With increasing numbers of New Yorkers both in the city and upstate dedicating the lion's share of their income to housing, and with Buffalo, Syracuse and plenty of downstate neighborhoods still reeling from the foreclosure crisis, advocates were on the look-out for ideas of how to address the state's housing needs when gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo released a detailed urban agenda at New York City Hall last week.

        But while there are plenty of worthwhile initiatives in the former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary's plans, advocates say, there are few bold ideas. And what is left out is as revealing as what is included. Cuomo talks about expanding and reinvigorating various financing schemes for building affordable housing and avoiding foreclosures and the blight that can be their aftermath, but he doesn't say a word about holding on to the state's existing stock of affordable housing.

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Eileen Markey
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        "It's sort of what we expected on the housing production side, which is good, but we were very disappointed that it doesn't address preservation," says Victor Bach, senior housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society (which owns City Limits). "We think there are some serious omissions and would encourage him to get serious on tenant protect and preservation."

        Cuomo is not the only candidate with a housing agenda. Besides the Rent Is Too Damn High's eponymous housing platform, there is Charles Barron's Freedom Party, whose multipoint housing agenda is short on detail but includes a moratorium on evictions from public housing and a ban on the use of eminent domain to clear land for private developers--a point on which Libertarian Warren Redlich, who says little else about housing, agrees. Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins wants to create a state bank to refinance affordable mortgages and give New York City home rule on rent control laws—a long-standing ambition of housing advocates.

        Despite his background as a real estate developer, Republican Carl Paladino has said almost nothing about housing other than that he wants to shut down the state's housing department.

        However, with his commanding lead in the polls, Cuomo's housing policy is the one most likely to matter come January 1.

A focus on federal funding

        Over twenty pages in his Urban Agenda document, Cuomo articulates what he says will be priorities if he becomes governor. He'll push to make the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program more attractive to investors. The tax credit program has been a bedrock of financing the development of affordable housing since it was introduced in 1986, but in the economic decline of the past two years, investment banks that usually purchase the credits slowed down their investment, particularly in upstate projects, Cuomo said. "LIHTC investments dramatically declined upstate, creating gaps in financing," Cuomo said in his blueprint. He says he'll work with Congress to reformat the program so investors start buying again and cash is once again flowing to affordable housing developers. But he doesn't get into details.