Affordable Housing

Fannie Mae pioneered Employer-Assisted Housing (EAH) which has grown to provide employees with grants or forgivable loans for down payments on closing costs on home purchases, subsidized second mortgages, matched savings programs, below-market interest rate or mortgage guarantees, technical assistance, credit counseling, subsidized rent and utility payments for renters and even participation in construction or rehabilitation of affordable rental or homeownership. Illinois began matching EAH programs dollar for dollar and providing tax credits in 2000 and now has 50 participating employers with 500 employees who have purchased homes and an additional 700 workers who have received credit counseling. The EAH program has grown so successful that New York Congress Member Nydia Velazquez introduced the "Housing America's Workforce Act" (H.R. 3194), which would provide employers with business tax credits to encourage this program. While we wait for this federal legislation to pass, New York City should create a local version to partner with our business community in building more affordable housing. The business community will benefit from the ability to attract talent, employees benefit from affordable housing and the City would benefit from the investment of the business into the local community so that our government dollars go farther towards creating affordable housing.

Mayor David Dinkins signed the historic “New York/New York Agreement” with then Governor Mario M. Cuomo to help spur the development of over 14,000 units in more than 220 supportive housing residences in the City for formerly homeless and inadequately housed people with a range of disabilities. Supportive housing is a type of affordable housing that provides on-site service to people who may need support to live independently, including formerly homeless families or individuals, people with HIV/AIDS or physical disabilities, ex-offenders, people with mental illness or with histories of substances abuse and young people aging out of foster care who are in danger of joining 220,000 thousand disconnected youth who are not in school or employed. We must expand supportive housing so that we can reduce the growing homeless population and generate an annual savings of $16,282 per person in costs relating to public services such as hospitals, shelters and incarceration.

A 2003 study from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) states that children in New York City are nearly twice as likely to have been hospitalized for asthma as kids in the United States as a whole. We must reintroduce Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s “New York City Asthma-Free Housing Act,” Introduction 750 of 2008, to require owners of multiple dwellings, where a person with respiratory problems resides, to prevent and immediately remove indoor allergen hazards such as mold, cockroaches, mice, rats, and dust mites. While HPD considers some mold conditions to be a violation of the Housing Maintenance Code, there is currently no established and enforceable protocol for mold assessment and remediation.