Deputy Commissioner Sandler explains methodology for affordable housing targets

Sure, thank you.

So just on the affordable need, I think the HPD and the DCP team really dug in on the methodology that was outlined in the legislation and tried to meet the letter and the spirit of this bill to create a citywide framework for how

What is the city's need in terms of creating housing and how should that need be distributed across the 59 community districts?

When projecting out in 10 years, we sought to have kind of methodological rigor and numbers that we could stand behind and that...

Felt like they were kind of defensible.

And so you'll see in the needs analysis, we use population data.

We looked at who is already here in our city that doesn't have housing and what type of housing is near, how much housing is needed to meet that need.

And then also what type of population growth are we expecting from births, deaths, in migration, out migration.

And in terms of looking at the affordable need, it's very difficult to predict affordable need given the incredibly constrained

environment that we have right now in New York City, we see that the city's, you know, the AMI, which is how, you know, affordable levels are determined in affordable housing in New York City is based around market rent.

And so eligibility for affordable housing is based around the city's fair market rent and who needs and who qualifies for affordable housing is very kind of circularly dependent on that.

Availability of housing generally and what is housing costs in the open market.

And so we felt that it's very hard to know what the affordable housing need would be in 10 years if the broader housing growth has been met.

It's very difficult to predict.

And so we felt that what was kind of

made the most sense to share with New Yorkers is what we're committed to do on affordable housing and that we know that there's a very incredible need right now and the mayor's block by block housing plan

has incredibly ambitious targets for affordable housing greater than we've ever done before and so we're sort of basing around like what what's

What's our North Star for affordable housing is based around those targets in the housing plan.

On the, I guess, sticking with that for a second, your question about why was the citywide target for affordable housing 25%?

Again, that goes back to the affordable targets for the growth, for the...

Fair housing growth strategy come directly from the mayor's housing plan.

So unlike the broader kind of overall housing growth projections, the affordable targets are what we're budgeting for and what we're planning for and what we want to hit.

So those are the targets that come directly from the housing plan.

And the 25% is really a function of that's just what percent those targets are of that overall housing production that we're targeting for the city.

And then in terms of the deeply affordable target, again, those come from our budgeted projections through the housing plan.

We create affordable housing through a mix of as-of-right programs that have affordability levels that are set by those programs.

And then on the housing that we finance, 50% of that housing is for extremely low and very low incomes.