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Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg on the Mamdani Administration's Housing Plan
01:04:48
Leila Bozorg, New York City Deputy Mayor for Hous…
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello and welcome to Max Politics. This has been Max coming to you from New York Law School in its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in speaking here on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. My guest on the show today is New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg, who is here to discuss where the city is in its housing challenges and efforts to address them. The Mamdani Administration's big housing plan called Block by Block, which was released about two months ago. the end of May, Leila Bozorg was named Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning by Mayor Zora Mamdani for the start of his term. She had been Executive Director for Housing under Mayor Eric Adams and has had a long career in housing and planning, including as a member of the New York City Planning Commission and in several roles over six years at the city's Department of Housing Preservation Development, or hpd, including a Deputy Commissioner position there and in several roles over four years at the U.S. department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. Deputy Mayor Bozorg also had a key role in the 2025 New York City Charter Revision Commission that put significant changes to speed up housing production before voters who approved them last fall, and those are now key pieces of the Mamdani Administration housing plan that she helped design. That plan has many strategies and tactics in it and we'll talk about some, but of course not all of them here on the show today, as well as the broader picture around housing supply and demand in the city, challenges related to public housing at NYCHA and preservation of public housing and other existing affordable housing and much more. New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg with me shortly for a little more context on Block by block. The Mamdani Administration calls it a 10 year action plan that takes an all of the above approach to tackling New York City's housing crisis. It sets targets to build 200,000 new units of affordable housing over that decade and also preserve another 200,000 units of affordable housing. The plan is broken out into eight chapters empowering tenants and strengthening enforcement preserving affordability and improving housing quality securing NYCHA's future, building neighborhoods for working people, expanding and stabilizing homeownership, reducing and preventing homelessness, investing in innovation and good jobs and achieving public excellence. In the conversation ahead, you'll hear the Deputy Mayor talk about some of the pieces in this plan, including programs and policies that are well underway and others that are now in development. The latter bucket includes a promised New proposal to change city zoning rules to allow and encourage more housing near mass transit hubs. We'll talk about that on the show ahead. That and much more in a moment. Very briefly, if you missed any recent episodes of the show, I had a series of post primary election conversations with great guests to talk about what happened in the June 2026 New York primaries for federal and state legislative seats and what it all means, what comes next around Democratic Party unity, the general election, policymaking and more, those guests included, but we're not limited to Jay Jacobs, the chair of the New York State Democr Party. I had a couple conversations with winners of competitive congressional primaries. Brad Lander, now the Democratic nominee in the 10th congressional district, Michael Lasher, now the Democratic nominee in the 12th congressional district. I also spoke to assembly member Jordan Wright of Manhattan, who was the only candidate to defeat a New York City DSA backed challenger in these primaries we just had. I also spoke with one of the now longtime DSA leaders in the city, Brooklyn State Senator Julia Salazar, and still others talking about the elections that happen. Very fascinating series of conversations on housing. I also recently spoke with Arpit Gupta, a member of the city's rent guidelines board and he was the lone vote on the board against the rent freeze that the board passed in June, which of course fulfilled a Mamdani campaign promise. And then last week here on the show, I spoke with New York City Council Speaker Julie Menon and we got into several key issues facing the city and some of her legislative priorities. So lots in the Max Politics feed here to check out if you haven't caught them all after you listen to this one. All right. I'm very pleased to welcome to Max Politics New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, Leila Bozorg. Thanks for joining me. How are you?
- [04:42]
B
I'm doing great. How are you?
- [04:45]
A
Thanks for taking the time. I'm doing okay. So couple months since the big housing plan was released, block by block, what's the sort of initial couple months after you release a massive plan like this look like? Like what are the key ways that you move from releasing a plan to implementation? Obviously there's many elements of a housing plan like this that are continuation of things that are already in place. But now it's a real reset moment for an administration. Right. What is the, what is the sort of initial rollout look like? Are there a lot of, you know, regular meetings and things to really make sure that this gets a kickstart to implementation? What's that look like two months since the plan was released?
- [05:30]
B
Sure. Well, first I'll say part of what I'm very proud of about block by block and the plan is the comprehensive nature of it and that it really covers a really wide scope of housing policy issues that we're facing in the city. Everything from our supply side challenges, preservation challenges challenges, the challenges facing owners, strategies to improve homeownership, strategies to support nycha. And so given that comprehensive nature, the next few months post release is really about how do we set ourselves up for success. Of course, a plan like this, it's not just made by me at City Hall. It's the product of a lot of engagement and a lot of work across the agencies under the deputy mayor for Housing and Planning portfolio. So there's a solid baseline of both kind of public engagement, but as well kind of agency work that has gone into creating the plans that then creates the foundation for all right, how are we going to move into implementation? What are the key things that we're going to be tracking? What does this mean for our MMRs going forward? Right, there's a whole phase of the work now where we're thinking about what are the kind of public pieces that we translate into MMR targets. So a lot of the work does come down to breaking out with the agencies, the different goals we've set for ourselves and laying out a path for how we want to get there. And those goals vary. Right. So on, on the production side, for example, we have tangible goals we've set of how many units we want to produce per year or how we want to scale to the 20,000 new affordable per year. But in other sections, it's strategies that we've laid out. Right. Like things like creating a transport Oriented Development framework. So the implementation of that looks quite different than the planning on the HPD side for making sure we're working on projects that help us get to financial closings of deeply affordable housing. So it's really disparate depending on the parts of the plan, and it really depends on the strong leadership team and teams at each of the agencies and the interagency work, I should say, involved in actually having a successful housing strategy.
