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Mayor Mamdani's Housing Plan, with Annemarie Gray & Alex Armlovich
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Housing experts Annemarie Gray and Alex Armlovich…
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Max Politics. This is Ben Max coming to you from New York Law School and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Speaking here on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, and it is the day after Mayor Zoram Mamdani released his much anticipated housing plan called Block by Block. The plan developed under the leadership of Deputy Mayor for Housing Leila Bozorg, came in at about 110 pages and it's broken into eight chapters outlining many strategies and tools to protect tenants, preserve existing affordable housing, develop new housing, help NYCHA public housing, enhance homeownership opportunities and more. So I have two great guests on the show today to help me break it down. With me shortly will be Alex Armlovich, a senior fellow at Nieskinen center and a housing program officer for the Abundance and Growth Fund at Coefficient Giving. A philanthropist Previously, Alex Armlovich was a senior housing policy analyst at the Nieskinen center where he advocated for pro housing reforms to address scarcity and improve affordability. Before that, he was at the Citizens Budget Commission where he covered transportation in the mta. He was also a member of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board until early this year. Also with me shortly, Ann Marie Gray, the executive director of the pro housing group Open New York. She's a former housing and planning official in city government, including at City hall under multiple mayors and deputy mayors for Housing. At Open New York since 2022, she leads the group's work to mobilize people statewide to fight for abundant, diverse housing that helps lower rents and makes housing more affordable for everyone. Amory Gray was on Mayor Mamdani's transition committee in the housing subcommittee and a key figure in that work, helping around appointments and policy. And so we're speaking on the day after Mamdani released his housing plan, but it's also the day that Governor Kathy Hochul announced she had quickly signed into law significant changes that she had been pursuing with the support of the Mamdani administration and passed by the state legislature to reform the state's Environmental Quality Review act in order to speed up housing development, especially in New York City, a move that will help Mamdani and the city meet more of their housing growth targets. This seeker reform is part of Hochul's Let them Build agenda to cut red tape and remove duplicative environmental reviews for housing and other critical infrastructure. According to Hochul and other supporters, modernizing the seeker law will expedite projects that meet certain criteria that ensure they have no significant environmental impacts and let localities build the housing and infrastructure New Yorkers need in communities across the state. And so now certain projects will be exempt from the additional state review while still being subject to local zoning and review. So in New York City, that will be housing projects that are up to 250 units citywide and up to 500 units within medium and high density areas of the city. The housing projects must be on previously disturbed land and connected upon occupancy to existing water and sewer systems. This law does not supersede environmental requirements, permitting, or as I said, local zoning. So that will help Mamdani's efforts to grow the city's housing supply. It's a number of tools at play now that have been passed by the state and the city in recent years, leading now into Mamdani's administration and his housing plan. He of course ran most principally on making the city more affordable and housing and childcare at the top of the list there, as well as transit. So in announcing his Block by Block housing plan on Tuesday, May 26, Mamdani said that the plan over the next decade is to build 200,000 new affordable homes and preserve another 200,000 affordable homes that are currently under some kind of regulatory framework related to income restrictions or other affordability measures. The city Mamdani is promising will overhaul code enforcement and crack down on bad landlords, create tens of thousands of good paying jobs, build new pathways to homeownership, and invest billions more into NYCHA while also leveraging NYCHA land for more housing. He called it an all hands on deck, all of the above approach. So there's a lot in here and I'll dig into some of it with my guests in just a moment. If you haven't had a chance to review block by block, I do encourage you to give it a read or at least a skim. It's presented like a lot of these plans in pretty reader friendly fashion. The eight chapters of the plan are related to tenants preservation and improvement of existing housing, nycha, public housing, building new housing and neighborhoods, homeownership, preventing and reducing homelessness, Jobs and innovation and Public excellence, which is a lot of government reform work to make government more efficient and effective, something Mamdani has been particularly focused on. So, Anne Marie Gray and Alex Armlovich with me in just a moment to discuss the Mamdani administration's new housing plan and what comes next in executing it. Very briefly, if you've missed any recent episodes of the show, plenty of good ones in the Max Politics feed for you after you listen to this one, including a few highlights such as the audio from a candidate forum I moderated with the two leading Democrats running in the 10th congressional district primary. That's Congressman Dan Goldman and challenger Brad Lander. You can hear my recent one on one interviews with them that we hosted at New York Law School. I also recently spoke here on the podcast with new state legislators, Senator Eric Bottcher and Assemblymember Keith Powers. They are two Manhattan Democrats and former City Council members who joined the Legislature in February after winning special elections. We talked about their adjustments to Alban and state budget negotiations, policy priorities and more. I also recently interviewed here on the podcast Darielisa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic Socialist and Democrat challenging Congressman Adriano espaillat in the 13th congressional district primary. I'm hoping to have Congressman Espad on the show here soon and I had a good conversation with two journalists on the show to help me break down Mayor Mamdani's $124.7 billion executive budget. So you can also check that one out if you haven't listened to it yet. Many good options in the feed, but first, this conversation on Mayor Mamdani's new housing plan. All right, I'm very pleased to welcome back to Max Politics two housing experts. Alex Armlowic is a senior fellow at the Niskanen center and Housing Program officer for the Abundance and Growth Fund at Coefficient Giving, a philanthropic funder and advisor. Previously, Alex was a senior housing policy analyst at the Nieskinen center where he advocated for pro housing reforms to address scarcity and improve affordability. Before that, he was at the Citizens Budget Commission covering transportation and the MTA there. Ann Marie Gray is back. She's executive director of the pro housing group Open New York, a former housing and planning official in city government, including at City hall under multiple mayors and deputy mayors for Housing, and at Open New York since 2022. She leads the group's work to mobilize people statewide to fight for abundant, diverse housing that helps lower rents and makes housing more affordable for everyone. Anne Marie Gray was a Mayor Mamdani's transition committee in the Housing Subcommittee and a key figure in that work. Welcome back to both of you. Thanks for being here. A big day after the day that the Mamdani administration released its big housing plan. Annemarie, how are you?
