Last June, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, stood before scores of older New Yorkers outside City Hall to celebrate the news that this year’s capital budget would include $500 million to build new housing for low-income seniors.
Yet, nearly a year later, it turns out that the money wasn’t in the budget, the plan wasn’t new and the senior housing envisioned hasn’t been built or financed.
Mr. Johnson told The Times that he thought the city had committed $500 million to the initiative. But de Blasio administration officials say that it’s all a misunderstanding and that the $500 million was the project’s total cost to build about 1,000 apartments over several years. The city’s share would be $100 million, a de Blasio spokeswoman said, and the rest would be financed by a mix of low-income housing tax credits and Section 8 dollars, from the federal program to subsidize housing for low- and moderate-income Americans.
But that’s not what people were led to believe, and the truth was revealed only after the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, asked Mr. de Blasio in March for an update on the project. In response, the de Blasio administration wrote that the $500 million wasn’t in this year’s budget.
Tawana Myers, a community activist from Brooklyn who lobbied the mayor for senior housing for years with the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, said the city should simply honor its promise.
“We fought for this money,” she told The Times, recalling years of rallies. “We came out in the rain, in wheelchairs.”
It’s distressing that Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Johnson misled older, low-income New Yorkers, 200,000 of whom are on a waiting list for affordable housing.
That the mayor seems content to slow-walk affordable housing for seniors is simply bad policy.
Building more of these apartments could ease the housing crisis across New York. An estimated 28,600 older New Yorkers are living in New York City Housing Authority apartments that are larger than they need, according to a 2017 report from the city’s Independent Budget Office. Many of them raised families in two- and three-bedroom apartments but their adult children no longer live at home.
New, smaller homes for some of these seniors can free up many of these apartments for the more than 20,000 children and their families who live in the city’s shelter system.
A model, of sorts, is an 80-unit development on a former Housing Authority parking lot in East New York, Brooklyn. Built by the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation and the East Brooklyn Congregations with rare federal funding, it has allowed seniors to free up apartments in nearby public housing since it opened in 2015.
Vicki Been, who was appointed deputy mayor for housing and economic development last month, said senior housing is a top priority for the mayor, although she said she regretted the “loose language” last June about the $500 million commitment.
A De Blasio spokeswoman, Jane Meyer, said that the “commitment is the same today as it was last June” and that the initiative was always part of the city’s larger housing plan for seniors. “We recognize there was public confusion about the details of this plan, and we wish we had communicated better from the start, but we never backtracked on our commitment,” she said in a statement.
The mayor has shown little urgency around building these 1,000 apartments. City Hall has issued only one of the initiative’s six requests for development proposals, and the other five won’t come until June 2020. Ms. Meyer said the homes are expected to be built by 2024.
This is part of the mayor’s previously announced plan to build 9,000 affordable apartments for seniors, and to build and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing over all, by 2026. The administration has built 3,785 apartments for low-income seniors so far and financed 7,677 others.
On Tuesday, hundreds of angry seniors gathered on the steps of City Hall to hold the mayor to his promise from June.
“Missing,” one woman’s sign read. “1. $500 million. 2. An Honest Mayor.”
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Mayor de Blasio, Keep Your Promise on Senior Housing
Opinion | Mayor de Blasio, Keep Your Promise on Senior Housing
Last June, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, stood before scores of older New Yorkers outside City Hall to celebrate the news that this year’s capital budget would include $500 million to build new housing for low-income seniors.
Yet, nearly a year later, it turns out that the money wasn’t in the budget, the plan wasn’t new and the senior housing envisioned hasn’t been built or financed.
Mr. Johnson told The Times that he thought the city had committed $500 million to the initiative. But de Blasio administration officials say that it’s all a misunderstanding and that the $500 million was the project’s total cost to build about 1,000 apartments over several years. The city’s share would be $100 million, a de Blasio spokeswoman said, and the rest would be financed by a mix of low-income housing tax credits and Section 8 dollars, from the federal program to subsidize housing for low- and moderate-income Americans.
But that’s not what people were led to believe, and the truth was revealed only after the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, asked Mr. de Blasio in March for an update on the project. In response, the de Blasio administration wrote that the $500 million wasn’t in this year’s budget.
Tawana Myers, a community activist from Brooklyn who lobbied the mayor for senior housing for years with the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, said the city should simply honor its promise.
“We fought for this money,” she told The Times, recalling years of rallies. “We came out in the rain, in wheelchairs.”
It’s distressing that Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Johnson misled older, low-income New Yorkers, 200,000 of whom are on a waiting list for affordable housing.
That the mayor seems content to slow-walk affordable housing for seniors is simply bad policy.
Building more of these apartments could ease the housing crisis across New York. An estimated 28,600 older New Yorkers are living in New York City Housing Authority apartments that are larger than they need, according to a 2017 report from the city’s Independent Budget Office. Many of them raised families in two- and three-bedroom apartments but their adult children no longer live at home.
New, smaller homes for some of these seniors can free up many of these apartments for the more than 20,000 children and their families who live in the city’s shelter system.
A model, of sorts, is an 80-unit development on a former Housing Authority parking lot in East New York, Brooklyn. Built by the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation and the East Brooklyn Congregations with rare federal funding, it has allowed seniors to free up apartments in nearby public housing since it opened in 2015.
Vicki Been, who was appointed deputy mayor for housing and economic development last month, said senior housing is a top priority for the mayor, although she said she regretted the “loose language” last June about the $500 million commitment.
A De Blasio spokeswoman, Jane Meyer, said that the “commitment is the same today as it was last June” and that the initiative was always part of the city’s larger housing plan for seniors. “We recognize there was public confusion about the details of this plan, and we wish we had communicated better from the start, but we never backtracked on our commitment,” she said in a statement.
The mayor has shown little urgency around building these 1,000 apartments. City Hall has issued only one of the initiative’s six requests for development proposals, and the other five won’t come until June 2020. Ms. Meyer said the homes are expected to be built by 2024.
This is part of the mayor’s previously announced plan to build 9,000 affordable apartments for seniors, and to build and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing over all, by 2026. The administration has built 3,785 apartments for low-income seniors so far and financed 7,677 others.
On Tuesday, hundreds of angry seniors gathered on the steps of City Hall to hold the mayor to his promise from June.
“Missing,” one woman’s sign read. “1. $500 million. 2. An Honest Mayor.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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