Housing New York: Final Report

The goal to create 200,000 high-quality, affordable homes over ten years was ambitious, as it had to be, to meet the scale of the affordability challenge we face.

It required us to rethink how we work across agencies and with communities. Crafted in coordination with 13 agencies and with input from over 200 individual stakeholders, HNY outlined more than 50 initiatives to address the city’s affordable housing crisis. The plan included strategies to create more affordable housing at a wider range of incomes, with a special focus on homes for seniors, the formerly homeless, and those in need of supportive services; to protect the City’s past investments in affordable housing; to secure major reforms to the State’s rent stabilization laws and introduce new tools to combat harassment and displacement; to partner with communities to plan for the investments they most want to see in their neighborhoods; and to require—not just encourage—that whenever the City rezones for growth, a share of that housing is permanently affordable in order to ensure balanced growth, fair housing opportunity, and diverse neighborhoods.

To achieve the goals embedded in the plan, the Administration more than doubled the annual capital budget for affordable housing; increased the operating budget of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and key agencies to fund the staff necessary to shoulder this significant undertaking; and set aside dedicated funding for infrastructure investments needed to make land available for significant new housing opportunities. Since 2014, the City dedicated $8.1 billion in City Subsidy, which leveraged four times that amount in spending from other public and private sources. In addition, the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) contributed more than $13.5 billion in bond financing to support the plan, and more than $826 million to help preserve New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) apartments. We also partnered with the State and the Federal government to identify new resources to fund affordable housing.

As a result, the City was able to finance the preservation and new construction of more than 200,000 affordable homes by the end of 2021, two years ahead of schedule.

The numbers are an important metric for accountability, but they don’t tell the full story. Behind each and every one of these affordable homes is a New Yorker—a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a health care worker, a taxi driver, a server, an artist, a survivor of domestic violence, a person struggling with homelessness, mental health or substance abuse challenges—who has a chance to live a better, healthier life because they have a quality home they can afford.

This report summarizes some of the key successes of the HNY plan, a multi-pronged approach to do all we can to ensure that all New Yorkers have a safe and affordable place to live, in neighborhoods that provide opportunities to succeed. HNY wasn’t designed to be a static blueprint but rather a dynamic approach that has allowed us to adjust to meet new challenges and needs.

Learn more about Housing New York and Action the Administration has taken.

To access housing resources, visit the NYC Housing Resource Portal. There you can find affordable housing, fight eviction or tenant harassment, find shelter, get help paying for housing, report a housing complaint, and more.