ABO will kick off the BuildingsNY Show with a bang, April 24th, by hosting a Mayoral candidates forum on housing development. Tom Allon, John Catsimatidis and George McDonald have already confirmed they will participate and additional candidates will be announced soon.
While other forums will address housing generally we believe this will be the only one to focus on the candidates’ ideas to encourage badly needed private construction.
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg’s final State of the City message emphasized how important rebuilding the city is, from housing to water tunnels and from university campuses to midtown office buildings. Bloomberg boasted that “For the first time since La Guardia was mayor and FDR created the WPA, we’re not only conceiving big plans that fundamentally change the landscape of our city, we’re achieving them. We’re taking a city built mostly before World War II and renewing it for the needs of New Yorkers today and tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, the Building Congress reported this week that housing construction did relatively well in 2012,. Residential construction starts reached $5.1 billion in value in 2012, a 54 percent increase from 2011, when construction starts reached $3.3 billion, and more than double the total, $2.3 billion, for 2010. The residential sector, however, remains 14 percent down from 2008.
The economic impact of apartment operation nationally was also examined this week in a new study sponsored by the National Apartment Association and National Multi Housing Council. The report says that operating 2.2 million apartments in the New York metropolitan area pumps $9.4 billion a year into the economy
One reason operating costs per apartment are higher in New York than most other cities, of course, is because of our laws and courts. Yesterday, the Court of Appeals ruled in Perez vs. Rhea that it wasn’t unconscionable to evict a woman from public housing who lied about her income on sworn statements for six years, defrauding the Housing Authority of more than $27,000. Apparently the Appellate Division had felt that paying back $20,000 was enough punishment. The whole decision begs the question of how a case this ridiculous gets to be heard in the State Court of Appeals in the first place.