A new study by the Community Service Society has found that New York City lost an astonishing percentage of apartments affordable to low-income residents over the past decade. The study supports Mayor de Blasio's "tale of two cities" narrative.
City's Affordable Housing Units Dwindle1
De Blasio Faces Challenge in Creating Low-Income Apartments
The Bloomberg administration marshaled billions of dollars to create and preserve affordable housing, but a new report said the city lost 40% of apartments for low-income residents over the last decade.
The study by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit advocacy group for low-income New Yorkers, underscores the challenges faced by new Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has promised to create 50,000 units of affordable housing, a number that may barely match the loss of rent-stabilized housing and cheap apartments in increasingly desirable areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
Despite the new mayor's rhetoric about taking on income inequality, advocates remain at best cautiously optimistic.
"It's not an impossible problem to begin to tackle," said Tom Waters, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. "If I was the mayor I would want to do as much as possible to make a dent in the problem and use that to get resources to do more."
- 1. source: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303393804579310832380848024-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwMDExNDAyWj