Washington Heights gets short end of Bloomberg’s affordable housing stick

For the past decade, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has touted his commitment to building and preserving affordable housing in New York City. But according to the New York Daily News, he’s overlooking Washington Heights.

While the area’s uptown neighbors in central Harlem and East Harlem have added 2,770 and 2,133 new units of affordable housing, respectively, and the entire borough has seen 11,627 new units, just 139 units have been added in Washington Heights. 

Similarly, Bloomberg’s initiatives have perserved 7,582 affordable units in central Harlem and 5,970 units East Harlem, but just 1,363 in Washington Heights.

“Our police officers and teachers and Latino professionals who were born here and want to stay here are being priced right out of the neighborhood,” said state Sen. Adriano Espaillat.

Bloomberg has aimed to create and perserve 165,000 affordable units across the city.

The city’s HPD is aware of the problem, but cites a lack of publicly owned, available vacant land and a shortage of developers willing to build or preserve affordable units as a huge obstacle. Still, Community Board 12 Sunday will rally to press the city on the issue. [NYDN]