Dear New Yorkers, 

I don’t have to tell you that we face the worst housing crisis in decades. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that evictions tripled in 2023, or that working- and low-income New Yorkers are leaving the city at triple the rate of wealthy residents. 

We need real action on housing this year – it’s a moral and economic imperative. Affordable housing MUST be New York City’s #1 priority. 

That’s why I was so proud to stand on the steps of City Hall this morning with the NYC Council’s Progressive Caucus, housing justice advocates, unions, and faith leaders to launch our ambitious new Homes Now, Homes for Generations campaign. 

Our demand: A $2 billion capital investment over the next 4 years that will allow the City to develop and preserve 10,000+ units of permanently affordable, community centered housing.

Where does funding come from? 

It’s important to note that the $2 billion over 4 years comes from the capital budget. At the Comptroller’s office, we issue the municipal bonds that fund capital projects – so we keep a very close eye on the capital budget. I can tell you, we CAN afford to make this investment, and we CAN'T afford not to.

Look, $2 billion additional for the Department of Housing Development and Preservation (HPD) is both reasonable and achievable. We’ll fund the Homes Now, Homes for Generations campaign through two existing HPD programs: Neighborhood Pillars and Open Door. 

The Open Door program, which is currently underutilized, funds the new construction of deeply affordable cooperative and condominium buildings. We are calling for increased funding for Open Door – specifically, to increase it by five times – to finally give tenants who have been excluded from homeownership an opportunity to create generational wealth.   

Meanwhile, Neighborhood Pillars would help preserve buildings that aren’t getting the repairs they need, leaving tenants to live in substandard housing. When a landlord is ignoring their tenants and refusing or unable to make the repairs needed, Neighborhood Pillars is a path forward. The program would let nonprofits and mission driven organizations take control of the building and finally allow tenants to live in dignity. This would also preserve rent-stabilize units in need of repairs, protecting our City’s existing affordable housing stock. 

Finally, to really make our housing programs work, we also need to ensure HPD has the resources to train new staff, clear its backlog of affordable housing projects, and has all the tools needed to scale these programs to the levels we need (as my Office analyzed in a report earlier this year). 

Legacy of community control 

New York City knows how to build affordable community-controlled housing that lasts generations because we’ve already done it. We have a history of models predicated on the belief that housing is a human right – not just a vehicle for profit.  

As we make new investments in community-controlled housing, we should look to examples of Community Land Trusts, Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFCs), and the Mitchell-Lama program — often called the gold standard for shared equity affordable housing.  

Mitchell-Lama has kept many neighborhoods integrated despite intense gentrification pressures. Mitchell-Lama co-ops perfectly demonstrate how community-controlled housing can cultivate solidarity in a way that becomes a genuine, tangible social asset that helps us confront the problems New York faces. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. 

This campaign is achievable 

We urgently need a deal in Albany that increases housing supply across income levels, with a focus on affordability, good cause protections, and housing vouchers to help people escape homelessness and secure permanent housing. 

But here in the City, we can’t have an austerity mindset when it comes to housing. We can’t use asylum-seeker costs as scapegoats for cutting back capital spending. The Adams Administration is expecting to decrease its capital funding for HPD, exactly in the moment when we need it more. That’s why we launched Homes Now, Homes for Generations. 

By treating housing as a public good rather than as a vehicle for profit, we can ensure that all New Yorkers have a home they can afford – and that future generations of families can stay in their communities. 

Thanks, 

Brad 

P.S. Thank you to all the advocates – ANHD, Housing Justice for All, NYCCLI, Churches United for Fair Housing, Tenants & Neighbors, Community Voices Heard, Co-operatives United 4 Mitchell Lama, Community Service Society, Habitat for Humanity, and many more housing advocates, unions, and faith leaders who joined us outside City Hall today.