Budget deal funds relief for property owners, disappoints housing advocates

The city’s budget deal provides some homeowners relief, but falls short of advocates’ calls for heftier investment in affordable housing.

On Friday, Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced they’d struck a deal for a $101 billion city budget for fiscal 2023. The agreement includes $90 million to fund a $150 tax rebate for property owners who earn less than $250,000. The city estimates 600,000 owners would be eligible for the program.

During a press conference on Friday, the mayor acknowledged that tenants are struggling as rising rents make living in the city increasingly unaffordable, but said owners need relief, too.

“Those out there who state that small property owners are in a comfortable place, if you own a home then you are already affluent, that is not a reality,” Adams said. “People are struggling that are small property homeowners.”

When asked about the impending expiration of the property tax break 421a, Adams reiterated that he is hopeful lawmakers will figure out how best to adjust the affordability levels of apartments under the program in order to revive or replace the incentive.

Housing advocates were disappointed when Adams announced in April that he would allocate an additional $5 billion to housing over the next decade, well short of the $4 billion in annual funding he endorsed during his campaign. The budget deal seems to have stuck with the April proposal.

“While this budget agreement marks a significant increase over years past on housing, it still falls far short of what is needed to address a housing and homelessness emergency that is rapidly growing worse,” Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, said in a statement. Fee noted that the state’s recent approval of a measure that will allow the New York City Housing Authority to create a public trust will help “unlock billions of additional dollars,” independent of the budget process.

Comptroller Brad Lander also criticized the budget, tweeting that it “fails to meet the needs of this urgent moment with the level of capital funding needed for affordable, supportive and public housing.”