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I'm great. Thanks for having me.
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Thanks for joining me. Alex, how you doing?
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Great. Yeah, thrilled to be here. All right.
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Yeah, big day for you guys and for the whole city. So just Emory, you were on the transition committee, Were you You know, that. That work has basically wound down, I believe, at this point. But were you able to give input on this housing plan? Did you have a voice in this? Was it sort of ideas from the transition work that then were incorporated here? What kind of input did you have on this big Mamdani administration housing plan?
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Yeah, so, yeah, I was on the transition committee on the. On the housing subcommittee. You know, we submitted a bunch of ideas. Deputy Mayor Bozor pulled us together for a meeting in the early stages of devising the plan. You know, and of course, I've been in this work for a really long time and part of lots of different series of recommendations and policy agendas and platforms. But, you know, they've been hard at work putting this together. And I got a, you know, a briefing at the same time as most folks did right before the announcement. So it's been really exciting. And I've been, you know, really digging
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into the details, and we'll get back to how much you see your ideas and agendas from Open New York and your other input reflected here in a minute. But that sounds good. Alex, did you have a chance to give any input here?
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As a.
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As a housing expert, you certainly seem to have. Have some influence in the housing policy conversation. I didn't mention in introducing you just now that you were on the rent Guidelines Board, but stepped down from that earlier this year. And you are, you know, well known for prolific writing and posting on housing. Do you have a chance to give some input here?
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I think only indirectly. I do have a great relationship with the mayor's housing team, but did not directly input on this text. But I think if you check the Vital City piece, a lot of the Vital City points I do think made it in there. Yeah.
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All right, and we will get to that. I mentioned that in the intro. You didn't get to hear, but a very interesting Vital City piece that Alex wrote that was a. A roadmap for the new administration. And we'll get into some of those points as well. So, Emory, big picture. What do we see here? You get this massive housing plan. Every administration puts one out. Is what is the administration sort of showing here? What's it signaling? Is this different from the plans we've seen from other recent mayors? In my view, you know, it's pretty, pretty similar. It's got some different ideas and different focus areas and different numbers. But what do you see here? What's your view, big picture of what the administration put out here?
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Yeah, I think there's a lot in here in the plan that's been really exciting to dig into. I think something big picture that's really noticeable and I was there at the event yesterday, standing behind the mayor is how much, to his own credit and frankly his own admission, he's evolved on housing issues and how much this plan really is embodying this all of the above approach. How do we. There's not one silver bullet, decades in the red of bad policy in terms of why we're at the housing shortage and housing crisis that we are, and especially around the need to build more housing and build more of all types of housing. His own evolution of how that is really part and parcel with protecting tenants, with investing in nycha, with this idea of public excellence and really delivering on what people need. So his speech and a lot of lines directly in the plan, it's really, really exciting to see, especially for someone who arose from DSA and sort of has this is really setting a national precedent in terms of progressive policy. It's really, really exciting to see a plan that is this rigorous and this kind of really embodying this all of the above approach that really does center we have to build more housing of all types, along with a lot of other strategies.
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And to your point, just say another word. You know, the mayor is really trying to set up a picture here that seems to be saying you can do tenant protections and focus on existing tenants and buildings and wanting tenants to have stability and quality housing and also focus on increasing housing supply robustly while increasing within that supply the amount of affordable housing that's developed. He's sort of saying none of this is intention. Is that fair to say? And is that, is that accurate?
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He's really explicitly saying that. I mean, both him and, and Deputy Mayor Bozork, I mean truly, like in the introduction, he's recognizing, reading a line. While observers have occasionally tried to pit these policy approaches against each other, we can't address the housing crisis with a single tactic. And these approaches build and strengthen each other and are not in competition. So of course the details of that always matter. But, but it's really, really notable and would not have happened even just a coup to see such a prominent, popular, progressive mayor really, really say this, embrace it. You know, in his speech he's like, I used to be a skeptic too. I really get it. And he's been really, I give him a lot of credit for really engaging on like what really does, what is going to work, what is going to. What is going to make. Give people more options and make things more Affordable. And for really clearly listening to some, some really smart experts that he's hired.
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He, he was a little bit later on this curve than some other sort of people on the left, you know, progressives or socialists. But now he's the poster boy for that because he became the mayor, so he's the biggest figure. But it's this evolution that many progressives and sort of lefties have taken in recent years in New York and beyond to become more supply oriented and more. Yes, in my backyard. Yimmy. And you know, but again with, as you're getting at in all of the above approach, and they would say, and many of their supporters would say, and people like Sia Weaver now in the administration who's, you know, been a big tenant organizer, that they are not leaving, you know, behind the tenant movement by any means, but they're also embracing, you know, a lot more of what the, the research shows and the data shows. And speaking of that, Alex, what do you see here? Big picture. What, what you know, sort of jumped out at you in terms of the framing and the approach here. And you are, you know, very deep into the research. You are very big in the YEMBY world and so are you, Emory. You're both YIMBY folks. But, but what do you see here and the positioning of the administration in terms of the approach here?
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Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to, a good way to frame it. I like to highlight the, just big picture, zoning permitting, building code reform and then NYCHA as like the big headline stuff, the, you know, the zoning stuff getting into a citywide TOD action, Transit
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Oriented Development, in case there's anybody listening who isn't intimately familiar with tod.
