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.
The plan relies on the rezoning of underused manufacturing areas, including the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods in Brooklyn, that allowed developers to build larger buildings if they set aside some apartments as low-cost units. New units have also been created through the citys Housing Development Corporation, which issues bonds and uses its corporate reserves to finance low-cost mortgages to affordable housing developers.
I think the city has done an extraordinary job, more than any other place in America, said Jerilyn Perine, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council and the former city housing commissioner who helped create the mayors original plan in 2002. You have to go to Europe to find another city that has this kind of robust, sustained housing policy and housing investment.
Read more in The New York Times.