The term “social housing” encompasses various ownership models, all with an emphasis on divorcing housing from market forces. Decades of disinvestment and mismanagement have stigmatized the idea and word choice of public housing. But it’s not clear that a new moniker resolves the challenges of building public housing.

That did not stop New York state lawmakers this year from proposing a Social Housing Authority that would build and own affordable housing. The authority would renovate buildings or acquire land to construct permanently affordable homes.

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“You have to look at the fundamental challenge of building affordable housing: reconciling the very high costs of building and the low prices in rents,” said Howard Slatkin, executive director of the New York City-based Citizens Housing & Planning Council. “This is about how best to allocate a limited set of resources.”

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The Road Toward the City of Yes

“[Council Speaker Adrienne Adams] has been very vocal through her Fair Housing Framework [legislation] that whatever solutions we find to our housing crisis, everyone has to play a role one way or another,” said Citizens Housing and Planning Council Executive Director Howard Slatkin. “Her role only becomes more important in this environment.”
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Citywide Zoning Changes and the Land Use Process

“That premise [of the petition to pause the public review process] is pretty insidious because it is not just a way to slow down this project, but it makes it pretty much impossible to update the zoning citywide,” Howard Slatkin said.
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First Airing of City of Yes at Public Hearing

"The more restrictive we make the zoning, the more we add restrictions on the circumstances under which you're allowed to build housing, the less housing we will get," said Howard Slatkin.
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