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Oh, sure. Thank you. And the, they, they didn't put a number on the number of market rate units, but the fact that they're looking at an HPD capital pipeline that is closer to 40 to 50 billion rather than the 100 billion for the 200,000 new units that implies they're going to use MIH mandatory inclusionary housing to achieve that income restricted affordable housing target, which all in could get them to 500,000 new units. Even though they didn't put the moonshot on there. There is a subtle implication. They're kind of hoping to under promise and over deliver on the permitting stack. Obviously the speed unit, the ballot measure implementation, even the little details on like fixing the fire inspections. You say. Oh, fire arm inspections. How big of a problem is that? Well, it affects the actual occupancy of buildings to get that final certificate of OCCUPANCY and there was that famous Adams administration scandal on those fire inspections. You know, there's two fire FDNY fire chiefs sitting in jail over those inspections. So fixing that is actually great. Even though it feels like a little, like a little detail, the building code stuff. You know, I think the last people there was like a Giuliani commission that looked into some of the building code stuff a long time ago. I don't know that much ever came of it, but this is the first time that someone's really digging in on this. And so that's a level of wonkiness that is just. That is thrilling to see. And then for nycha, it's like a Nixon in China moment, in my opinion. A mayor like Bloomberg, not that Bloomberg ever tried that hard to rescue nycha. I think it was. Obviously, the slide of the authority has been steady for decades now, but he would not have had that credibility to come in and promise this kind of rescue and transformation of the authority. But I think Mamdani has that credibility with tenants and with the DSA in New York to deliver this kind of absolutely critical support to keep the authority from collapsing.
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Yeah, I mean, there's interesting things there where it's sort of like almost to that there's all these programs in place. Federal monitor, such a dire capital need that, you know, it would be extremely unlikely for a new mayor to come in and try to, like, throw it all out and couldn't even really do that. But there are questions around sort of, what do you emphasize around nycha? And is the new mayor and administration supportive of some of these programs that are complicated? They're somewhat controversial, but, you know, they are sort of the only solution really on the table right now as we're in primary season here of the elections, and a lot of the focus is on Congress. You know, that keeps coming up in my conversations with candidates for the House in New York City and these Democratic primaries that are going on is sort of like, well, everybody kind of in New York, you know, Democratic circles, wishes they could sort of snap their finger and have the federal government send tens and tens of billions of dollars to nycha, but that's just not happening. And it didn't when Democrats had full control of the government. So, like, what's your. What's your realistic plan? You know, those billions not. Not coming? And so some of that seems to be in place here. But it was fascinating to see elements of this plan that include really, you know, pursuing this idea of NYCHA being a builder and building on nycha Land.
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Yes.
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You know, is a. Is a fascinating area for them to stress and to look like they want to really pursue. You got at something there, Alex, that I wanted to ask you both about. So, Anne Marie, what do you think of the sort of unit goals here? I mean, you know, sort of. This can get unnecessarily, you know, in the sort of, like, focus on what's the number, what's the number when the policies are really what matters. But I think most people agree it's good to have target numbers. You can look at the data of what's been, you know, produced in the city year by year, decade by decade, as you were getting at, and. And you can sort of see the numbers. So you. There's a lot of sense of, like, what targets are not enough to, you know, really make a dent. You know, there's estimates out there about what the city should be aiming for. I think the Adams administration was praised a lot for a lot of its housing policy, including setting this goal of, you know, 500,000 new units over a decade. What do you make of how the Mamdani administration is approaching this idea of 200,000 new units of affordable housing and then 200,000 preserved units of affordable housing? And that's sort of the big numbers they're putting on their targets here.
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I mean, I think that, you know, Alex kind of got at this, but the 200,000 new affordable. I think what's really interesting is, you know, they're focusing on an affordable target, which is consistent with. With his campaign, but by really embracing market rate, like, and mixed income, and really explicitly, both in the text and in Deputy Mayor Bozer's words yesterday of, like, we need to. We need to stretch public dollars as far as possible and really make use of places where we can cross subsidize effectively? You know, they're. They're. The number they're not saying is what is a much higher number of what total production could be. And again, Alex, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is not inconsistent with like, a 500,000 total that, that we've definitely seen consistently, both in other admins and in general in terms of, you know, what research shows should be a solid target.
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That's exactly just to back you up on that, that the plan says that they're going to ramp to 8,000 HPD subsidized units per year. And so if you extrapolate that out over. Over. Over 10 years, that, you know, doesn't get you to 200,000, which implies that they're looking to use the 25% affordable MIH number fueled by rezonings to make up the rest. Right.
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So just to be clear, for people who might not be as familiar with the details, there's, as you're getting at, there's city subsidized affordable housing and then there's affordable housing that's required without city subsidy in mandatory inclusionary housing, where most of the building is market rate and a portion has to be affordable and sort of relying on the market and where that zoning has shifted or does shift under new rezonings to require that affordable housing to be baked in. Is that fair? From a generalist, basically.
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Exactly. If you take 8,000 a year times 10 is 80,000 to get to 200,000, there's 120,000 units left. 120,000 divided by 0.25 is 480,000. So it implies 480,000 market units to fill that gap. They're not promising that, but it's implied by just the arithmetic of MIH and the number of HPD subsidized homes doing,
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doing a little math for us here that gets us out of these numbers. I appreciate that. So in, in going back to this idea of all of the. Well, first, Alex, when you think about what the city needs. So if you think about those numbers, you look at this plan. Is this an ambitious enough plan? Are you sort of satisfied as a big, you know, supply side person that, that this is an ambitious enough plan? And are there any elements of it that, you know, jump out at you as the most promising and then the most concerning when it comes to sort of big supply numbers and questions?
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Yeah, the, the, the, the, the plans announced in here are consistent with being aggressive enough. The actual details and the execution will determine whether or not that holds up.
