A report issued today by New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. indicates that the city¿s affordable housing crisis is worsening.

Prior to 2004, more than 24,000 units were withdrawn from the Mitchell-Lama and Limited Divided housing programs and since then more than 25,000 more have either been withdrawn or notices have been filed to withdraw them, the report stated.

The report found that 32 Mitchell-Lama developments with 12,603 units of affordable housing, ¿constituting 8 percent of all the units built, have left the program since 2004. Of these units, 7,860 were in Manhattan, 2,257 were in The Bronx, 1,517 were in Queens, and 969 were in Brooklyn.

¿Many more developments,¿ it continued, ¿are planning to withdraw from the problems. Twenty-eight Mitchell-Lama developments and one Limited Divided development, representing 12,952 units, have begun the process to withdraw from these programs. If these developments withdraw, New York City will have lost more than 49,000 units ¿ almost 33 percent of affordable units built under the Mitchell-Lama and Limited Dividend programs.¿

Most of the rental apartments in the Mitchell-Lama developers that have been withdrawn are able to have their rents rise to ¿market-rate¿ level, and the report noted that ¿a recent court ruling permits owners of potentially thousands of pre-1974 Mitchell ¿Lama units to seek to raise rents to market levels.¿

The report recommends that New York State establish a program to refinance mortgages and pay for needed repairs for the remaining units in the state-supervised Mitchell-Lama housing and that the state should ¿immediately enact legislation to place under rent stabilization all post-1974 Mitchell-Lama housing developments that leave their program.¿ Such legislation (A2454), it continued, passed the New York State Assembly last year and this year, and ¿awaits action by the Senate¿ (S2061).

The study also said that ¿working with financial institutions and the City¿s public employee pension funds, the City should investigate the feasibility of new partnership loan programs that would provide Mitchell-Lama and Limited Dividend developments (that are not eligible for the Housing Development Corporation Refinancing and Rehabilitation Assistance Loan program) with access to long-term low-interest financing if they continue to remain in their respective programs.¿

It also urged that the city develop affordable housing production goals ¿on a targeted neighborhood basis, taking into account those neighborhoods that are most likely to lose Mitchell-Lama and Limited Dividend housing in the coming years.¿

Low interest rates and the soaring real estate market in recent years has enticed many owners of limited profit housing projects to prepay their mortgages to seek early departure from the programs, the report maintained.

The report said that there are currently 113,810 housing units in the city in Limited Dividend and Mitchell-Lama developments, of which 44,218 are rentals and $69,592 are co-op units. Mitchell-Lama developments occupied onor after January 1, 1974 are not subject to rent-stabilization on leaving the program.