The New York Housing Conference testified in Albany on Monday, February 1st in support of Governor Cuomo’s affordable housing budget which provides unprecedented support for homeless initiatives and 100,000 new affordable housing units over 5 years. We also expressed serious concern regarding new volume cap approvals and recommend that new reporting requirements be adopted instead. Lastly, NYHC called for $100 million in capital funding for NYCHA, which is not included in the Governor’s budget proposal this year.

Volume Cap Recommendations:

– Prioritize volume cap for affordable housing. The State should aim to maximize the use of tax-exempt private activity bonds for affordable housing in both the State and local programs. This will generate more as-of-right Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits which will raise additional private capital for a desperately needed public good. In fact, every dollar of volume cap used to finance new and rehabilitated housing directly generates at least one additional dollar of construction activity in New York State, a powerful form of economic development. Use of volume cap for non-housing economic development fails to leverage tax credit investments on the part of banks and corporation, therefore allocation to housing is a substantially more efficient use of tax-exempt bonds.

– Reallocate volume cap unused by IDAs to affordable housing with regularity. A new process should be established to redirect unused volume cap to affordable housing. This new allocation process should provide consistent levels of volume cap to NYC’s Housing Development Corporation in line with historic levels, as they are a reliable consumer of volume cap, easily utilizing 35-45% of the State’s allocation.

– Increase transparency for volume cap allocation through new reporting requirements, not new approval processes. The Executive Budget includes a new process requiring as of right volume cap allocation received by local issuers to be subject to approval by the Public Authorities Control Board “(PACB”) at the project level. In addition the Empire State Development Corporation Commissioner is given authority to sign off on the reallocation of what has historically been as-of-right volume cap.

Many of our suggestions echo the Citizen Housing and Planning Council’s recommendations in their excellent Pump Up the Volume Report linked here.

With a new housing plan to be unveiled at the end the month by HCR, there are still many unknown details about how the new $2 billion in housing capital will be spent. In addition to launching an expanded supportive housing program which has been outlined in the budget, NYHC recommends investing in the following top priorities:

– Preserving Public Housing
– Launch a New Senior Housing Program to Address Rapidly Growing Need
– Assist Homeowners and Preserve Neighborhoods through Foreclosure Prevention
– Support Mixed-Income Housing through the State Low-Income Housing Credit (SLIHC)

Read more about these proposals in our 2016 Policy Priorities on our website.