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So
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a citywide Transit Oriented Development Action can do huge numbers if you're bold enough with it. But that is to be authored in the future. So they're signposting that they'll do it. But to actually implement it, it'll have to be implemented in a way that's large rather than small, of course. And then also nycha, NYCHA has a whole lot land. If they do, if, you know, if they use HPD and NYCHA together, you can build a whole lot of housing and also income restricted affordable housing. Because again, NYCHA has the land. You know, you say, well, HPD has the capital. Where are we going to have the land? Well, NYCHA has that public land that basically if tod, plus the ballot measures fueled by the other permit Streamlining stuff in the speed unit, plus the NYCHA plan, these things are consistent with being that big. But it'll, it'll be a question of actually delivering. They've signposted a plan that's big enough. The, the final details and the implementation will determine whether we realize that.
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And when you reference the charter changes, you know, that were passed through the ballot questions, basically that's about sort of the speed with which projects will get proposed, proposed and approved. Or is there other, or is that more sort of like, like also just the broader atmosphere of development in the city and encouraging more speed and feasibility.
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It's both like, you know, will it happen within 10 years? And shaving, shaving two years off of a project, you know, it has a big part of when it, when it arrives, but that then inflects on feasibility. So you know, when people are dealing with, you know, when interest rates go up, you become more sensitive to like the, you know, the carrying costs of holding a project are, you know, are higher than they used to be. Just the time and the time value of money matters. So like, yeah, it's both feasibility and timing.
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I'll also just chime in on the ballot measures. I do think it shows up, you know, it showed up in his speech yesterday. It really shows up multiple times in the, in the plan. It is really, really enormous that he has these tools and he's leaning into using them. And as Alex said, some of it is just like flat out like projects now move a lot faster. But also they, I mean they're noting they are looking into using city sponsored actions when the bottom 12 districts come out.
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Right.
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Like that's, and that. So that is, that is, you know, the city leading on new projects in an era where the politics now look really different because those ballot measures are now law and there's a lot of references to how they're going to work really aggressively to speed up the internal process for projects that will now run through the new ballot measures. And we're going to look a lot about, like how are they going to set up BSA to be effective? How are they going to set up DCP to move things a lot faster? But the combination of, of things moving faster, the city internally setting itself up, setting itself up to not be a barrier and the fact that the politics are just flat out different in a whole new set of neighborhoods and them leaning into that is really, really enormous and is not something that we can actually compare to past administrations because they didn't have those tools.
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Yeah. And when you say the politics have shifted. I mean, they've shifted citywide. And now because of the passage of those ballot questions and those charter changes, basically areas of the city that have not welcoming, hospitable, pursuing housing growth basically have no choice. And you're referencing, you know, we'll see by or on October 1, the 12 districts that will be subject to the fastest fast approvals. You know, we have a sense of where a lot of those are. It's very interesting. You know, a lot of the areas of the city that have not been producing housing or affordable housing are, are some that might come to mind right away, like east in eastern Queens or you know, South Brooklyn and Southern Brooklyn, but also the Upper east and Upper west sides. Some, some very interesting, you know, data will come out and names of neighborhoods and community districts will come out soon. So that'll be, that'll be very interesting. So in terms of, of sort of this question, again, just sticking big picture for another minute here. Anne Marie, you've, you've sort of been embracing and advocating for this, all the above approach. When I read through this housing plan, you know, it's kind of, you know, there's at least signals here that the building is secondary to other things that this is, you know, the plan starts with the tenants and the preservation. And I get, you know, I get that that makes a lot of sense. Do you see questions there? Are you concerned at all about where the emphasis might be? Are there things that you're sort of most worried about in terms of like pitfalls or variables that could really undercut the growth that, you know, you're advocating for and you want to see in terms of the overall housing supply picture.
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I think I actually really, from his event yesterday, I really think he leaned quite hard into a lot of the supply side stuff. And I think, you know, of course he was, he, he, the tenant movement was so central to, to his, to his reelection. But I, I, I really see this plan as him trying to pull a lot of different pieces together in a really smart plan. Again, I think the, as Alex said, I think the focus on NYCHA is really, really interesting and really compelling. And I think, and same with like, you know, doing a deep dive into code reform. And so I, so I, I don't, I, I really don't read it that way. And, and I think that the something else that comes through in the plan that I think is really, really interesting and frankly, what is a national model, especially given the platform he has, is he's talking a lot about how to that a Lot of these issues have been thought about sort of individually. He does not feel like their intention. And he's. A lot of this is how do you build a new coalition that has and kind of cement a broader coalition than existed before? So that is something that I think is, you know, open New York is really excited to be part of and I think is a interesting approach that he uniquely might be able to pull off. I think the things that I, again, like, I do think Alex mentioned this before, but Transit Oriented Development, a citywide Transit Oriented Development proposal and the ballot measures are two enormous levers that he has. I think he's also already announced two different rezonings. There are a couple other little things in here on, like using our 12 districts really leaning into supporting homeowners building. Edus. He has a line here about, about, you know, leaning into housing production in historic districts, which is, which is really needed. So there's like a lot of. There's a lot of things that, like, they're really trying to be thoughtful about. I think the main. I don't call it a pitfall, but just like where what we're looking at next is it's a question of priorities and a question of. Of implementation. Right. There's a lot in here. Just, you know, I spent three years in City hall, and attention is the most precious resource in City Hall. And, you know, a lot of these things will take just a continued focus and continued priority, political capital. And, and. But I think that the potential is enormous. And housing is something that he, he ran on so centrally that is such a, like, unbelievably pressing issue for New York and, and has a national audience that I, I'm really hoping. And I think he's found a place unlike some other issues that he's been working on. He's really found a way for this to be a place of consensus. Right. This is his main place of consensus with Kathy Opel Seeker, which just passed this morning. You know, it's been a place of consensus with a lot of folks who have been really skeptical of him as mayor. And so I, I, you know, I'm hopeful and I think this plan is. Is the foundation of it that he continues to really lean in and see this as a place where he can really use his position and his seriousness about a range of strategies to, to cement a new kind of progressive lane on all of this.
