City address on Tuesday. Shown above is the city’s rendering of what Pitkin Avenue in East New York might look like after a planned rezoning. Rendering courtesy of the Department of City Planning
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Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that affordable housing would be the centerpiece of his administration’s plan to fight inequality and address what the mayor calls the “tale of two cities,” in Tuesday’s State of the City address delivered at Baruch College in Manhattan.

“Nothing more clearly expresses the inequality gap, the opportunity gap, than the soaring cost of housing,” he said.

De Blasio committed to building 80,000 new affordable units by 2024, and to preserving 120,000 already existing affordable units.

This would amount to “two times the annual rate of the last 25 years,” de Blasio said, saying that this number of units would house 200,000 residents. “That’s more people than within the city limits of Miami,” he noted.

The initiative also includes building 160,000 units of market rate housing, de Blasio said.

To build all this housing, de Blasio proposed rezoning neighborhoods in each borough. In these neighborhoods, a new policy would require all new housing to include affordable units.

In Brooklyn, East New York is one of the first six neighborhoods being studied for rezoning.

Other target neighborhoods include Long Island City in Queens, Jerome Avenue Corridor  in the Bronx, Flushing West in Queens, the Bay Street Corridor in Staten Island and East Harlem in Manhattan.

To make isolated areas of the city more accessible, de Blasio announced the launch of a five-borough ferry system with new landings in Red Hook, South Brooklyn, Astoria, the Rockaways, Soundview and the Lower East Side.

The cost would be “the same as the MetroCard fare,” de Blasio said. Service will launch in 2017 and spur new commercial development in the outer boroughs.

The city also plans to expand bus rapid transit to reach 400,000 riders by implementing 13 new routes through 2017. He cited Utica Ave, in Brooklyn as one place where new routes will roll out.

Other Commitments

De Blasio called for an increase in the minimum wage, committing to fight for $13 an hour next year. With an index for inflation, that would rise to roughly $15 by 2019.

He pledged to end chronic homelessness for veterans this year. He also promised to provide 10,000 affordable housing units for seniors and 1,500 affordable live-work housing units for artists and musicians, with 500 dedicated affordable work spaces as well.

He also called for stronger rent regulations and enforcement from Albany, and promised free legal representation in the rezoned areas for tenants fighting landlord harassment.

On the subject of gentrification, de Blasio said he rejected the notion that New Yorkers can’t have both clean, safe neighborhoods and affordability.

“That’s a false choice,” he said. He said that his immigrant grandmother, Anna Briganti, would have called that “una cavolata,” or a “foolish statement.”

As de Blasio ended his speech and politicians shook hands, the folk song “If I had a Hammer” struck up.

 

Update: On Tuesday afternoon Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams commented, “Affordable housing has been a significant focus of my administration, and I am greatly heartened that it has been a focus of Mayor de Blasio’s as well.”

Adams applauded de Blasio’s expansion of bus rapid transit to Utica Avenue, and his commitment to a five-borough ferry system “that will affordably connect residents of south Brooklyn to the rest of the city, in addition to expanding economic development to neighborhoods in every corner of our borough.”

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