Mayor de Blasio delayed the expected release of his affordable housing plan yesterday to announce a new contract providing $3.4 billion in retroactive pay increases to teachers. He did not want the media coverage of the contract decision to take away from the importance of the housing plan. It is likely the housing plan will involve considerably less direct City funding than even just the retroactive pay raise for one City union.
If it is released this weekend, the housing plan may again be trumped in the headlines by a preliminary vote on rent guidelines for 2015. In the past, de Blasio has called for a rent freeze and he just appointed six members to the Rent Guidelines Board. The Board meets at 6 p.m. Monday in the U.S. Customs House at Bowling Green and will hold public hearings on their proposal later.
Brooklyn may have indirectly gotten a preview of the Mayor’s housing plan in hearing testimony by Borough President Eric Adams who wants a four mile stretch of Broadway in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Bedford Stuyvesant up-zoned to allow ten story apartment buildings. Local councilmen are already leery of the proposal.
One year before rent regulations are up for renewal in Albany, DNAInfo has released an analysis showing that, in 2010, more than 22,000 rent stabilized households had incomes over $199,000 and 2300 had incomes over $500,000. And, of course, some were millionaires who will become poster-children for the stupidity of the law.