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B
Right. I mean, in a sense this has been developing, but this is also, you know, a new leader coming out of, you know, the, the socialist left, the progressive left. Also now in this executive position and recognizing all the things we've been talking about and trying to blend, you know, sort of this, the, the populism and the abundance and, you know, ways in which the focus on tenants and the focus on building and, you know, do it all. And it's all tenuous because then there's also, obviously we've gotten at a little bit the big questions about the financing p of it and, you know, how much government subsidy is ever available and the city's borrowing capacity and all of these nitty gritty questions that are going to come into play there. A lot of this government reform and the pursuit of, you know, quote unquote, public excellence that gets at, you know, sort of some of the key tenets of this, of this, you know, broadly speaking, abundance movement about just making government work better and get out of the way more and cut red tape and unnecessary process. Anne Marie, you just mentioned the state level changes to environmental review that the governor just signed into law the morning we're speaking here on May 27th. That will speed up, you know, another measure that will speed up housing development. So a lot seems to be coming together, but then there's also, you know, tenuous relationships between some of this stuff. There's a lot of concerns about, and I don't want to quite get into this yet, but, like, what's going to happen to distressed, you know, buildings especially that are fully or mostly rent stabilized and all that. So, you know, know, a lot to keep together. There's also the labor piece of all this and questions around. You know, the mayor's already adjusted his campaign promise about, you know, building, you know, all the affordable housing with union labor to adjust that, you know, to be a little less costly, insisting on certain wage and benefit packages. You know, a lot of interesting question marks and, you know, a broader sort of coalition to keep together here to pursue an all of the above approach, but good to be ambitious. You also mentioned this, the first two neighborhood rezonings that the administration is going to pursue, one along White Plains Road in the Bronx and another south of Prospect park in Brooklyn along Coney island and McDonald Avenues. Again, as we've gotten at already in this conversation, both of these really looking at transit oriented development opportunities both around and near existing subway lines, but then also in Brooklyn, the expected Interborough Express, eventually the light rail that will connect parts of Brooklyn and Queens. So really interesting stuff there, getting those out, which of course were in development at the Department of City Planning under the prior administration, but seemingly have a lot of buy in from the new administration and crucially, although less importantly now local city council members in the impacted areas. Alex, on the labor front, I wanted to ask you about this because I saw you posting a little bit on on, on Twitter on X about this. Just your read on what the administration is doing here by, you know, moving a little bit as I got it away from the campaign, you know, pledge to focus on what is now city law related to city finance, construction projects and the labor. Do you want to just, you know, briefly sort of note your observation there?
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C
Yeah, yeah, there was a little bit of a kerfuffle because I think some, some readers saw the, saw the Construction justice act wage rules as something new and mayorally led. But the city council passed that before he was, before he became mayor and then overrode the Adams administration veto in January. So it was passed by a veto proof majority. This is a dollar forty an hour hour minimum compensation floor for construction workers. That's like 25 an hour for wages and 15 an hour for benefits. And this is like a middle ground. It is much less expensive than doing full prevailing wage or full project labor agreements for all city assisted housing, but it's also not free. The Office of Management and Budget estimates it's going to be a little more than 400 million a year. The New York Housing Conference thinks it could be closer to the 800 million a year in terms of how much extra HPD capital dollars it'll take to assist and pay those wages.
- [35:38]
B
But again, this is in city assisted housing, not all new housing.
- [35:42]
C
Exactly, exactly. It's specifically for city assisted and it's both less expensive and less risky than doing full prevailing wage, but also more equitable because it's only topping up the lowest paid workers, crane operators who earn 400k to a million. A, um, you know, prevailing wage raises their wages too. The Construction justice act only helps people who make less than 40 an hour in total comp. So it's more equitable and also less expensive than prevailing wage.
- [36:12]
B
Anne Marie, how constrained is the administration right now broadly? You know, you have the sort of much discussed tough city budget picture that the mayor walked into. You know, again, that was not that the city doesn't have a lot of money to spend, but more that, you know, there were some real budgeting challenges in terms of expenses and under budgeting and expenses growing faster than revenue, even with revenue coming in very strong. You have a mayor only in office five months here and you have to, you know, put together this plan and figure out, you know, how you can come close to some of the promises that you ran on and not disappoint too many people, but also the realities of governing. And that's where we see some of these differences in, you know, the campaign plan versus is this plan. And also just, you know, the, the capital dollars available. There's only so many dollars you could shift into the HPD or the NYCHA budgets. And he's, you know, trying to do some of that. You have some pretty good state partnership, you know, to a, to a significant extent. But also, you know, the state has taken, you know, a pretty careful approach in terms of, you know, how much it's touched things like, like zoning, but doing things like environmental review reform that we just talked about. And then you have like a very sort of mixed to negative bag out of the federal picture. Lots of question marks there, although, you know, some, some progress from the federal government and then also signs of a huge federal housing package coming together. But how, you know, how do you sort of see the constraints on the mayor here with this housing plan and some of the biggest sort of question marks around resources and help from other levels of government and things like that.
