City likely to meet New Housing Marketplace Plan objective, says study

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan — the 10-year program aimed at creating and preserving 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014 — is on track, Crain’s reported, citing a new report released today by the city’s Independent Budget Office. In fact, the report said, the city just needs to create or preserve about 13,500 each year through 2014 to complete its goal.

The success is partially a result of the mayor shifting more of his focus to the preservation of affordable housing rather than the creation of it.  The alteration was primarily to the economy, the changing financing environment and federal stimulus programs.

Through the end of the 2011 fiscal year, the city had completed 124,418 units. As The Real Deal reported, the city invested a total of $1.25 billion that fiscal year to create 3,873 units of affordable housing, and preserve 11,771 more.

The shift to preservation has created more low-income units than expected, but the report said that preservation will make a larger number of units lose affordability restrictions more quickly. At the same time, though the city is in track to fulfill its goal, it will likely not meet the creation percentage expectation of having new construction comprise 36 percent of the 165,000 units. As previously noted, unfulfilled promises of new affordable housing have become commonplace in large-scale development projects. [Crain’s]