Our Principles

Our housing policies must address the City's changing demographics and expand the range of those we serve. We must recognize the unique needs of growing populations of small households and seniors, as well as those of larger families. We aim to broaden the range of New Yorkers who benefit from our affordable housing programs to include both the City's lowestincome residents and the middle-income workers who increasingly cannot afford to stay in our city.

The City's planning processes and land-use policies need to be revamped. To become a more affordable city, we must become a denser city, and better plan for growth by staging investments in infrastructure and services that will make our neighborhoods more livable. Such a place-based approach must be guided by early and regular input from the communities themselves.

Economic diversity must be a cornerstone of housing development. In future re-zonings that unlock substantial new housing capacity, the City will require, not simply encourage, the production of affordable housing in order to ensure balanced growth, fair housing opportunity, and diverse neighborhoods.

Our municipal tools and public assets should be deployed more effectively. The City must rationalize and streamline its incentive programs, eliminate inefficient regulations and reduce delays and redundancies in regulatory and permitting processes. It should also seize opportunities to thoughtfully develop affordable housing at public sites.

We must strategically protect past investments and lock in affordability in changing neighborhoods. We should ensure that billions of dollars already invested in subsidized affordable housing are not lost because of market pressures and the expiration of regulatory agreements. We also must protect the affordability of the existing rent-regulated and unsubsidized housing stock as neighborhoods change.

The City needs to protect tenants in rent-regulated units more aggressively. We cannot allow landlords to harass tenants and drive them out of our rent-regulated housing stock. Keeping those units affordable is critical to our overarching goals of addressing inequality.

We must leverage today's favorable markets and adapt quickly to future conditions. The City must derive maximum value from today's low interest rates and strong real estate market, while maintaining flexibility to respond to market downturns.

We must increase capital funding to our housing programs. The City will expand its financial commitment to affordable housing and leverage its capital dollars and tax expenditures. We will call on the State and Federal governments to do the same.