- [37:51]
A
Like that. Yeah, yeah, I'll start. But, but you know, Alex, please jump in too. I think that starting with a couple of the things that we've seen in here that he is really taking seriously is, are, are things that either don't cost that much money or frankly are revenue positive. Right. Like we both mentioned Transit Oriented Development and Environmental Review reform and just rezonings in places where you already have demand. This is just, this is, this is latent housing growth that is just constrained by zoning laws. This is us frankly, paying public sector workers for, for thousands of pages of paperwork and defending lawsuits against things that we shouldn't have to defend. Right. In, in terms of what Seeker is actually going to start to fix. You know, a lot of this stuff is just, it's just, you know, he, I really love the way he's talking about public excellence. And a lot of it is just really basic, like getting rid of things that really don't make sense that the government is doing that cost money and that hold back things that would. That, that don't actually cost that much money, you know, generate or more revenue, generate more opportunities. I think that, you know, a lot of the fun thing about working more on the supply side and zoning side is that that's not the main barrier. And you know, just money is actually really not the main barrier. That again, that's only me. That's not to say you absolutely need resources for a huge amount of this plan, but that's what I think is so important for why he is leaning into a bunch of different angles here. Because you need a whole lot of money and it needs to be used efficiently. It needs to be directed the places you most need it. And we need to not be wasting money on things that aren't actually adding public value. So again, I think the ballot measures, Trans Oriented Development, some, some of his supply side items and the general focus on public excellence. And you know, Devin Bozork has been talking about this a lot but like you really got to get in the weeds and have a lot of city hall leadership and involvement to force age to really be in the weeds of why agencies aren't working the way they should and where there's, where there's slowdowns, where there's like duplicate efforts and that, that you know, there are, there are a lot of savings and a lot of efficiencies to be gained there but it really requires a lot of prioritization from the top that that's a value.
- [40:17]
B
Now it's fun in there. I was going to note in my setup there, you know the, it's in the housing plan. But you know, there's been attention, as I was sort of alluding to from housing and affordable housing advocates and providers that you know, the federal government did do some things to help the city with you know, low income housing tax credits for example, and expanding their there. But you know, there's so much volatility under the Trump administration with threats, you know, to cut off various funding that come to certain places or you know, issues related to, you know, HPV's overall budget or again NYCHA programs and all that. But what's, what's your view doesn't have to be federal level, but broadly speaking on some of the sort of constraints that the plan is working under.
- [41:03]
C
Yeah, the one big beautiful bill functionally double the number of projects you can assist with the 4% LIHTC credit that didn't get a ton of coverage because everyone felt bad talking about that because it was paid for by Medicaid cuts. But it was nonetheless a substantial expansion of the 4% LIHTC by cutting the bond. It's called the taxable bond cap test from 50% of a project's financing to 25%. So basically you can use your quantity limited bond cap to establish, assist, double the projects as long as you can replace the funding source. So they're going to be using city funds to Maximize the use of this new allowance for the 4% light tax. So yeah, that's absolutely in there. The bill that hasn't passed yet but, but that you know is in both the House and the Senate at the federal level is going to. There's some things on streamlining section 8 like allowing remote inspection and pre inspection of units and reusing federal income certifications from other programs. You can reuse them for Section 8 purposes. And so that's really going to help. That's really going to help on the voucher side of things. So yeah, there's federal tools there that are helpful but like you said, there's give and take. On the other hand, the HUD's Renew rebuild once called Faircloth to rad was the old name was the process where you may have read about the so called faircloth cap on new public housing. Most cities are not actually at their faircloth cap and so in theory have authorization for federal funding to build new public housing. An administrative action that HUD just took has closed off. There will be no more rebuild, no more of these rebuild letters allowed. So the nature won't be able to use those that faircloth capacity to do new new public housing. But nonetheless the LI tech resource is there.
- [43:11]
B
Does that apply to things like the west side of Manhattan Project? That that is a tear down rebuild plus infill. Is that is that part of what we're talking about there?
- [43:23]
C
It won't hurt that but it would have been nice to be able to use this, the renew rebuild waivers to on future projects. This particular one they're using the smart revolving loan fund plus LIHTC to get the full Nellie at Chelsea done. So it's part of it. But the Fuldnnelli at Chelsea project is although it is innovative for New York, it is copying what San Francisco and Boston did. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom did this in San Francisco back in 2005 for the Hunter's Point development in San Francisco with 100% percent right of return and everything. And it was a very successful project. Boston is doing this at Bunker Hill. London has done this with they call it estate regeneration where they have the tenants vote on redeveloping their council estate projects. And I've estimated that somewhere between 12 billion and as much as 30 billion of NYCHA's capital backlog could be addressed by this kind of build first and then redevelopment approach. So it's one reason I'm so excited about Madani's seriousness about this. You know, we'll see what they're able to do, but the political support is the first step.
- [44:38]
B
Yeah. There's other interesting things in this plan and we obviously can't touch on everything. And I only have you for, you know, five, ten more minutes. But Emory, anything we haven't mentioned that's particularly interesting or exciting to you, you know, Sunnyside Yard is in there. But then there's also, you know, that, that, that's like the biggest, you know, project in there, I think. And then there's, you know, lots of small things. There's better use of city owned land. There's, you know, all sorts of things in this plan for development. But then there's also again, things related to sort of the public excellence side and process. There's, you know, preservation tools that we haven't really talked much about here. Any other couple of things that stand out to you in the plan or that you're particularly excited that we're, that we're in there?
- [45:30]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, again, reiterating that, I think that the two things on the supply side that I feel very excited about are like tod and I think there's a lot of questions of what that might look like. They signaled they're interested in something, you know, like a citywide text amendment can just. Can change sort of the underlying zoning text across the city or more targeted areas of rezonings. This is also the type of thing that frankly I'm thinking a lot about the state level. Right. Like a region wide tod. I think there's a lot of interesting. How do you, you know, how. How do you start with New York City, but, but really take the approach of this. The whole region really needs to be much smarter about how we build housing around transit. So that, and you know, I already mentioned the ballot measures a lot. There's. I do think, you know, Alex mentioned cord code reform. I think we haven't talked that much about, but so much of the speed report is really great and really detailed and just like really making sure they follow through on that. That definitely NYCHA is huge. Yeah, again, there's just like, there's. There's a lot in here. So I think it's a question of what are the couple things that rise to the top that like that, that really have to happen, that you know, that, that follow through over over the next handful of years. But.
- [46:44]
C
Right.