- [07:54]
A
And what's the role of the deputy mayor here in this? Is it basically regular updates from those commissioners and meetings to have the different interagency folks coming together where you can say, where are we? Tell me your latest progress, you know, how do we kick this up a notch? What do you need for staffing that I can tell the mayor, you know, he needs to approve or work with the, you know, budget office? To approve. Like, what is your sort of most pressing role here? Is it about that management and accountability and progress tracking? Are you doing more public facing work where you're meeting with a lot of people in the real estate and housing and tenant world? What, what is your, like, how are you spending most of your time, I guess is the question.
- [08:42]
B
It's really a mix, some of which you've just hit on. But I'd say first and foremost, part of the work is figuring out how to translate the administration's broader affordability agenda and affordability goals into housing policy. Right. I mean, this is an administration that is very focused on the broader affordability challenges that New Yorkers are facing. And the crux of that often for many people lies in our, in their housing affordability challenges and the broader housing affordability crisis. So first and foremost it's about figuring out how we translate this broader vision of trying to get become a more affordable city into tangible housing policies. That's kind of what the purpose of the plan is. Right. Let's set a roadmap for how we want to work towards becoming a more affordable city through various housing and land use strategies. Then it really is about identifying the right leadership and team, both here at City hall, but also at the agencies, and working with them to ensure they have the resources they need and the support they need to implement. And then I'd say there's a lot of iterative. You know, we have this plan out there. It's meant to be a ten year plan, but we're learning a lot along the way. And so a lot of my work is also there are a lot of meetings. Some is subject matter specific, some is agency specific, where there's a constant feedback loop around what's going well, what do we need to adjust, where do we need resource allocation shifts in order to really meet these ambitious and aggressive goals and this ambitious vision.
- [10:28]
A
Two things about your portfolio here. One is how do you assess the staffing levels at your key agencies? Is there a big problem, a medium problem, a small problem? You know, there was a lot of attention over the last bunch of years since COVID about deficits in personnel at city agencies to execute on a lot of plans, whether it was the de Blasio administration, the Adams administration, or now into the Mamdani administration. Challenges with hiring, retention, all of that. A lot of the budgeted vacancies have just been slashed year after year after year because the agencies can't nearly fill all the, the personnel that they were budgeted for. And there's still you know, plenty of personnel to potentially be added that is budgeted for. How do you sort of assess that and how are you, you know, sort
- [11:18]
B
of addressing really has to be assessed at an agency by agency level and it's really different by agency. And I would say in for example, the housing space there, there was a real problem. And I think part of what HPD has been able to achieve over the past years has been despite real staffing challenges, they had a pretty high vacancy rate coming out of COVID and the great resignation hit many city agencies, including HPD and then. But I was quite impressed with how much they've been able to achieve even within those staffing challenges. But yes, a huge part of actually the first couple months was really sitting with each commissioner and team to really evaluate, especially in the context of the day one executive orders. We kicked off, right, we kicked off the lift task force land in Victoria fast track. We kicked off the speed task force. How do we make housing more efficient? From environmental review to lease up, we kicked off wanting to reinvest in the mayor's office to protect tenants. All of those had specific kind of resource and staffing needs associated with them, let alone the evaluation of what's the baseline need to sustain. On the housing side, affordable housing production. On the planning side, being able to do ambitious neighborhood planning work is very resource intensive. Wanting to do that faster, for example, if secret reforms happen, which was introduced in the governor's budget, also has staffing implications. So it's this constant iterative conversation around where we are, where we're trying to go and what the needs are. And I'm happy to say that through things like speed, through the executive budget, we, we really were able to add significant staffing in some core areas that were needing, needing those resources.
- [13:07]
A
So how hamstrung do you feel in implementing this massive plan by staffing at city housing related agencies? A little. A lot.
- [13:17]
B
Medium right now. I'm very proud to say that in the executive budget and the adopted budget, we were allocated significant resources both on the capital side to be able to ramp up affordable housing production, but on the staffing side as well. So. And the agencies now also with some of the broader changes that the admin has rolled out around allowing agencies to start filling vacancies is going to make a significant difference for all of the agencies involved. That's not to say there won't be other needs that come up or that there's, there's still some needs to be met in some agencies, but that will always be kind of as, as we hit different plans and financial plans, you know, we take a step back and look at the resource needs.
- [14:05]
A
One other thing that's sort of part of the management role you're in that I wanted to ask you about that sort of in the weeds, but is really important, as all these task forces have been show showing and things related to charter reform and other things is you sort of have to get permits done, you have to get approvals. You. A lot of this comes back to like the Department of Buildings and the Fire Department. Will you just say a little bit about the effort to turn the Department of Buildings into more of a housing focused agency? Obviously the commissioner there, Ahmed Tagani, came from recently being at hpd, had been at Buildings previously. But there's sort of a, a way in which people don't always understand that a lot of getting housing built and opened and tenant, you know, tenants moving in relates to some of this sort of in the weeds, things related to inspections and approvals and things that are really important around safety. We can get to the, you know, office conversion issues in a minute. But what's, how's that going and is it a huge culture shift? Is it going well? Is it a challenge? How is it turning Department of Buildings into more of a housing focused agency? If that's a correct way to say what one of the goals is here?
