Matt Dunbar (Habitat for Humanity) on COPA, J51, and homeownership expansion

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Matt Dunbar.

I'm the Chief of Staff with Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County.

We build and preserve affordable homes with working class New Yorkers and in Westchester County.

And I first just wanted to say that we fully endorse the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act and the opportunity for nonprofits like Habitat to be able to have a first right of offer to purchase properties.

In our case, we would be purchasing them in order to transfer them to tenant ownership.

And so I think that's one of the essential aspects of

What is necessary in the market is more opportunities to create opportunities where tenants can become owners of their own properties.

In addition to that, I also want to endorse J51 reauthorization.

It will also help to really support those co-ops and condos that are seeking to meet Local Law 97.

I want to spend the remaining of my time to talk about the block-by-block plan, specifically the homeownership section of the plan,

and to emphasize that it is critically important that the council come alongside to budget for a lot of these efforts that are put forward in the plan.

Right now, the city is looking, as we heard earlier, to do about 300 units a year in affordable homeownership, new creation.

That next year is about two-thirds of that is the Habitat for Humanity portfolio of properties that we have planned to build.

And so the meeting of the minimum requirement of 4% from 2% is extremely small, and we urge the city and the city council to be more ambitious when it comes to creating affordable homeownership opportunities.

And that includes what we're really excited about, which is the Our Home program.

We're looking forward to seeing that term sheet because that is a critical aspect of how we can create more affordable homeownership opportunities, not just out of properties that are distressed, but looking at LITECH 15 or year 30 deals, looking at the Affordable Housing Retention Act that was passed by the state

in two sessions ago, looking at rent-stabilized buildings before they become too distressed.

and really seeking to bolster the affordable homeownership stock.

I'll also mention we support the Plus One ADU program and, of course, CLTs, and we urge the city council to support operating funds for community land trusts like Interborough CLT, which Habitat is a part of.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.