A group of low-wage workers hit Mayor de Blasio’s affordable housing plan Monday, as top administration officials defended the plan.
The workers said they can’t afford the homes in the plan — targeted at people making an average of at least 60% of the median income, or $46,620 for a family of three.
“We have people who can’t make that much. We need dignified housing to be able to keep living in this city,” said Berta Chacon, a hair salon worker who makes $15 an hour, speaking at a City Hall rally organized by the union-backed group Real Affordability for All. “We are living badly — we live five, six people in a room because we don’t make enough.”
De Blasio has vowed to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing.
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To make it happen, the mayor is pursuing a set of zoning changes called “mandatory inclusionary housing,” which would require developers on any project that needs city approval to make 25% to 30% of apartments affordable, at incomes averaging 60% to 120% of the median.
He also needs another zoning plan to allow more housing density. Both proposals go before the City Council for hearings this week.
Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen told reporters Monday the mandatory inclusionary housing is the “strongest, most rigorous program anywhere in the United States.”
Officials said forcing developers to go to even lower incomes could mean the plan would fall to legal challenges. But they said other parts of the affordable housing would cater to those families.
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“We think we’ve pushed as far as we can push without triggering those kinds of constitutional challenges,” said Vicki Been, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “We think we’ve delivered a program that secures a very high amount of affordable housing at a range of incomes.”
The officials also rejected the idea that the plan could speed gentrification by promoting development and new amenities in neighborhoods that haven’t seen rents spike yet. Those neighborhoods are changing anyway, they said, and more housing is needed to take pressure off rents.
“The notion that doing something is worse than doing nothing is a ridiculous premise,” Glen said.
City Planning Commission chairman Carl Weisbrod said the administration may make “modest” changes in negotiations with the Council, but won’t move away from the fundamentals of the plan.
“If you make it too onerous, people just won’t build,” he said.