With the City Council set to vote on the ‘City of Yes’ housing plan on Thursday, City Limits has published an op-ed from Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams on the ways in which the plan fits into an overall strategy for housing affordability, and how to go beyond it, entitled ‘How Can New York Be a City of ‘Yes, And?’ In the piece, the Public Advocate questions what comes next after the plan passes.
As the Public Advocate points out, “No measure, no singular vote, will solve the housing crisis that has been building for decades. Addressing housing insecurity, affordability, and homelessness requires not just new construction, but a deconstruction of the root causes and foundational solutions. Only then can we build up our city in a way that lifts up New Yorkers and keeps them in their homes.”
Among the necessary steps put forward are holding developers to strict affordability standards, repairing and maintaining NYCHA, and working to bring tens of thousands of ‘warehoused’ vacant apartments back onto the market through enforcement. As the Public Advocate declares, “ We can’t build our way out of this crisis… Preservation, not merely construction, is an essential part of any serious housing strategy.”
“While the worst private landlords take housing off the market and make rents unaffordable, too often poor conditions in public housing make units unlivable,” he argues. “No amount of new units will address the housing crisis if New Yorkers simply cannot afford to move into them.”
Finally, the Public Advocate demands the administration commit to meaningful affordability policies rather than declare victory, that “This administration wants to trumpet the Council’s pending passage of ‘City of Yes’ as a win, but refuses to implement housing voucher expansion passed by the Council years ago. They are actively preventing the most immediate means of getting New Yorkers into permanent homes, while supporting record rent increases on regulated units.”
The full piece is available online here.
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