“We need Albany to just act and do their job,” says Rachel Fee, president of the New York Housing Conference, a policy and advocacy coalition dedicated to affordable housing. Fee’s group has published athat suggests short-term fixes the lawmakers could implement while deferring a bigger deal involving 421-a and good-cause eviction.
A deadline extension should be granted to preserve the thousands of units currently at risk of losing their subsidy, Fee tells me, and the state should also reauthorize the J-51 property-tax exemption-and-abatement program, which expired this year. “That’s a preservation credit. This is getting owners to invest in their buildings and make repairs,” Fee says. “It just makes a lot of sense at this time. We have an increase in code violations. In the last two years, it’s gone up 54 percent.
Two other short-term boosts to New York’s housing stock are no-brainers: The legislature can and should authorize a regulatory process for converting office space to residential use — Fee estimates it could lead to 20,000 new apartments — and state lawmakers need to give the city the power tohas been urging members of the public to contact their legislators about the housing crunch.