Mayor Eric Adams on the hunt for affordable housing sites, orders NYC agencies to review own properties
NEW YORK -- With New York City facing an incredibly tight affordable housing market, Mayor Eric Adams has signed an executive order requiring city agencies to review their properties for use as potential development sites for home building.
If the mayor was making a movie about his latest endeavor, he might call it "On the Waterfront," because that's among the areas he has ordered city agencies to scour for possible sites to build affordable housing.
"We've got 578 miles of the city's waterfront, a lot of publicly owned land there that we can exploit in the best sense of the word for the city's competitive edge in terms of housing its workforce and housing its future," said Adolfo Carrion Jr., commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
- Read more: New York City making it easier to live in affordable housing in the neighborhood of your choice
NYC rental vacancy rate at just 1.4%
In signing the executive order, the mayor wants agencies to look at every property and facility in their portfolios, including the sanitation building at 7 North Moore St. in Tribeca., for evaluation as possible housing sites, because the city faces a dire housing crisis.
The rental vacancy rate is just 1.4%.
"If you're looking for affordable housing, you've got zero chance of finding it in the five boroughs," Carrion said.
City officials told CBS News New York that everything is on the table. For example, an old sanitation garage on Jersey Street on Staten Island is already slated to get a housing development. Officials tore down an old library in the Inwood section of Manhattan and replaced it with a new library and 174 units of affordable housing. Those are the kind of projects the mayor is looking for.
"We're in a hurry to make things happen"
But when City Hall says "everything is on the table," there are some notable exceptions.
"Does this mean Central Park and Prospect Park and other city parks? No. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Carrion said.
But with a moonshot goal of building 500,000 new homes by 2032, finding every possible building site is a must.
"The mayor is asking every city agency to put a little housing in their mission and collaborate with us, and I'm very excited that it's more than a dozen agencies. We're in a hurry to make things happen, to make New York City a more livable city.
The Legal Aid Society called the move a step in the right direction, but insisted on more tenant friendly actions, including rental subsidies for low-income individuals and limits on rent increases for stabilized apartments.