Low-income Housing – New York City

As city adds housing for poor, market subtracts it, By Manny Fernandez, October 14, 2009, New York Times: “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is closing in on a milestone: building or preserving 165,000 city-financed apartments and houses for low-, moderate- and middle-income families, the goal of a $7.5 billion housing plan he announced in 2002 and expanded in 2005. It has already financed the creation or preservation of 94,000 units, including 72,000 for low-income households, city officials say. But those efforts have been overwhelmed by a far larger number – the 200,000 apartments affordable to low-income renters that New York City has lost over all, because of market forces, during the mayor’s tenure. The shrinking supply of these apartments, highlighted by researchers at New York University, illustrates not only the increasing strain that housing costs have had on this city of renters, but also the limits of the mayor’s success in providing the city’s poor with reasonable places to live…”