Public Advocate Williams questions HPD on 50-50 preservation/production split and homeownership affordability

Thank you so much.

Commissioner Levy, who'd have thunk it 20 years ago?

I have a few questions.

One, for the whole administration, I think this is one of the better housing plans I've seen across administrations, so congratulations there.

My first question, I always thought, I mean, 50-50 is great, better than we usually do.

I've always thought of having a little bit more preservation percentage.

So I'm just trying to first want to understand why did we go 50-50 and maybe not 60-40, something like that.

I mean, I think to your point, public advocate Williams, in years past, right, I think

I don't think preservation was raised up to an equal level as new production, right, as new construction financing.

So I think we are very pleased that there has been such a great, like, right, we were able to get huge amounts of capital for both preservation and new construction.

I think there are some tools that preservation...

Can happen through that don't necessarily just involve capital investment.

So like this tools initiative, which is really meant to stabilize and improve conditions in existing buildings without necessarily having to come in for a tax abatement or a new capital loan.

So I think while the capital side is, you know, we wanted a balance between new construction and preservation, there's additional things we're trying to do on preservation that aren't just capital specific.

Thank you.

And with home ownership, I think I saw most of it around condos.

I'm sorry, co-ops.

So one, I had a question.

Is there anything for condos and one and two family homeowners?

And what's the price point for the co-ops and what is...

What is affordable?

What's our defining affordability?

That's a great question.

It is true that we focus very much on affordable cooperatives, less so on condos because they are not eligible for the same tax abatements that co-ops are eligible for.

So to your question of affordability, we typically need an Article 11 or an HDFC to get to an affordable purchase price.

The way we think about affordability in homeownership,

is through a debt to income ratio.

So we're basically looking at what the

monthly maintenance needs to be, what taxes and insurance will be, and that sort of backs us into what an affordable mortgage would be.

So combine those four sources, we want to be no more than 30% of the incoming buyer's total monthly income, right?

And so we're often targeting, it varies somewhere between, I would say, 70% at the low end to 120% AMI at the high end.

Usually we're trying to get closer to an 80% affordability.

So you want those monthly expenses to be no more than 30% of 80% of the monthly income.

Thank you.

And is there anything for condo one to families or is it too difficult?