Daniel Hernandez, a former executive at affordable housing-focused development firm Jonathan Rose Companies, was tapped to run a new division of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to set up the new mandatory inclusionary zoning program.
Agency commissioner Vicki Been said the new division, known as Neighborhood Strategies, will work on land use review applications and plan for large-scale projects. Under the mandatory inclusionary housing program, developers of massive projects that need zoning approvals would be required to provide a percentage of affordable housing without subsidies.
Past rezonings in Brooklyn, for example — in areas including the now-flourishing Williamsburg and Dumbo — did not include mandatory affordable housing stipulations.
“Everything is under scrutiny,” Been said at a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast, as cited by Crain’s. “Everything is being rethought in terms of how we could do it better.” [Crain’s] — Mark Maurer