Policy Breakfast Explores Permanent Affordability Requirement

News & Events | March 24th 2017

Over the past two decades, many affordable housing units developed under New York City’s housing subsidy programs expired out of their original affordability restrictions. As a hot real estate market makes it harder for the city to convince owners to remain in subsidy programs, many question whether the city should require units that receive subsidies to remain affordable for longer terms.

On Tuesday, March 21st the NYU Furman Center hosted a policy breakfast entitled Requiring Permanent Affordability: Costs, Benefits, and Challenges to explore the benefits and challenges of a permanent affordability requirement for government-subsidized housing.

The panel explored ways to structure government subsidy programs to maximize both length of affordability and housing quality. The discussion examined how designing a very long term or permanent affordability arrangement is complicated by uncertainty about future changes in market conditions, affordable rents, and costs. The panelists also provided insights into how longer term arrangements might alter the incentives for not-for-profit and for-profit developers to build and maintain affordable housing.

NYU Furman Center Senior Policy Fellow Mark Willis facilitated the panel, which also included:

  • Eric Enderlin, President, New York City Housing Development Corporation
  • Fred Harris, Managing Director of Development, Jonathan Rose Companies
  • Alexa Sewell, President, Settlement Housing Fund
  • Barika Williams, Deputy Director, Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development

View a video of the policy breakfast or download the slide deck from the introductory research presentation. 

« Previous | The Stoop | Next »