- [15:25]
B
Yeah, that is certainly part of the goals and I think part of the vision of bringing Department of Buildings under the Housing and Planning portfolio. And I'll say the team there is just, to me, wildly impressive. It's incredibly helpful to have the leadership of Commissioner Tigani, someone who deeply understands the role of Department of Buildings in the city, not just for housing, but so many other important parts of civic life go through the Department of Buildings for reviews and approvals. And I think he has a very clear vision of that. He's also promoted First Deputy Commissioner Yagal Shamal, who has been at the agency for some time and is just an incredible leader. So the leadership team that has taken shape there has this kind of great outlook and vision and understanding of the important role that the agency plays. And as they played a big part in again that day one EO speed where we were really looking at, they, along with many other agencies, do play this very critical role in the process of creating and preserving affordable housing and housing broadly across the city. And so we're really leaning into that and ensuring both the coordination necessary, but also, again, it allows me to really evaluate for our housing goals what are the types of resources that DOB most needs. And of course, it's not just about our housing goals. They do play a big role in ensuring safety across a wide range of areas, whether it's schools, hospitals, small businesses. But it's been great having them under the portfolio. The other thing I'll just say about that, though, is that I truly believe, having been in government for some time now, there is no perfect structure for how agencies are split across portfolios. There is always going to be a really critical need to break down traditional silos between, whether it's deputy mayor teams or just between agencies and the functions between agencies. And I think we saw a lot of this conversation in the coach testimonies and the coach work that just kind of unfolded over the past few months, that there's just this intense need for good government and for coordination because you're never going to have the perfect structure, I think, from a. From an organizational management standpoint, because everything is so interconnected and people experience the city in a really interconnected way. So as much as I'm. I'm thrilled that DOB is in our portfolio, that doesn't mean that, you know, they're not coordinating with all the other operations agencies that they used to sit within. And the housing work also relies so much on the work of other operations agencies. And there's been a really collaborative kind of mindset and attitude from agency leadership and the other deputy mayor teams as well.
- [18:24]
A
And I suppose that's either a purposeful or nod also to the question of whether the Economic Development Corporation should have been under your portfolio. And you know how that sort of shifted around under this new mayor. But as you said, you know, so much that is key is the idea that there can't be silos and there needs to be coordination because it's going to be a little bit different here and there, so. Absolutely. All right.
- [18:51]
B
I will note on that, though, Ben, that, you know, an agency like the Economic Development Corporation does play a really critical role in our housing and land use work. They have a very strong neighborhood planning team, a very strong real estate team, and I have been working very closely with them and Deputy Mayor Su since day one to ensure that the role that they play is sustained and is supported and has the right resources to be able to continue to support our broad housing goals that they play a really critical role in.
- [19:21]
A
All right, noted. All right, let's zoom way out here. That was a lot of the nitty gritty of your job as deputy mayor, which is, of course, interesting and so key to implementation of all this. But we're talking here at the very end of July 2026. Where do we stand on the sort of big picture of the city's housing crisis as it relates to sort of supply and demand? Right. So there are many facets, as you already noted in your first remarks. There's, of course, nycha, there's of course a homelessness crisis which relates to the supply of housing as well. Obviously, even at nycha, there's the question of, you know, getting vacant units back online and all that that relate to supply. But sort of bigger picture. There was reporting from the Department of city planning that 2025 saw basically a modern record of the number of units coming online in housing in the city. Close to 40,000, which is. Which is a big number. Where are we right now in terms of the big picture here of the city's housing sort of availability, supply and demand? We know that the last, you know, vacancy survey showed an incredibly low 1.4% vacancy rate, which basically means, you know, there's a major housing emergency ongoing. There's not enough available units at any time for people that want to stay in New York, live in New York, move to New York. But how do you sort of capture where we are right now? Because it does seem like over the last, I would say, maybe even decade, a lot of different new pieces have been put into place to address these issues. From mandatory inclusionary housing programs during the de Blasio administration, through City of Yes. You know, that you were instrumental in, in the Adams administration and now moving into this new administration. You mentioned state environmental review reform that just got passed in the state budget. You have this big housing plan out. You're already doing things. Where are we right now in that. In that big picture?
- [21:22]
B
Sure. So I will start with, I think, the big picture challenges, which remain, as much as I am glad with the progress we've made, which I'll lean into more in a moment that you just named, you know, big reforms, whether that's mandatory inclusionary housing. During the de Blasio administration, City of yes, during the Adams administration, and so much more. As. As pleased as I am that we've made great progress in kind of shifting the dynamic and broad agreement that we have a supply side challenge. The reality is the challenges remain incredibly severe. Right. So our housing shortage is. We still have this 1.4% vacancy rate. That is a number from the 2023 housing and vacancy survey that gets updated every three years. So next year we will be getting an update that is the only representative data set about the housing stock in New York City. And so those are numbers we'll be looking very closely at. But we have the severe shortage and even more severe shortage of low cost units and housing. We see incredibly high numbers of homeless households, over 97,000 individuals sleeping in various shelters on any given night. That's both DHS shelters but also shelters that HPD runs, Department of Youth and Community Development runs. So severe homelessness as well. And then real challenges in the existing stock of affordable housing. And that's a wide range of types of challenges. Right. We have challenges in Michalama, we have challenges with some of the in NYCHA. Right. Our $78 billion capital backlo and all that's happening in a context where we are still in a kind of post Covid inflationary environment. We have the federal government kind of retracting in its responsibilities. That's something it'd been doing on the public housing side for decades, but is also impacting the work we do, whether it's through the emergency housing vouchers OR through section 8 or other critical federal resources that we rely on have been contracting. So a very tough environment broadly that we're operating within. That being said, I am pleased and I remain optimistic about the progress we've been able to make in starting to get big reforms and system level reforms done that help us start to tackle this issue. The core part of our challenges still really lie in our housing shortage. And so I think that's something I really keep my eye on and know that we can't kind of drop the ball on. And so I am very happy about the, you know, recent production numbers. Really good production numbers in 2025 as you noted from, from Department of City Planning putting out that I think over 38,000 close to 40,000 homes were constructed in 2025. That's the second consecutive year that more than 30,000 units were completed, which is the highest. But that really hasn't happened six since the 60s. So that's solid progress. But if you look closely at the numbers, a lot of that is driven by kind of 421A hangover, the rush to get foundations in and to get projects done as 421A was expiring. So the reforms we've made are all positive, incredibly positive and are going to have a big impact over time. But we have to stay really focused on ensuring that we are continuing to put resources towards our affordable housing production, but also ensuring that the tools we have out there work to create greater housing production overall. And of course this is all happening at a time when, as I noted, we have these preservation challenges and we have to be ensuring that as we work to grow, that we are continuing to invest in the existing stock to protect tenants, to improve housing quality. The affordable housing we have today is, is priceless and losing that, it's very hard to buy back affordability once you've lost something. And so as much as we have to kind of continue being aggressive on the supply side, our administration is also very focused on our preservation needs, which is why we also put in, block by block, an equally high preservation target of 200,000 homes over the next 10 years.
- [26:01]
A
Right. So it's 10 year goal, 200,000 new affordable units, 200,000 preserved affordable units, just on the supply side to continue. And of course, as you just noted, preservation is a key part of keeping supply available. And there's, you know, questions that I hope we have time to discuss around returning vacant NYCHA units to availability as well as other units that might be in the broader affordable housing stock, whether that's rent stabilized, units that are not online and so forth. We can get back to hopefully some of that in a minute. But, but on the broader sort of supply side, again, is it right to say if you're aiming at 20,000 affordable, sorry, 200,000 affordable units over a decade, 20,000 a year, that that roughly means that you're aiming for somewhere between 40 and 50,000 new units per year. Is that, is that fair to say? And that. And that 20,000 of them, roughly half to 40%, will be affordable?
- [27:03]
B
That's roughly right, yes. Though I'd say because some of it
- [27:08]
A
comes from like, direct city financing of affordable housing, some 100% affordable housing, and then a lot of it via the private market, that will very often trigger mandatory inclusionary housing, which means at least 20, 25%, if not more of the units will be affordable.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, given our housing shortage, I think we need to get to a place where we as a city are producing over 50,000 new homes per year.
- [27:37]
A
Is that possible? Like, do, do you think that that's. To get.
- [27:40]
B
I mean, yes, I, I do think that's possible. I mean, it's not something that can happen overnight. Yeah, but I think it absolutely is possible if we focus on the kind of core challenges that contribute to our supply constraint, things like property tax reform, focusing, continuing to focus on where we can add density and making zoning reforms that allow for greater density where it makes sense. So yes, I believe that that is possible for our future.
- [28:16]
A
And you have, we're not going to mention every new tool you already have at your disposal. But now there's these changes to the city charter that voters approve that fast track a lot of housing. There's going to be, as you just noted, you know, various new tools and fast tracks for developing housing in areas of the city that have not welcomed much new housing in recent years. So I mean, there's a very long list of changes that have happened even in the last few years, not to mention the last decade that, that contribute to this possibility.
- [28:45]
B
Yeah, and I think that's part of the challenge that folks don't always recognize is there's really not, not going to be, I think, a single solution here that, that shifts the dynamic. We have to address this kind of at every regulatory level and kind of at every regulatory barrier that we have we've set up over decades for ourselves that have contributed to this housing shortage. On the affordable side, I will say, and it's worth just pulling this apart a little bit, the 200,000 new homes. I can't reinforce enough how aggressive that goal is. And ambit, you know, historically HPD or the city on kind of its strongest years. And again, those are years where 421A historically has coming up on some kind of expiration and people are rushing into the door. Kind of the highest per year production we've seen is often around 13, 14,000. And that's not regular. Those have been outlier years. Right. And that's a combination of projects financed by HPD and HDC. Right, your typical 100% affordable projects and the affordable units coming out of what we call mixed income developments, whether it's mandatory inclusionary housing or inclusionary housing or 421A, what have you. And now 467M. So for us, the 200,000 goal is really about one maxing out the affordable production that we can get. Given the changes that the federal government made to the low income housing tax credit, you know, they lowered their threshold, what's called the now called the 25% test, which essentially kind of in layperson's terms, it allows us to spread out tax credits across more projects. That means though that we need to get those projects constructed. We actually have to add capital dollars into those projects to be able to do more. So HPD's typical construction, new, new construction on a given year was around 6,000 homes. We're now trying to ramp that up so that we are maxing out that the low income housing tax credit use on new construction to at least 8,000 homes. Per year. The remainder, it really needs to come from some of these mixed income programs, 467 M45X and new tools that we want to, that we've introduced. Things like our smart loan, the way we're using public sites a little bit differently to cross subsidize and strong neighborhoods. It's really now about stretching our strategies and our resources to be able to get as much affordability built with the capital budget that we have.
- [31:34]
A
So you acknowledged early on in this conversation that you've put out a few metrics for this plan and the administration's approach to housing, but you're developing others. You mentioned MMRs, Mayor Management Report metrics. What are a few of the ones that are on your mind? I mean, this is something I was going to ask you about even if you didn't mention that I was curious what other metrics for success you're working on here? You know, obviously there's this sort of, of shifting conversations sometimes that people say, you know, we want to, we want to bring rents down versus, you know, the probably more sensible way to say it is sort of break the rent increase curve. But you know, it's good to have a goal that, to bring rents down. And we've seen that in some places that have really added a lot of housing supply. But that's, that's going to be, you know, very hard to really reduce rents. You know, maybe it's breaking the rent increase curve, you know, a certain way. Maybe it's the vacancy rate, you know, that you have a goal. I mean, this is sort of like a third rail in housing policy conversation. But maybe a goal is to not have there be a housing emergency anymore. That would trigger a whole bunch of questions. But homelessness metrics, I mean, what are some of the metrics that you're thinking about here? And I know the ones I just listed are like very big picture. And you're probably thinking also about, you know, number of supportive housing units that come online per year and things like that. But how are you thinking about some of the metrics that you're, that you're eyeing for development here to measure success and to indicate to New Yorkers beyond those big numbers we already mentioned, you know, how this is going.
- [33:13]
B
Yeah, it really varies. But I'll name a few or some of the ways that I'm thinking about this one, obviously are the actual, for lack of a better word, production goals that we laid out in the plan. Right. Are we financing, you know, 14,000 to 15,000 preservation homes in the portfolio in the first year and do we have, you know, we've kind of set ways that we're going to try to ramp that up over a five to ten year period so that we get to that 20,000 per year. Similarly on the new construction. And that's a lot of work across the agencies to ensure we are actually working on those projects in a way that allows us to have both flexibility to be able to negotiate really good projects for the public with each developer. You need to be moving enough projects along but also using your capital resources strategically and wisely. So it's really about tracking towards making sure we hit those production goals while also those affordable production goals while using capital resources wisely. So that's kind of the most obvious. I'm also though thinking a lot about our goals for nycha, both on the comprehensive modernization side, but also tracking the way NYCHA is meeting its obligations under the HUD agreement. There's a lot of metrics within the HUD agreement that we track closely and that the NYCHA team has been tracking closely and making incredible progress towards. That's on the kind of operations of Section 9 side. We're also looking at comprehensive modernization right through, through tools that allow us to do the deep investments to preserve NYCHA homes for the long term. At nycha, it's not just though about the unit production, it's also about looking at that large capital backlog, that $78 billion number that you probably hear me or others talking about, which represents kind of the 20 year physical needs assessment. There's one silver lining with that number. I hate to call it a silver lining, but that number has stabilized over the past few years. Which means if we continue to scale the work of investing in NYCHA homes, we can really try to get to the other side of the cost curve. Right. So we want to bring that number down rather than assume it's going to keep going up. And that number, I should say when I worked at HUD in 2010-2014, the number NYCHA's capital backlog at that time was 17 billion. So that's grown just in the decade, which goes to show how challenging, right? If you're not investing in housing, especially housing that is falling apart, the needs can really escalate dramatically. So on the NYCHA side we're looking, there's both nuance on the operations metrics, but also broader preservation and that capital backlog. And then there's things like that point to just broader public excellence. You noted the work on turning over NYCHA vacant units, right? That's something that we're working very closely with NYCHA on. We've made additional investments to support through the plan to support NYCHA in turning over those units more per year. I should note, I do think there's some misinformation out there and I'm happy to dig into it later with you on. On their vacancy number, but that's something we're looking at.
- [36:43]
A
Well, go ahead. I mean, the vacancy number at NYCHA is estimated in your plan. I think it's something like 6,000 units. Is that.
- [36:50]
B
Yeah, it's around 6,000 units. I think what folks don't often recognize in this conversation is that it's not a stagnant 6,000 units just sitting there vacant. Like any other kind of housing provider, there is turnover in NYCHA homes. So when a unit is. So I'll just. The important number to keep in mind in addition to the 6,000 is actually the 4,500 homes that NYCHA has been turning over per year to make ready for new households. So what happens is, you know, the average tenancy in a NYCHA home is over 25 years. When a resident moves out, NYCHA goes through a very intensive capital process to reinvest in that unit. They make it, if needed, fully lead free, asbestos free, and really create essentially a new unit for people to move into. So there's the time that it takes to do that level of repair. And then, and this was through the advocacy of a lot of advocates in the city. NYCHA has very strict tenant selection procedures and policies where they do prioritize things like internal transfers for reasonable accommodations, victims of domestic violence within their portfolio. And so what's often happening when a new resident moves into one of those new units is they're immediately creating a new vacancy. So that overall number can be hard to kind of chip away at. But the turnover, that's the number I'm looking at. How do we ensure that they are doing, you know, as many turnovers as possible and that they're doing it as fast as possible? That's in their mmr, actually, the number of days that it takes to turn over an apartment.
- [38:42]
A
Do you have a city wide separate from NYCHA vacancy rate target goal in mind? So if it's 1.4% at the last survey, there'll be a survey, as you noted, coming out again next year or later. Next year or later? This year.
- [39:02]
B
It comes out around February, January, February.
- [39:05]
A
So yeah. So early next year.
- [39:07]
B
Yeah, early next year.
- [39:09]
A
Let's assume that that says something like, I don't know, 3 or 4% somewhere. But do you have a longer term goal in mind? Like what's the, what's the target vacancy rate for the city in, you know, at the end of term, one of, you know, Mamdani administration or, or after 10 years of this housing plan? Like what would be a, a goal? Because you know, people say if you get up to 7, 8, 9%, then you have a much healthier housing market where renters have a lot more leverage.
- [39:41]
B
Yeah, it's, it really speaks to kind of the balance of power between landlords and tenants. This vacancy rate. We haven't set a specific vacancy target. We obviously are working towards trying to chip away at the vacancy rate, which actually means is trying to create more supply. Right. And ensure that units that are, that we, we can get onto the market are also being leased up quickly. I should just note on the other, other indicators that I'm tracking is things like how fast things are moving through the lottery, how many units are being leased up per year, what the experience of getting homeless placements placed through the processes. Those are other really important pieces of this. But going back to the vacancy rate, we haven't set a specific vacancy rate target. But it's, that's certainly kind of a core part of what the challenge is and what we're working towards as a solution which is getting to a healthier housing supply and a healthier housing market. And as you note, that would imply something certainly not 1.4%. The state recognizes 5% as being kind of a housing emergency. Technically it's the city council that has to recognize and call it a housing emergency. But, but names that 5% as what would pull us out of a technical housing emergency. And yes, some research has suggested that it's really that 7, 8 to 11% that gets you to a true kind of balance of power between those searching for housing and those providing housing. So we don't have a set target, but it's certainly something we're pushing towards is a healthier kind of supply and demand dynamic.
- [41:26]
A
I know a lot of people, I think broadly on the sort of left, let's say, which include well, moderates to, even to socialists. I think many people want the vacancy rate to be something like 4.99%. But, but maybe that'll be a discussion for another time.
- [41:43]
B
That would be a much healthier place for us to be in. So, but you know, it also I will note the nuance matters, right. What's driving, what would be driving that vacancy rate? Is it things like a pandemic Right. Our vacancy rate went up during the pandemic. That's not a, that's not a healthy reason to fall into a higher vacancy rate. So ensuring that there through housing strategies is part of what I'm focused on.
- [42:07]
A
And just in case anyone listening didn't get the half joke there, that's you know, in reference to this idea of not, not lifting the housing emergency that then relates to the rent stabilization system. You mentioned the day one executive orders from the mayor. One of those was for, as you mentioned, the Lyft task force, which is the land inventory fast track Task force I believe in that executive order report was due into you by July 1, which is looking at city, city land and it's use usability for housing. Do you have that report? Should we expect to see some further news on that soon? What's the latest on, on that and the use of more city land for, for housing?
- [43:00]
B
Yes, I have kind of the initial findings from the task force and we are working through and soon we'll be sharing more publicly on that. But broadly I can say, you know, the goal of this is really to do a very comprehensive scan of city owned, publicly owned properties and ensure that we are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to evaluating whether any of these properties are suitable for housing and, or suitable for colocation. Right. We have now a pretty deep history of doing co location with affordable housing and libraries. We're also looking at ways to use to address other capital needs that agencies might have with city owned properties through housing redevelopment. Right. So 100 Gold street is a good example of that where you have dilapidated city office space and instead of investing, you know, x hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to modernize that space, we decided as a city to RFP it for significant housing production and to use that land value to buy or lease other office space for the city. So that's allowing us to, you know, have kind of the site serve dual purposes, both leveraging land value to help us meet some office space needs while also meeting housing goal needs. So we've done a pretty wide scan, I'm happy to say we are I think being very creative in the different ways we are using public land and we'll continue to do that in this administration. And I will note part of the goal here too is and this is harder for, you know, there's certainly differing opinions on this but we really want to be able to use land in a smart way that allows us to be really aggressive towards our housing goals. So on some of These higher value sites, for example, where we have needs, we're really trying to balance the affordability goals with the other needs of agencies. And again, this goes to stretching our capital dollars furthest on high value sites where we can use market rate units to cross subsidize affordability or cross subsidize these other goals. It's a really good way to get more housing built without having to use scarce capital dollars so we can put those capital dollars in another neighborhood that can't pencil without them. And so that allows us to just do more overall with the resources we have.
- [45:39]
A
One of the aspects of block by block that I think grabbed a lot of attention in the housing world was the promise of a new, I think, zoning framework around transit Oriented Development. What's the sort of timeline for seeing that? Is it, is it is the idea here that this is a new citywide zoning amendment that sort of builds off of city of. Yes, but then goes even further on development near subway stations. It's mentioned in the plan some bus rapid transit lines. What's sort of exactly how you're thinking about that and what's the timeline for sort of seeing that. That plan?
- [46:27]
B
Yeah. So with that framework, our goal is really to kind of set a baseline expectation that areas with good transit access should allow more housing, period. And we can do that in a, in a nuanced way, but also with that baseline, understanding that in a city like ours, if you have good transit access, you should be enabling more housing production or have an appropriate level of density around that, that, that node. So the, the goal of the TOD proposal really is to kind of introduce reforms that are going to allow us to build more densely around, you know, transportation nodes, while also kind of providing access to really important services, job opportunities, you know, using the tools to create greater accessibility in the transit system as well, and also be able in some, some neighborhoods use some of the new higher density mapping tools that we got through both through City of. Yes. And through some of the state changes a couple years ago with the lifting of the FAR12 cap. So right now we're very much kind of what I call in the lab, cooking on what this framework could look like. And I'll say it's going to require a lot of engagement with the public, with the city council, with different communities, because it is something that would have to be introduced as a citywide framework and that we'd have to do in partnership with the city council. But I'll say, you know, key elements of it, of course, are increasing density around, you know, high capacity transit, creating pretty consistent and predictable rules to make TOD as of right where it makes sense and then also allowing smaller infill sites around transit where it makes sense as well. So the goal, again, any sense of
- [48:29]
A
timeline, I'd say, or hard to know right now.