- [46:44]
B
And the speed reforms cross over a lot of aspects of, you know, city processes to make them faster, essentially. Again, the name speed, which is an acronym, but again, you know, a signal for what they're trying to do. Here, from environmental review to, you know, to permitting and approvals. And I think the point earlier, you know, about FDNY inspections, you know, there's just so many pieces here that are not, you know, headline grabbing per se, but are, you know, key to a sort of more functioning pipeline around, you know, housing supply. But also even, you know, know, sometimes even sort of the preservation elements of things too. And you know, there's, there's elements in here about, you know, making sure that more people who are homeless are, you know, getting allocated opportunities to move into housing. You know, there's, there's like a lot in here. Again, you can read through this plan or skim through it, people can and see, you know, there's a million ideas in here. And that's what, you know, these big plans are for. But to your point, Emory, is it's like what are going to rise to the top in terms of the priorities or the feasibility of, you know, certain reforms. And that'll be interesting to see, you know, in the coming weeks and months
- [47:54]
A
and years and, and just adding two things. You mentioned this too, but there's a whole chapter that we haven't talked about that much about about homelessness. And he really, in the speech yesterday, really stressed like homelessness is a housing issue. And also there's a whole section on homeownership that leans into a bunch of different strategies of like, direct support for homeowners. I think I, you know, I was excited to see Lean City rulemaking and support around implementing accessory dwelling unit rules from city of. Yes. And so, yeah, there's. There's still a ton we haven't talked about, but just highlighting this too as well.
- [48:28]
B
Yeah, Alex, anything you want to jump in there? Other things we haven't mentioned, just any other couple of highlights and then couple more questions for you guys.
- [48:35]
C
But yeah, now that the governor has signed it. Yeah, just highlighting that the environmental review threshold going up to 500 years, units that interacts with the ballot measures, the ballot measure FAST tracks are limited by the type 2 action threshold that triggers an environmental review, a full environmental review. And so now being able to use the ballot measure FAST tracks on up to 500 unit projects means that individual reapplications now are going to be a big part of hitting this goal in addition to these citywide actions like the citywide dodge.
- [49:08]
A
Yeah, totally agree. The secret reform is really, really huge for the state, but really for New York City. So big kudos for Mamdani for prioritizing that and huge kudos to Kathy Hochul for Like really making, I mean, and we're finally seeing the text. It's a really good version of it. Right? No one had sort of seen some of the details, but it's coming out now and it's just really strong.
- [49:26]
B
Alex, let me start with you on this. You know, some of the biggest concerns that we saw in response to this plan were, you know, we saw the Real Estate Board of New York commentary that they were concerned about, you know, some of the pursuit of project labor agreements and questions around, you know, again, labor related mandates that could, you know, in their view, slow housing development projects. We've obviously seen some of the questions around the implementation of the state 485X program and all these 99 unit and lower buildings being built because 100 units triggers the, the new labor standards in that state program. We saw criticism from the building owners and landlords of rent stabilized housing saying this plan really doesn't have any new bold ideas for rescuing the severely distressed rent stabilized housing stock. Even as we're getting close to the Rent Guidelines Board ruling sometime in the next few weeks on a likely the rent freeze, which again, you know, sort of freezes the revenue coming into a lot of those landlords, at least from their rent stabilized tenants. What's your view, you know of any, you know, either of those, but especially the latter. What do you see in this plan? There's, you know, a lot in here related to preservation and improvement of existing housing. But you know, some of these folks are saying it's, it's nowhere near enough. What's your view on that?
- [51:03]
C
I think like the, the, the insurance captive is in there to, you know, as, as, you know, as, as a patch. There is also a new J51 which is important, but you could see in the new J51 also the, the limitations requiring it to apply to income restricted housing is like the honest truth here is that, you know, there's this, this really is all of the above and, and a, and a diverse coalition in the sense that the wonks and technocrats and moderates are, you know, are getting our land use reform and people say, well, what does the DSA get out of this? Well, there's, they're, they're going pretty hardcore on the, on the legacy regulated stock. And so you know, when, when landlords say, you know, we, we won't be able to maintain our buildings under the HSTPA as it is, the city is saying, we hear you, but we will use Article 7A proceedings, we will use, use special HPD enforcement and you will Sell your building if you cannot maintain it. And so I think Sia wrote a little while ago saying she estimates maybe 20 to 30,000 units in physical distress. The RGB data, when you look at Table 8 in the RGB data, suggests it's more like closer to 10% of the stock or around 100,000 units on the financial distress side. But you know, that's, they're, they're, they're playing hardball. They, they really are playing hardball. But that's, you know, that, that's, that's the thing. They're, they're, you know, we're getting, you know, we're getting the, the, the wonky technocratic strategies where, where that's what's needed and then where, where they have leverage, which is on the pre1974 stock. They're really playing hardball.
- [52:53]
B
So, playing just in case. I'm not understanding playing hardball meaning they're basically saying a rent freeze is probably coming. But we believe that a lot of these landlords can actually keep their buildings in better repair and pay their bills than they're letting on. And if you can't, we're going to come in and potentially force you to sell to one of our favored partners.
- [53:18]
C
Yeah, that. Between third party transfer and Cope copa, the community purchase thing and the, and the, and the HDFC co op proposals, this is something that has happened before during the Koch plan. The Koch in REM plan, HPD peaked at, I think they had about 100,000 units that they had taken through tax foreclosure. And so this has happened before. Now, we did survive. But I just mean that this is something that it's not unrealistic to think that the city could end up taking as many units as they took during the car during the Koch administration. It's not, it's not unthinkable, but that
- [54:02]
B
is, but that require, I mean, that's, that's sort of a big dynamic on its own to unpack and we won't unpack it now. But it's also a question of the city then needing to finance a lot of that housing. Right, That's, Yeah.
- [54:17]
C
I mean, they have financial distress. They have not strictly ruled out. My, my old colleague Arpit Gupta on the Rent Guidelines Board had proposed. I called it like the slumlord freeze, where you do the normal cost base increases for good landlords and you do a freeze for bad landlords. And, you know, that is a strategy that is, I think, consistent with the politics and would preserve the net operating income of the regulated stock, but that's also not guaranteed, you know, and so I think, you know, four hard freezes.
