Mayor Bloomberg Outlines Plan for 165,000 Affordable Housing Units

Mayor Bloomberg outlined steps to achieve his affordable housing goal of an additional 165,000 units.
Mayor Bloomberg Outlines Plan for 165,000 Affordable Housing Units
MAKING PLANS: Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about his plan to increase affordable housing on Monday. (Aloysio Santos/The Epoch Times)
2/23/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/bloomberg3.JPG" alt="MAKING PLANS: Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about his plan to increase affordable housing on Monday. (Aloysio Santos/The Epoch Times)" title="MAKING PLANS: Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about his plan to increase affordable housing on Monday. (Aloysio Santos/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1822761"/></a>
MAKING PLANS: Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about his plan to increase affordable housing on Monday. (Aloysio Santos/The Epoch Times)
NEW YORK—Despite historic economic challenges, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday outlined steps to achieve his affordable housing goal of an additional 165,000 units to house 500,000 New Yorkers. The plan includes an additional $1 billion infusion for affordable housing.

Bloomberg is pushing his plan ahead of a March 17 deadline. For his plan to work, the City Council and the state Legislature in Albany must put the right legislation in place by that day.

The New York City Housing Authority currently provides affordable housing to 403,000 residents.

“That’s roughly 1 out of every 20 New Yorkers,” Bloomberg said. He also mentioned that New York City’s efforts have been outstanding compared to other areas in the United States. In “2009—one of the worst years in housing in a very long time—New York City still created and preserved 12,500 units of affordable housing, almost as many as the entire state of California accomplished during that same period.”

Bloomberg also boasted about the quality of New York’s affordable housing units, currently ranked its best on record, and the Housing Authority’s lending abilities.

“New York City is fortunate to have the best public financier of affordable housing in the nation today,“ said Bloomberg. The New York City Housing Development Corporation was ranked the ”No. 2 affordable housing lender in the entire nation.”

Since 2002, the New York Housing Authority has established and preserved nearly 100,000 units of affordable housing throughout the five boroughs. “That’s enough to shelter the entire population of Pittsburgh,” Bloomberg remarked.