Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

More Housing for New York’s Homeless? Council Will Weigh Question Mayor Ignored at His Gym

Rafael Salamanca Jr., a councilman from the Bronx, at the site of a new housing development on Willow Avenue in the Port Morris neighborhood of the Bronx.Credit...Elias Williams for The New York Times

Three weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio had his workout interrupted by a homeless woman who posed a question that the mayor chose not to answer: Why won’t the city set aside more apartments for the homeless?

Mr. de Blasio walked away. “I’m not doing this here,” he said, according to a video recording of the incident at the Prospect Park Y.M.C.A. “I’m in the middle of a workout.”

Now the woman, Nathylin Flowers Adesegun, who has lived in a homeless shelter for three years, may soon get what she wanted.

Rafael Salamanca Jr., a councilman from the Bronx, will introduce legislation on Wednesday that will mandate that any rental housing project that receives taxpayer subsidies — such as tax abatements, loans, tax credits or reduced-cost land — has to set aside 15 percent of its created or preserved units for people living in the city’s shelter system.

Mr. de Blasio’s current housing policy, Housing New York 2.0, calls for 5 percent of the 300,000 units to be set aside for the homeless, a total of 15,000 apartments. The mayor has said he is strongly against increasing the 5 percent set-aside.

But the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, said he strongly supports the concept of Mr. Salamanca’s bill — an important sign that the legislation will be seriously considered by the 51-member body.

“I hope this sends a clear message to Mayor de Blasio that a homeless woman like me is not alone,” Ms. Adesegun, 72, said “and that there are elected officials in New York who are willing to fight for what’s right when the mayor refuses to do so.”

Mr. Salamanca represents the South Bronx, one of the poorest Council districts. Over the last year, he has worked with developers there on at least two affordable housing projects that increase to 15 percent the number of units set aside for the homeless, creating 48 units.

“We have an affordable housing crisis that continues to ravage the city and we need to do better at getting housing for our most vulnerable families, the homeless and the very low income,” Mr. Salamanca said in an interview. “The need to address the homelessness issue is so intense and dire that individuals are interrupting the mayor while he’s working out to ask him to do better.”

Mr. Johnson said that he “strongly supports” increasing the number of units set aside for the homeless.

“Homelessness is one of the biggest issues we are grappling with as a city, and we need an all-hands-on-deck approach toward solving it,” Mr. Johnson said.

The number of people in the city’s homeless shelter system is at near-record levels. As of Thursday, there were 60,896 people in the city’s homeless shelters, including 22,519 children, about 37 percent of the total.

Image
In the South Bronx, Mr. Salamanca has recently worked with developers on at least two affordable housing projects to set aside 15 percent of the units for the homeless.Credit...Will Glaser/The New York Times

Although the mayor’s plan generally calls for a 5 percent set-aside, since May 2017, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has required developers on city-financed projects to earmark 10 percent of units for the homeless, according to housing officials. Some projects have set aside as much as 30 to 60 percent of the units, depending on the type of development, for the homeless.

Since Mr. de Blasio took office in 2014, the city has financed the creation or preservation of 109,000 affordable units, including 8,900 homes for the homeless.

“I think the affordable housing plan works for the people of the city because it is for everyone. It is meant to reach working-class people, middle-class people, low-income people,” Mr. de Blasio said last week at an unrelated news conference in Queens.

City officials say they have taken a holistic approach to address homelessness by preventing homelessness. The city rebuilt its rental assistance program and provides legal services to tenants facing eviction.

As a result, 38,000 families comprising 100,000 people have exited shelters or been prevented from entering shelters, the city said. The number of people in the city shelter system remained flat in 2017, the first time in more than a decade.

“I don’t want to send a message that the only folks who can get affordable housing are folks who end up in shelter. I think that’s wrong for everyone,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Increasing the minimum amount of housing for the homeless would also make it more difficult to finance affordable housing projects. In order to make affordable buildings financially sustainable, there has to be the right mix of people from all incomes, city officials said.

City officials estimate that it costs $433,180 and takes five years to develop a newly built unit that is set aside for the homeless. Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said building new apartments is a “much more expensive and slower option than providing things like rental assistance.”

“This bill would undermine the flexibility we need to adapt to the market and continue delivering housing for homeless New Yorkers as well as low-income New Yorkers and those on the brink of homelessness,” said Matthew Creegan, a spokesman for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Giselle Routhier, policy director of the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group, said the city has focused too much on the social services side of homelessness and now should focus on housing development.

“If the city provides the subsidies, the developers will build,” Ms. Routhier said. “We are not asking for 100 percent of the housing plan to be for the homeless but we are asking for a proportion that is commensurate with the need.”

Mr. Johnson has previously been able to extract concessions from the mayor. Mr. de Blasio was not in favor of an effort to provide subsidized MetroCards for low-income individuals, an initiative known as Fair Fares. But the final $89.2 billion budget included $106 million to subsidize the fares.

It is too early to say if Mr. de Blasio would consider vetoing the legislation were it to pass, his office said. Ms. Adesegun said she will continue to push.

“We should stand as one and not leave people behind,” Ms. Adesegun said.

Follow Jeffery C. Mays on Twitter: @JeffCMays

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Bill Would Expand Homeless Housing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT