This year, the city is giving $400 million in tax breaks through the 421-a program, with most of that going to subsidize luxury development. This fall, a task force appointed by Mayor Bloomberg proposed to adjust the program to require affordable housing in a broader swath of the city in exchange for tax breaks. Speaker Quinn pushed these reforms further, limiting the benefits that buildings outside the expanded exclusion zone can receive to $65,000 of “assessed value” or approximately $107,000 per unit in lifetime tax benefits. These reforms are a step in the right direction.
In every borough, however, in neighborhoods from Riverdale to Flushing and Brighton Beach to East Harlem, the “reformed” 421-a program will continue to subsidize the development of luxury condos. Under the reforms proposed by Bloomberg and Quinn, New York City will continue to take tax dollars from working families in neighborhoods across the city and use that money to subsidize the construction of million-dollar luxury condominiums right across the street. Essentially the plan asks people from rapidly gentrifying low- and middle-income communities to pay to price themselves out of their own community.
That’s why I endorsed a letter last week, from faith leaders to the mayor and council, urging changes more like those in Councilmember Palma’s bill. We ask that 30 percent of units at minimum be affordable to those making 50 percent or less of the area median income, that they remain affordable in perpetuity, and that the program covers the whole city.
Housing affordability is a crisis that requires the type of vision, commitment and action that the mayor described in his speech in Queens. As we consider the future of the 421-a program and how to keep New York affordable for the next generation, we need to ask our elected officials to stand up to special interests in real estate and stop wasting our tax dollars on subsidies for luxury housing. As Mayor Bloomberg said at the end of his speech, challenging his audience to think big: “It is our city. It is our future. It is our choice.”
Rev. Kendall is the Archdeacon for Mission of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and chairs the Housing Committee of the Commission of Religious Leaders of the City of New York.
