City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn today announced that the council and the Bloomberg Administration plan to buy unsold luxury residential condominiums in the city and provide subsidies to make them affordable for middle-class families.
"Throughout the housing boom, we've been swimming against the tide - trying to create affordable, middle class homes while real estate prices climbed. Seemed everywhere you looked, from Chelsea to Corona, a new luxury building was cropping up....Thousands of those homes never sold, left like tarnished trophies of the building boom. These vacant apartments now represent our best asset in the fight for affordable housing. So today we are announcing a new partnership between the council and the Administration, to turn those unsold apartments into affordable homes. Where developers have units they cannot sell, the City will negotiate the lowest possible price, and make these homes affordable for middle class families to rent or buy. Using existing funds we'll add thousands of new affordable homes," she said in her "State of the City" speech.
"New Yorkers who were once nearly priced out of their communities will now have a change to buy or rent one of the new homes that were built in their own backyards. And best of all, these units are already out there, just waiting for someone to call them home. Empty homes are just a missed opportunity for affordable housing," she said. Her speech and the accompanying press release provided no further details of the plan such as how much funding was available.
She called for the city make starting a business easier and "for keeping more local dollars in our local economy" by changing the law that requires the city to take the lowest bid for a product or service "even if that means sending out taxpayer dollars to Minnesota or Malaysia, and by not raising the sales tax." She said that "we'll pass a law to establish temporary amnesty for businesses with outstanding violations," adding that "right now there's $150 million in unpaid fines, of which we're not seeing a penny. If a small business comes forward during this time and demonstrates that they've corrected the underlying problem, we'll waive their late fees and develop a payment plan."
She proposed the creation of a city Biotech Tax Credit to start "stealing those jobs" that have gone to "San Diego and Boston." She also noted that the city does not "have nearly enough nursing professors" and should therefore "recruit experienced nurses from our City's hospitals, and have them serve as guest faculty at CUNY school. By adding just ten more nursing teachers, we'll train 500 new nurses in the next five years."
She said the city should create a new "collaborative workshop" for the food industry, a "shared kitchen will allow 60 small food manufacturers to get started."
The city, she continued, forgoes over $4 billion annual in various tax credits but needs "an annual review - top to bottom - of existing tax credits, to find and eliminate waste and keep up with changing times." "Look at the New York Board of Trade, a commodity exchange. They've gotten nearly one million dollars in tax credits to keep jobs in New York City. But since they got the deal in 2000, they've gone from 4,731 jobs down to only 170. Should we really keep giving them taxpayer money?" she asked.
"Right now, New York City taxes everyone making above $90,000 the same. It's shameful - Bernie Madoff pays the exact same tax rate as a public school principal....We've come up with a proposal to reform the city's outdate income tax structure. We don't tax the middle class a penny more. But we will ask the city's top 4 percent - those making over $300,000 a year - to kick in a little extra."
"Throughout the housing boom, we've been swimming against the tide - trying to create affordable, middle class homes while real estate prices climbed. Seemed everywhere you looked, from Chelsea to Corona, a new luxury building was cropping up....Thousands of those homes never sold, left like tarnished trophies of the building boom. These vacant apartments now represent our best asset in the fight for affordable housing. So today we are announcing a new partnership between the council and the Administration, to turn those unsold apartments into affordable homes. Where developers have units they cannot sell, the City will negotiate the lowest possible price, and make these homes affordable for middle class families to rent or buy. Using existing funds we'll add thousands of new affordable homes," she said in her "State of the City" speech.
"New Yorkers who were once nearly priced out of their communities will now have a change to buy or rent one of the new homes that were built in their own backyards. And best of all, these units are already out there, just waiting for someone to call them home. Empty homes are just a missed opportunity for affordable housing," she said. Her speech and the accompanying press release provided no further details of the plan such as how much funding was available.
She called for the city make starting a business easier and "for keeping more local dollars in our local economy" by changing the law that requires the city to take the lowest bid for a product or service "even if that means sending out taxpayer dollars to Minnesota or Malaysia, and by not raising the sales tax." She said that "we'll pass a law to establish temporary amnesty for businesses with outstanding violations," adding that "right now there's $150 million in unpaid fines, of which we're not seeing a penny. If a small business comes forward during this time and demonstrates that they've corrected the underlying problem, we'll waive their late fees and develop a payment plan."
She proposed the creation of a city Biotech Tax Credit to start "stealing those jobs" that have gone to "San Diego and Boston." She also noted that the city does not "have nearly enough nursing professors" and should therefore "recruit experienced nurses from our City's hospitals, and have them serve as guest faculty at CUNY school. By adding just ten more nursing teachers, we'll train 500 new nurses in the next five years."
She said the city should create a new "collaborative workshop" for the food industry, a "shared kitchen will allow 60 small food manufacturers to get started."
The city, she continued, forgoes over $4 billion annual in various tax credits but needs "an annual review - top to bottom - of existing tax credits, to find and eliminate waste and keep up with changing times." "Look at the New York Board of Trade, a commodity exchange. They've gotten nearly one million dollars in tax credits to keep jobs in New York City. But since they got the deal in 2000, they've gone from 4,731 jobs down to only 170. Should we really keep giving them taxpayer money?" she asked.
"Right now, New York City taxes everyone making above $90,000 the same. It's shameful - Bernie Madoff pays the exact same tax rate as a public school principal....We've come up with a proposal to reform the city's outdate income tax structure. We don't tax the middle class a penny more. But we will ask the city's top 4 percent - those making over $300,000 a year - to kick in a little extra."
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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