NYC housing board OKs $1.15 billion bond and subsidy package

The New York City Housing Development Corp. intends to issue up to $838 million of multi-family housing revenue bonds and provide $321 million in additional financing for affordable developments.

The actions affect 19 developments in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Of the 19, three are preservation developments which will ensure the continued affordability of 1,518 homes. These include Masaryk Towers, a 1,109-unit cooperative on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, financed under the Mitchell-Lama Reinvestment Program.

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This project reflects the city’s renewed commitment under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Housing New York 2.0 program to preserve the last of its remaining Mitchell-Lama stock, according to HDC president Eric Enderlin. The program offered low-interest mortgage loans and real property tax exemptions, in return for profit and income limits on tenants or cooperative owners.

“These dynamic projects demonstrate the continued importance of resources such as private activity bonds and housing credits to combat the affordability crisis in New York City and throughout the nation,” Enderlin said in a statement.

The remaining 16 are new construction developments which will create 3,602 new affordable homes. Of these projects, nine will be financed under HDC’s Extremely Low and Low-Income Affordability, or ELLA, program, five under HDC’s Mix and Match program and two under HDC’s Mixed Middle-Income Program.

Included in the package are 121 senior apartments in the Concourse Village section of the Bronx, which Volunteers of America for Greater New York and Robert Sanborn Development will co-develop, with VOA-GNY providing supportive services; and 158 new supportive housing units, including 48 for formerly homeless seniors, in the Jamaica section of Queens.

Fifth Avenue Committee, Northeastern Conference of Seventh Day Adventists, and Mega Development are co-developers for the Queens undertaking, with the Hellenic-American Neighborhood Action Committee providing on-site services.

HDC’s board also approved two proposals that aim to combat rapid turnover of unregulated and rent-stabilized buildings.

The first is the approval of HDC’s new Neighborhood Pillars Loan program which will make available up to $100 million to aid in the financing, acquisition and moderate rehabilitation of existing affordable buildings that have received no previous city investment.

The second is a proposal to use the corporation’s unrestricted reserves to make an interest-only loan to the New York City Acquisition Fund of up to $15 million to help generate an increase in the volume of loans the fund generates.

Both proposals support the Neighborhood Pillars initiative, another priority of the recently expanded Housing New York 2.0 plan which aims to achieve the creation or preservation of 300,000 affordable homes by 2026.

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Infrastructure Budgets Housing New York City Housing Development Corporation New York
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