Mayor Adams announced HPD’s affordable housing production for city fiscal year 2024 this week, with some categories having the highest production on record.
Adams announced that HPD financed 25,266 units of affordable housing in fiscal year 2024 (HPD counts affordable housing when it closes on financing or when the developer applies for 421a). This includes 14,706 units of affordable housing through new construction, the highest on record. The new construction number consists of subsidized housing – 6,873 units – and housing produced as-of-right by 421a and inclusionary housing without subsidy, which produced 7,833 units of affordable housing.
It also includes 10,560 units of affordable housing preservation. This is 30 percent less than the average over the previous five years. We look forward to working with HPD to increase the number of affordable housing units preserved each year. We understand they have been continuing to rebuild the preservation team staffing, which decreased significantly during the pandemic. Other areas of HPD have been closer to fully staffed but preservation financing staffing has lagged. HPD reported that they financed more preservation transactions last year and the smaller number is in part due to projects with fewer units on average.
Looking into the numbers in a little more detail, we were pleased to see that HPD affordable housing production for households at the lowest incomes was high and in some cases the highest ever.
HPD financed 2,155 units of supportive housing and 4,085 units of housing for people experiencing homelessness overall (supportive housing is a subset of the homelessness housing number), and both are the highest ever. The city also financed 2,862 units of affordable housing for seniors, the second most on record. These numbers include new construction and preservation of existing housing.
HPD also financed 3,161 units of new construction of extremely low income (ELI) housing, the second most on record. Housing for people experiencing homelessness, through HPD set asides and supportive housing, are not necessarily extremely low income housing since the household could be using vouchers to rent housing that is financed at AMIs higher than ELI.
New York City’s housing crisis is most acute for the lowest income New Yorkers, with 85 percent of New York City households – nearly 550,000 households – that make less than $50,000 per year are rent burdened.
HPD reported that they financed 2,130 units of homeownership housing, including preservation and new construction. This is more than in the past two years, but far less than what HPD produced on average between 2017 – 2021. However, the bulk of production in those years included big preservation projects.
Overall, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s production numbers for FY2024 are strong and indicate that our city is moving in the right direction. It is especially promising to see such high levels of housing for the lowest-income and formerly homeless New Yorkers. We are grateful to Mayor Adams and the City Council for doubling down on their commitments to addressing our affordability crisis by delivering an additional $2 billion toward housing in this year’s budget. We look forward to continuing to work with the Mayor and the NYC Council to pass the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, bringing more critically-needed housing to every neighborhood throughout the five boroughs.