Housing activists push de Blasio on affordable housing plans

It’s not only developers who are nonplussed by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policies — housing activists are also less than pleased with the mayor’s affordable housing plans, and they’re getting loud.

While aligned with the de Blasio administration on various issues, organizing group New York Communities for Change is disappointed that several meetings with senior city officials in recent months have proven fruitless in addressing the group’s demands.

Those demands include “deeper affordability and higher job standards in the rezoned neighborhoods” to be affected by the mayor’s contentious Mandatory Inclusionary Housing proposal, organizer Jonathan Westin told Politico.

“We have been meeting with the administration over and over,” Westin said. “And we have not been met with open arms. We have kind of been brushed aside for the entirety of this administration.”

With those talks yielding no conclusion, New York Communities for Change arranged a demonstration Tuesday morning on the steps of City Hall.

De Blasio spokesman Wiley Norvell told Politico that the administration has never negotiated the terms of its policies with Westin’s group and only intends to work out particulars with the City Council, which is set to cast a binding vote on the plans early next year.

“We’ve discussed these objectives at length with a wide range of stakeholders,” Norvell said. “But that in no way impacts where we stand on the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, or our negotiations with the City Council to pass it.” [Politico] – Rey Mashayekhi