The five social housing proposals, known together as the Community Land Act, are the latest attempt to create affordable housing by removing real estate from the speculative market.
Advocates held a “Social Housing Festival & Speak-Out” at Foley Square in Downtown Manhattan Tuesday, ahead of a City Hall hearing on the bills. (Photo by Adi Talwar)
Social housing advocates rallied in Foley Square on Tuesday ahead of a City Council hearing on a package of bills aiming to de-privatize residential properties across the five boroughs.
The bills would, among other things, give qualifying nonprofits priority to buy privately held residential real estate that comes up for sale, and receive grants to develop affordable housing on government land. They would also establish a land bank through which the city could acquire distressed properties for public benefit.
The package, known as the Community Land Act, represents the latest attempt to create affordable housing by removing real estate from the speculative market. The New York City Community Land Initiative Coalition says this is vital to ensure the development of low-income housing, that rent stabilized apartments are properly maintained, and that tenants control their communities.
“When you own the land, you decide how and what’s developed on the land and how it’s dispersed out into the community,” said Debra Ack, special projects coordinator at the East New York Community Land Trust, a nonprofit that bought a dilapidated rent-stabilized building at 248 Arlington Ave. last year and is converting it to co-ops. “[Developers] say they’re building 200 units, but out of those 200 units, maybe 5 percent of them will go to very low income people. And that’s not fair. That’s total displacement in our neighborhood.”
If distressed properties or city land were in the hands of community groups, rather than private developers, they would be used for the benefit of the community, advocates say.
The first bill discussed at the hearing was the Public Land for Public Good Act, which was introduced by District 33 Councilmember Lincoln Restler. It would require the city to prioritize nonprofits when searching for outside parties to develop affordable housing on public land.
When campaigning for the bill, Restler said his constituents are generally “shocked that there wouldn’t [already] be an incredibly high threshold that ensures that we are demonstrably achieving a public good every time public property is redeveloped.”
City Councilmember Lincoln Restler speaking at Tuesday’s rally. He’s the sponsor of the Public Land for Public Good Act, which would prioritize nonprofit developers to build on city-owned land. (Photo by Adi Talwar)
The New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) opposes the bill, saying the measure would add barriers to an already bureaucratic process, and that for-profit developers are not necessarily worse for tenants if there are clear restrictions on how they use the land.
But advocates cite studies showing that nonprofit developers are almost twice as effective at creating deeply affordable housing as for-profit developers. “I feel like we keep having the same conversation but we don’t seem to be making progress,” Restler vented in response to HPD’s opposition.
Another proposal, introduced by District 2 Councilmember Carlina Rivera, is the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), which would require property owners to report plans to sell residential buildings to HPD before listing them publicly.
Qualifying non-profits would then have the opportunity to purchase the sites before private developers got a shot. The proposal is based on legislation enacted in San Francisco designed to ensure land is used for public benefit when possible, as nonprofits must demonstrate a commitment to affordable housing and community representation, as well as ability to pay, in order to qualify.
While the bill has the support of the majority of councilmembers, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who has the authority to bring it up for a vote, is not among its co-sponsors this year (though she was in previous legislative sessions). Her office said this is no indication of her level of support for the measure, though.
“The creation and preservation of affordable homeownership and housing continue to be Council priorities,” a spokesperson for the speaker said in a statement.
The New York Apartment Association, a trade group representing property owners, argues that the bill’s time requirements would be overly burdensome and throw the market into chaos. As written, property owners would have to offer buildings to qualifying nonprofits for 180 days before listing them to private developers, and would have to give nonprofits 90 days to match any private offers after that.
“If the goal is to help nonprofits buy apartment buildings, then let’s create a bill that actually helps nonprofits,” said CEO Kenny Burgos in a statement.
The other major proposal of the day, Int. 0570, came from District 6 Councilmember Gale Brewer and would create a land bank, a government corporation that could buy and warehouse land, as over 30 municipalities across the state have created. It was first proposed over a decade ago, and if passed in conjunction with the Public Land for Public Good Act, would allow the city to more seamlessly funnel properties to nonprofit developers.
This would also create an alternative to the city’s controversial lien sale, which took place the same day as the hearing for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the land bank, liens placed on properties with outstanding debt are sold to the highest bidder, who then proceeds with foreclosure, rather than managed by the city, which could’ve helped the owner avoid foreclosure or developed the site for public benefit. Legislators also say a land bank would have enabled the city to purchase properties during the price crash of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When you own the land, you decide how and what’s developed on the land and how it’s dispersed out into the community,” said Debra Ack, special projects coordinator at the East New York Community Land Trust. (Photo by Adi Talwar)
“If we’re able to pass the land bank bill and set it up in a way that it could take the liens that are delinquent and find a way to work with the homeowners to get them right, or if necessary, transition them to community control or permanently affordable housing, then that would be a good outcome,” said Will Spisak, senior policy strategist at the New Economy Project, a nonprofit leading the campaign.
Much of the change needed to put housing in the hands of tenants is beyond the jurisdiction of the City Council, so lawmakers introduced two resolutions that call on the state to take action too.
One introduced by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams advocates for passage of a state bill that would require landlords to sell buildings to tenants before third parties. The other, introduced by District 1 Councilmember Christopher Marte, calls for the state to establish a public authority that could actually build social housing directly, rather than depend on outside developers.
“Every politician talks about Mitchell Lama 2.0, but we won’t get there unless we have the authority to actually build that type of housing and build new public housing,” said Marte. “We are putting the building blocks together through these bills and resolutions.”
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