- [54:47]
B
So not what, what the mayor ran on, right?
- [54:49]
C
Yeah, exactly. Four hard freezes with HSTPA as it is, would put things on a steady rate ramp towards, towards the Koch era, you know, takings that it just. But not that I'm saying it's guaranteed. I'm just saying it's not unimaginable. But.
- [55:09]
B
Well, and they're explicitly saying that it's very imaginable that, you know, that a significant number of properties might need more government intervention that there's of seemingly happy to provide.
- [55:23]
C
Yeah. The plan does mention a new fast track for Article 7A proceedings, which is a technically temporary seizure of the rent roll. But usually when you're seizing the rent roll, that's a, you know, that's a ramp towards a third party transfer or another type of, you know, public transformation of a building, you know, going through the 7A process.
- [55:48]
B
Yeah. And I'll, I'll look to talk with, you know, some tenant activists and advocates in the future and also, you know, some of the building owners and landlords and advocates on that side to dig in more on what's in here related to tenants and building owners and, and rent stabilized housing as we also are preparing for the Rent Guidelines Board to make a final decision in the coming weeks. Like I said. All right, in our last two minutes here, Anne Marie, in terms of, of the sort of open New York agenda and platform for a new mayor that you put out, was there anything missing in here? One thing that I want to make sure to note before we say goodbye is that the sort of concept of, of sweeping property tax reform is seemingly has been moved to the side. The mayor and his budget director and others were promising a proposal pretty quickly and we haven't heard a peep since I think February on that that would need, you know, a lot of work at both the city and state levels. And obviously the state has been very consumed with its budget and all that. So I'll just note that as something that that would also again, be sort of key to this picture of costs for existing building owners and you know, what costs are passed on to tenants or how, how rent stabilized owners, you know, deal with what the Rent Guidelines Board decides. But, but also new development as well. It impacts, of course. But in terms of the open New York agenda, here are anything missing from the mayor's platform that you want to still advocate for or anything you want to highlight that you especially put forward that you do see reflected in here.
- [57:34]
A
Yeah. I think, honestly, overall, the themes were all in here.
- [57:37]
B
Right.
- [57:38]
A
We talked a lot about tod. We talked a lot about how to really use the ballot meas. We talked a lot about how to. How to make use of the lifted 12 FAR cap when it makes sense. Implementation of CDBs, sort of like a fair housing framework, and. Which was just kind of like a theme throughout. You know, the details matter, of course, for all of this stuff. So I like all of the themes of stuff that is really core to open New York. Of course, like, I follow and care about a much wider range of things, but it's super exciting. But it's also, you know, that there's a lot in here to try to get done. And so, you know, we have our work cut out for us, too, in terms of how do we. How we're mobilizing people, how we're expanding our membership, how we're building really smart coalitions that are also in line with the opportunity that Mandani, you know, talks about wanting. And how do some of these, you know, how do all of this play out when we're with city council in terms of sort of as plans are really coming together and the politics? So there's a huge amount of work to do. I think thematically, the things here are, you know, there's a lot of core stuff to open New York's work. Definitely, of course, care about and follow property tax reform, but that's a little bit less in terms of the stuff that I'm working on every single day.
- [58:53]
B
Yeah. Alex, any final thoughts? Anything we didn't touch on here that you want to just shout out, or anything that was in your vital city piece that we didn't get to here, that is still something you'd like to see taken up. Obviously, you know, they might have had some typos in the plan that they'll need to edit into the issue, but other than that, you know, they probably won't be refashioning this plan anytime soon. But just anything, you know, anything that you were sort of advocating for. And again, everybody should read the piece, but anything you want to highlight that you didn't see in here or you want to see go further or less far or anything like that.
- [59:28]
C
One thing, like, I'm expecting future detail. Like, I think they're. They're holding back some of the good news to come, like the details on TOD when that get announced. When those get announced, I'm expecting more good news. There are some even on the building code side, there's a little bit like enhancing New York's single stack their walk up apartment allowance on the building code. That that is again like you know, signposted but not detailed that. I think there's probably more good news to come. That just wasn't, you know, it wasn't done by the time this, you know, plan was ready to be announced. And then right, it's for those who
- [60:03]
B
haven't looked at it. It says, you know, that the city could pursue a citywide, you know, transit oriented development proposal, you know that, that increased increases housing that's allowed near transit across the city. So it doesn't sort of have that proposal in here, but it's sort of saying oh we're, we're, we're looking to do this and planning to do it. And as I got at some of the initial neighborhood plans in the Bronx and Brooklyn are, are TOD focused. So that sort of to come that to me also sounds like something where you know, they might want some more city council buy in before they, you know, move that forward and things like that. I cut you off.
- [60:40]
C
And then, and then also reiterating on the NYCHA point, they are signposting NYCHA as a public builder. Again, that could be truly transformative or it could be just big and important, but just solid. Do you know what I mean? So in other words, like depending on how that evolves, it could be like we're literally going to rescue NYCHA using own source, you know, opportunities. Or it could be like we're going to support Fulton, Fulton, Elliott, Chelsea and we'll do one or two more. But in other words, it could be anywhere from, from, from solid support for status quo, not backing down, which is actually still really important to all the way up to, I mean profoundly transformative. Rescuing nycha.
- [61:22]
B
Yeah, very interesting. All right, we'll leave it there. That's a lot to chew on and think about. And we again, you know, only touched a portion of what's outlined in this plan and we'll see what the administration does, you know, really focus on and prioritize but. Amory Gray, Alex Armlovich, thanks very much for the time and thoughts. Really appreciate it.
- [61:41]
A
Thank you for having us.
- [61:42]
C
My pleasure.
- [62:02]
B
Sam.