Affordable housing projects by area

The city invested $1.25 billion during fiscal year 2011, which ended June 30, to create 3,873 units of affordable housing, and preserve 11,771 more for existing tenants, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials announced today. That investment is part of the $8.5 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan initiated in 2004 to build and preserve some 165,000 affordable housing units in the city by 2014. The city is now more than three-quarters towards that goal, having invested in 124,510 affordable homes, 41,556 of which are newly constructed.

The initiative also created 120,000 full-time equivalent, construction-related jobs. – Adam Fusfeld Comments

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The Bronx’s 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — a rundown affordable-housing apartment building sometimes credited as the “birthplace of hip-hop” — is now one step closer to repair after the sale of the building’s $6.2 million mortgage to a partnership between Workforce Housing Advisors and WinnResidential. The sale, financed in part by a $5.6 million loan from the city’s Housing Development Corporation, is intended as a prelude to a takeover of the property from the investors who bought it in 2008 and subsequently allowed it to deteriorate. The city funding comes from a $750 million program that aims to help responsible buyers take over distressed multi-family buildings that have fallen into disrepair. The new mortgage owners have filed to foreclose on the building, where D.J. Kool Herc once held famed hip-hop parties in the first-floor community room, and plan to buy it at a public auction, which is likely to be held next year. [NYT]

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HPD Commissioner Rafael Cestero

The city financed 14,676 affordable housing units during fiscal year 2010, which ended June 30, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Housing Development Corporation. The break-down by borough was as follows: 5,006 units in Manhattan; 3,184 units in Brooklyn; 3,045 units each in the Bronx and in Queens; and 201 units in Staten Island. The homes were financed as part of the Bloomberg administration’s $8.4 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan, which has forged ahead with its goal of creating and preserving 165,000 affordable housing units despite the real estate downturn and the city’s budget woes. Thus far, the city has financed nearly 108,600 units in total. “There is no other city or even state in the nation that can claim to have achieved anything on this scale,” said Rafael Cestero, commissioner of HPD. TRD

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The Bloomberg administration is planning to use the sluggish residential development market to its advantage by offering incentives to developers who build affordable housing, the mayor said in his weekly radio address on 1010 WINS. “In today’s economy, incentives that our City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development can offer in exchange for affordability commitments… look a lot more attractive,” he explained. His administration is aiming to build or preserve half a million affordable housing units by 2014, and he said it is on track to do that. On the distressed housing front, the city is converting stalled condo projects into even more affordable housing, and has slotted $750 million for low-cost refinancing and repair loans that will encourage multi-family building owners in danger of default to prevent apartments from deteriorating. To pay for all of this by the 2014 goal, the city’s Housing Development Corporation will provide $1 billion in funds, none of which will come from taxpayers, Bloomberg said. In addition, the New York City Housing Authority is on its way to securing $100 million per year in Federal funds to upgrade and maintain 18,000 public housing units, thanks to the recently-passed bill in the State Legislature, supporting the bid, he added. TRD

Bronx resident Amadou Lamoudi was indicted today after allegedly
directing a fraudulent scheme in which he helped unqualified tenants
file false applications for apartments subsidized by the Housing
Development Corporation, according to a press release from the
Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Lamoudi, 39, would allegedly
charge ineligible applicants $1,000 or more to help them with their
apartment applications. Lamoudi would reportedly tell them to falsify
their income information and then, when they were selected by the
lottery to continue with the apartment application process, would
direct them to others who would create false financial documents.
Lamoudi has lived in an HDC apartment since 2003, according to the
press release. The number of housing applications with which Lamoudi
was involved was not revealed. TRD [more]