- [48:33]
B
It's, it's. It's hard to say right now, but it's something overall in terms of when, when it gets introduced and when it gets past. Our goal is to have this done
- [48:42]
A
in the first term and you are already sort of moving in something in that direction where one of your first neighborhood area community rezoning efforts is in an area south of Prospect park that already has transit accessibility and is going to be near the expected inter Borough Express. So it seems like, I mean I should have mentioned that even at the beginning that the Inter Borough Express, this plan for Brooklyn and Queens is also very relevant as a layer to acknowledge related to any sort of new zoning tools around transit oriented Development, because those should really go hand in hand. Is that fair to say?
- [49:20]
B
Yeah, it presents an immense opportunity certainly to be doing planning around the future of ibx. I'll note it's not just the south of Prospect neighborhood plan that we introduced, but also the one in White Plains in partnership with council member Riley is also around a transportation corridor. And those will look very different. They're very different neighborhoods, very different communities. But. So those are two that already have a bit of a TOD lens to them. And I'll note it kind of points to the fact that we as we're going to introduce a citywide TOD framework, but that we'll also be doing some more of the traditional kind of neighborhood planning efforts like whether it's south of Prospect or White Plains. We'll also be looking to introduce different types of neighborhood planning efforts. You probably saw in the plan something that right now we're calling micro plans where we look at specific corridors or property types, looking at kind of smaller scale opportunities to introduce reforms that unlock housing that are at a smaller kind of scope than your traditional neighborhood plan or certainly much significantly smaller than a citywide framework. And then of course we'll be looking to use the tools that voters enabled us through the charter reforms of 2025 and the fast track rules, the ERP, et cetera. So I'm.
- [50:43]
A
Is that the next big thing? I mean there's the depart. You have, you have some of those fast track tools that are ready in place. Then October, the Department of City Planning is supposed to publish the list of the 12 community districts in the city that have been building the least affordable housing, and then those areas are then subject to fast tracking for new housing. Is that like the next big thing you're eyeing? I mean, I know there's a million parts of this plan. You know, you've been referencing many, many of them throughout. There's so many tools and strategies. But if this TOD framework is going to take a while, which makes sense as you're getting at, and you know, a citywide zoning reform take takes a lot of work. Like, what are, what are the next sort of big pieces that you're eyeing here? Is it that list? Because that'll then open a lot of sort of the floodgates for the city and developers to sort of go into new places that really haven't been building housing and say, oh, there's a, there's a whole new world here. Any other things that are.
- [51:42]
B
I'd say, yeah, in terms of kind of the sequence of different planning efforts we put in the plan, yes, October is fast approaching. HPD is working on the broader fair housing framework, which needs to be put out and has an intersecting part of this. But then that is where in October, you know, the methodology, the rules for it have already passed for the affordable housing fast track and how we're going to identify the districts that have produced the least amount of affordable housing. But once that's identified. Yes, it's really about looking at what are the different types of actions that we want to introduce to enable faster and greater housing and affordable housing production in neighborhoods that just haven't been producing.
- [52:29]
A
Yeah, I want to spend our last, I don't know, eight minutes on rent stabilized housing. But let me ask you quickly. First, you mentioned the need for property tax reform. Seemingly there was discussion in the administration that that was going to move faster. Now, there's been commentary that the administration plans to have a proposal out ahead of next session in Albany. Unless there's anything else to add there. I won't ask you further about that right now, but that's basically the idea, is that. Okay, so the second other thing is, speaking of the session in Albany, is the administration going to pursue any changes to the sort of successor program you mentioned? 421A. The successor program to that property tax break for developing housing with some affordable housing within it is 485X. There's a lot of attention on the fact that a lot of buildings are being built around the city to stay under the 100 unit threshold. That then kicks in different labor standards and expenses for developers. A lot of 99 unit buildings in the pipeline and so forth. Is the administration looking at advocacy around any reforms to that so that the, you know, perhaps there's strong labor standards still, but that the housing supply constraints that have appeared on that are not still in place.
- [53:52]
B
Look, we're tracking what's happening with 485x very closely and it is producing some housing. Of course there's been wide reporting on the 99 unit developments. We are by the way starting to see larger buildings come through. So you've probably heard me say publicly, and I still very much believe this, that the tool needs a little bit more time, I think to. To shake out. We're still someone on my team framed this one as we're dealing with 421 and a land prices in a 485X world. Right. The extensions of 421A have enabled a lot of housing production to still continue under the old rules. There was even a couple projects that got an extension in the last state session specifically for their projects, an extension of the old 421A rules. So that I think has complicated the market a bit. But we certainly. The vision of 485X is to be able to create those larger projects. And I don't think anyone envisioned exactly the way that these 99 unit and especially these kind of multiple 99 unit buildings would that are on, you know, consecutive tax slots, et cetera. Yeah, I think that that's certainly something we're tracking. We're watching organized labor has raised concerns about that. On the other hand, the real estate industry has raised concerns that, you know, the. Between the affordability restrictions and the wage requirements, nothing will pencil. So again we're tracking the data closely and really it's hard to imagine, you know, a big reform in 485x without all parties coming to the table and trying to find what that sweet spot is for the tool to work for everybody. So I still think it needs time. It is producing housing and we are starting to see larger projects. But as I mentioned in our broader affordability goals, we need a tool like that that to be working smoothly, be working well and producing good quality, strong wage jobs for it to work as designed.
