De Blasio is 34,000 units closer to his affordable housing goal

Mayor says city on target to create or preserve 300K units by 2026

Mayor Bill de Blasio
Mayor Bill de Blasio

The de Blasio administration is touting its progress toward reaching its affordable housing goals, even as it struggles to control the systemic and widespread problems at the New York City Housing Authority.

Last year, the city funded more than 10,000 new affordable-housing units, the Wall Street Journal reported. City officials said that’s one step closer to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s goal of building or preserving 300,000 units by 2026.

The total units financed or preserved in 2018 were a record, according to the city. In 2018, the city invested more than $1.7 billion to increase affordable housing across the borough — including capital for building new units and for starting to preserve more than 24,000 apartments that are already built.

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De Blasio’s administration claims it has funded more than 38,700 units and preserved more than 83,000 affordable apartment since the mayor took office in 2014. Still, his office has faced criticism for not inadequate help for the city’s poorest, including the more than 60,000 people in homeless shelters. Comptroller Scott Stringer pressed the mayor to focus on the 400,000 households making less than $28,170 a year.

In November, a report by the New York Building Congress said the mayor was on pace to reach his goals. At the time, the Bronx has seen the most new affordable housing units, followed by Brooklyn.

NYCHA, meanwhile, was named by the public advocate’s office as the worst landlord in New York in 2018, and has an estimated $25 billion in needed repairs. De Blasio’s leader at NYCHA, Shola Olatoye, resigned in the wake of a lead paint scandal, and he must also replace his housing czar, Alicia Glen, who announced her resignation last month. [WSJ] — Meenal Vamburkar