A Champion for Affordable Housing

While the City of Yes was a good start for creating more housing across New York City, we cannot build our way out of the affordability crisis. District 7 is already one of the densest parts of the city, and in 2023, District 7 only created 87 new units of affordable housing. 

More luxury developments with limited public housing in our neighborhood–like a recently approved building at 135th street–will not fix our housing crisis. Edafe wants to massively invest in existing social housing programs like Open Doors and Neighborhood Pillars to create more limited equity cooperatives like HDFCs and Mitchell-Lamas and to preserve existing affordable units - thousands of which in our district will expire over the next five years. 

Columbia and NYU are two of the city’s biggest landowners, at more than 320 properties worth over $4 billion–yet they pay very little in property taxes. As Columbia continues to expand into Harlem, it removes more and more properties from the city’s tax base while driving up the cost of housing. The Community Benefits Agreement offered by Columbia in 2009 ($170 million over 36 years) is just a fraction of the amount of savings it receives from tax exemptions as Manhattan’s largest landlord.

Columbia commits less than $5 million annually to the West Harlem Development Corporation, but it receives over $180 million annually in tax exemptions. Edafe will push for a re-negotiation of the Community Benefits Agreement, including a drastic increase in the amount allocated to affordable housing, which currently only sits at $1.5 million per year. In order to bring Columbia to the negotiating table, Edafe will work with state legislators to tax Columbia and NYU’s real estate holdings—which could generate over $300 million in revenue for the city—and end Columbia’s use of eminent domain.

Over half a million people live in NYCHA, and another 200,000 people are on a waiting list. Despite NYCHA’s importance in providing affordable housing for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, though, it has been underfunded for decades, leading to a $80 billion backlog in needed repairs–including nearly $3 billion in District 7. In order to make substantial progress. Edafe is calling for New York City to increase its investment in capital funding for NYCHA by 50% to $1.5 billion per year. 

Over the past several years, NYCHA buildings have been increasingly run by private management companies, which evict residents at a significantly higher rate than traditional NYCHA housing. Edafe will fight against the privatization of public housing to ensure that residents can stay in their homes.

SCRIE–which freezes rent for low and middle income older residents–has been one of the most successful housing programs in the city, with about 70,000 older New Yorkers participating in it every year. But about 45% of eligible residents don’t participate in the program. Because SCRIE freezes rent at the time of application, applying as soon as possible ensures that you can save more money. As a councilmember, Edafe will dedicate a staff member to be a liaison for older residents, helping to advertise SCRIE and make sure those who are eligible sign up promptly.

Even under SCRIE, however, many older New Yorkers are paying more than half of the income on rent. Edafe will fight to have SCRIE freeze rents for older New Yorkers at no more than one-third of their income on rent.