Members of community and citywide housing organizations cheered the mayor, exclaimed “Hallelujah,” and thrust a baby into Bloomberg’s arms. This was the fun part. What preceded the celebration was more than a year of careful organizing work, election-season strategizing and a lot of luck. And the work is far from over.
City Limits Magazine
The money was there all along. In 1989, New York City and the state-controlled Battery Park City Authority reached an agreement: The authority, which leases the site from the city, would give the city $600 million in its revenues--money paid by major tenants in lieu of taxes--to be spent on affordable housing.
It wasn’t. A year ago, the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) determined that “little if any of the $600 million was used for housing programs, and was instead used for general budget purposes.” Total spent on housing: $143 million. A clause in the agreement allowed the funds to be redirected if City Hall needed them to “maintain fiscal stability”--and according to the Dinkins, Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, that was always the case.
Over the decades, watchdogs--notably Glenn Pasanen of City Project--kept the heat on City Hall to fulfill the pledge. Mayor Bloomberg even mentioned the funds in his 2001 campaign. But it wasn’t until last year that a window of opportunity opened, and an organized network of affordable housing advocates kept it propped open.
The new Battery Park City deal is a side effect of the administration’s West Side redevelopment mania. In March 2004, the mayor and governor announced an agreement to finance the expansion of the Javits Center, a plan that counted on using $350 million in Battery Park City revenues. That use of the funds was shot down by State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and the city never pursued it further. (The Bloomberg administration has since moved to create a special “payment in lieu of taxes,” or PILOT, fund, over which the mayor has exclusive control.)
But the Javits flap was a wake-up call to affordable housing advocates: The Battery Park City money was once again in play. The Battery Park City Authority had restructured its debt, freeing $1.1 billion in proceeds and generating its final payment to the city under the 1989 agreement. The slate was clean. And a new alignment of advocacy organizations stepped up to bring the pledge back from the dead.
Joe Weisbord, consultant to the financial-institution-backed Housing First! coalition, worked with the IBO to determine what money was there and what needed to be done to get it. Any deal would have to be approved by the governor, the mayor and the comptroller. So Weisbord set out to find partners who could help persuade the comptroller to get on board.
