We're probably going down the tubes no matter what, but here's where the candidates stand on housing. So far, no free IPads for every household. Much more at this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/14/ignore-anthony-weiner-heres-what-matters-in-the-nyc-mayors-race/
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De Blasio was limited to stuff like
shaming bad landlords in his capacity as public advocate, but he has a
quite detailed housing plan for his mayoral campaign, which is broadly similar to a plan his public advocate’s office
released.
He is a supporter of rent control. “As mayor, he will fight to retake
control of rent rules from Albany, so we can make our own decisions
again,” he
writes
in the plan. “Bill de Blasio will also support tenants fighting to
maintain the affordability of their homes through organizing efforts in
complexes like Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Independence Plaza,
and Riverton.” He wants to
freeze rents at all rent stabilized apartments
Besides that, his strategy relies heavily
on “inclusive zoning,” a practice wherein developers are obliged to set
aside a portion of housing to low-income families, to be sold at
below-market rates; it basically
functions
as a tax on housing development with proceeds directed to low-income
households. De Blasio wants to rely on that and his other proposals to
create or preserve 200,000 affordable units. Inclusionary zoning is a
good way
to help families stay put in the face of gentrification, if that’s a
priority the city wants to have, but the policy has many of the
downsides that price ceilings usually have. Plus inclusionary zoning
only works if low-income residents can get mortgages. As Lydia has
explained, that
often isn’t the case, at least for condos.
De Blasio also wants to apply the same tax
to big vacant lots as to commercial properties, which reflects a pretty
longstanding preference economists have for
land taxes rather than property taxes. He has a long record of supporting
increased density, including backing the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, supporting
“granny flats”, and
easier transference
of development rights within neighborhoods. He supports making Section 8
vouchers available to homeless families, a move Bloomberg has
opposed as unfeasible.
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Quinn is, if anything,
even fonder of inclusionary zoning than de Blasio. She wants to
create 40,000 middle-class housing units over 10 years, create or preserve
80,000 units,
freeze rents at all rent-stabilized apartments,
convert
many more market-rate apartments to below-market rate, and make units
“permanently affordable.” “Currently the affordability requirements for
most subsidized apartments expire after 20 or 30 years, which means
residents may be priced out of their homes and the middle class gets
priced out of entire neighborhoods,” her Web site explains. “Chris will
work with her colleagues in Albany to pass a Permanent Affordability Act
giving us a new financing tool that will allow us to keep units
affordable indefinitely.”
Again, that’s a really good policy for
those who can get the apartments in question, and is an effective way to
fight gentrification, but it drives up other costs and prevents new
people from moving to New York. “That’s great for people who win
affordable housing lotteries and get below-market rate rents,” as Josh
Barro
says.
“But the set-asides also reduce the returns to developers, which
reduces the amount of housing stock that gets built, which drives up
market rents for everybody else.” That’s what
seems to have happened under Boston’s inclusionary zoning law.
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Thompson sees
Quinn’s 80,000 affordable housing units created or preserved and raises
her another 40,000, which still puts him under de Blasio’s 200,000-unit
pledge. He wants to use available federal and state subsidies to fund
50,000, get another 50,000 by organizing new loan agreements with
existing landlords, and get the final 20,000 by using vacant properties
controlled by the government. Like de Blasio, he wants to return control
of rent restrictions to the city. He
wants to “preserve rent-stabilized, rent-controlled, and Mitchell-Lama housing,” the latter being a kind of
housing subsidy in New York State. When he was the Democratic nominee in 2009, he
bashed
Bloomberg for not taking rent control seriously enough, saying, “Mike
Bloomberg’s rent-stabilization board, his guidelines board, that
continues to increase rents, isn’t there for tenants — they’re there for
the landlords.”
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Lhota has
endorsed
a plan by the group Housing First that cost $8 billion total, including
$356 million in additional annual spending by the city to create or
preserve 150,000 affordable housing units; 60,000 of those would be
new units
and 136,250 of the 150,000 would be for low-income families. That plan
would involve expanded inclusionary zoning — as called for by the other
candidates — along with Section 8 funding for the homeless, reduced
parking requirements, and a bonus for denser building. It’s a bit
different in the latter two respects than the Democratic candidates’
proposal, but it’s broadly similar. Lhota has also mused about using
post office buildings as affordable housing as demand for snail mail services flags.
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Catsimatidis has, like Lhota,
endorsed the Housing First plan.