- [56:15]
A
Interesting. All right. There's many, many aspects related to rent stabilized housing in the stock and the, and the recent rent freeze that the rent guidelines board voted through, that we could discuss. We don't have time to do all of that. But my, my real question to you is what is your assessment of the distress in the rent stabilized stock? And both Its, its physical stock and its financial stock. Like how much of an emergency is this? You know, is it, is it up to one third? You know, some, some people put out there of the rent stabilized buildings are in, in pretty bad, you know, financial shape. What's your, what's your sort of assessment of the both physical distress? You know, you mentioned with nycha, it's hard to turn over the vacant units. I believe in the housing plan, you know, you've got estimates of it costing up to, you know, six, $60,000 per unit to turn that over rent stabilized. You know, building owners are saying we can't afford that, especially in buildings that have mostly or all rent stabilized units. So, so how are you thinking about the distress level both physically and financially in this stock and you know, the key tools to deal with it?
- [57:36]
B
Yeah, so I mean, thinking about the distress levels, again using the data that's available to us, one of the data points that the RGB put out this year really signals that properties that are struggling most. I think it's about 8% of units, 11% of properties mostly concentrated in the Bronx. The 100% rent stabilized buildings that do face negative NOI, for example. But that's a pretty narrow. Yeah, net operating income. That's a pretty narrow slice of the pie that's experiencing that level of distress. It's still con. It's very concerning and something we need to bring our tools to the table to, to, to bear. It's not tools that the rgb, for example, has at. At its disposal are not the same tools that HPD has at its disposal. So it's really about, I think, narrowing in on where the distress is happening, what type of tools we have to bring to that type of challenge. Right. So for the, for the affordable regulated stock, they're dealing, if we look at kind of the challenges they're dealing with, they're mostly dealing with the insurance increase increase, incredible increases in insurance costs. They're not paying property taxes, so that's not one of their issues. And they're dealing with significant renter rears still and recovering collections post Covid where, you know, collections are generally underwritten about 95% of a building. During COVID it fell to something like 70%. It's starting to inch back up to 90%. This is about collecting rent, people's ability to pay. And so for the affordable stock, there's a different set of tools we can bring to the table, some of which we talked about in the housing plan through something actually the acronym is tools, but targeted owner options for long term stability. But it really is a set of, you know, strategies to support those owners in addressing the types of distress they're facing. Things like more flexibility in how they're using their, their operating reserves, which we tightly regulate. So providing more flexibility there, providing for folks that have actual partial property tax relief, looking at providing full property tax relief despite expediting violations, clearance of violations when they're going through a rehab project. And then I'll also just note our preservation tools itself are one of the main ways that we are supporting financially and physically distressed properties. And we added significant capital dollars to those programs. Right. So this is where you're inviting an owner in and you're saying to address the distress in your building, whether it's financial or physical, often it's both. We will provide a low cost loan in exchange for long term affordability. And so they can do major capital investments through those tools. So when owners say we can't afford the investment, we're often saying, well, come talk to us about what the challenges are you're facing. We do have a wide range of tools that we can bring to the table and some are looser than a full capital investment. Things like J51, really important reforms actually just got made in this last state session, extending that out for another 10 years. I mean the last set of changes for J51 that were made were effectually you couldn't use it because the council hadn't reauthorized the program locally until very late.
- [61:12]
A
And just very quickly, what's the balance in the administration's eyes between those programs and the idea of trying to transfer ownership to nonprofits, tenant co ops and so forth? Because it seems like that's a key part of the strategy, at least for some in the administration. Something that maybe the mayor is, is, is more eager about. I'm not sure how you see sort of is that last resort or is that a high priority for the administration to say, you know, these buildings are in financial distress, we're happy to work out a way to take them off your hands.
- [61:50]
B
Well, it's a real part of our preservation strategies. And look again, I the you have to really break out the different types of rent, stabilized housing and the different types of challenges they're facing. The challenges that the kind of regulated, affordable providers are facing are different than those over leveraged speculative buildings that have speculative loans from an era where the rent laws really enabled a business practice that was predicated on churning units over and getting people out of homes and getting the units out of rent stabilization. So for that stock of properties that are either over leveraged or have been neglected for decades. Right. This isn't something recent. For some of those properties, we're talking about negligent owners that have left their buildings in complete disrepair against the law, by the way. That's a very different set of issues with different tools. Those are we can bring enforcement tools to the table. In the housing plan we talk about something called Fix the City, which is a combination of enforcement and preservation tools to really try to facilitate a change in ownership where it makes sense to a preservation purchaser, where then we work with that purchaser to invest in the building through again, as I Note, one of HPD's loan programs or preservation programs. So that's a again, you have to really break down this broader concept of the rent stabilized stock. Look into the different types of rent stabilized buildings, different types of ownership and the different challenges they're facing which really are nuanced.
- [63:32]
A
I appreciate all the time for listeners we touched on a whole lot and then there's many pieces of this to dig further into and I will in further episodes with with other guests like leaders at NYCHA and you know, folks working specifically on anti homelessness programs and more on rent stabilized housing housing. But Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg, thanks for touching on so much of of the housing landscape and the administration's plans and taking all this time. I really appreciate it.
- [63:58]
B
Thanks Ben. Appreciate it.
- [64:00]
A
Be well.
- [64:15]
B
It's.
- [64:41]
A
Sat.