The Future of Affordable Housing in NYC

Yesterday, NYU’s Furman Center started a great series, #NYChousing: 10 Issues for NYC’s Next Mayor:

Over each of the next 10 days, #NYChousing will release an issue brief that presents a housing policy question that will confront the next mayor of NYC. The #NYChousing briefs do not provide policy recommendations, but instead provide the background facts, point out potential trade-offs, and pose questions to be considered in order for the candidates and the public to make informed decisions about competing policy proposals.

The first two issues are:

1. HOUSING BUDGET:  Should the next mayor commit to build or rehabilitate more units of affordable housing than the Bloomberg Administration has financed?

2. PERMANENT AFFORDABILITY:  Should the next mayor require developers to permanently maintain the affordability of units developed with public subsidies?

There are Twitter chats about both of these issues, with eight more to come. Tomorrow’s topic is

3. MANDATORY INCLUSIONARY ZONING: Should the next mayor adopt a mandatory inclusionary zoning program that requires developers to build or preserve affordable housing whenever they build market-rate housing?

The Center provides the following guidance for its Twitter chat:

 Throughout the #NYChousing series, the Furman Center will host a series of Twitter chats to discuss each of these policy questions. Each one-hour Twitter chat will start at 11:00am ET and will focus on that day’s policy question. We encourage and welcome your participation.

What’s a Twitter chat? It’s an interactive Twitter conversation spanning a specific period of time. The Furman Center (@FurmanCenterNYU) will pose a handful questions about that day’s #NYChousing policy question. Participants will follow the conversation and tag their responses with the hashtag #NYChousing.

How do you participate? If there’s a question you want to answer or a point you want to make, simply chime in with your insight, a link to a blog post you’ve written-whatever you’d like to add to the conversation. There’s no pressure to follow along for the entire hour or to answer every single question. Be sure to include the hashtag–#NYChousing-in your response.

I will be giving my own two cents as this chat progresses.