NEW affordable housing report

Staff turnover and bottlenecks at HPD As anyone could tell you, New York City is in the middle of an affordable housing crisis. Post-pandemic rents are at all-time highs, housing starts are at extremely low levels, and homeownership remains far beyond the reach of most families. Meanwhile, more tenants than ever face extremely high-rent burdens, and homelessness rates have hit historic highs. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has an urgent role to play in solving the housing crisis. Financing the production and preservation of affordable housing remains the City’s most powerful tool in combatting the city’s housing crisis – and HPD is involved in the vast majority of affordable housing projects across all five boroughs. My [latest report]( finds that HPD needs to dramatically increase the pace of affordable housing production in order to confront our city’s housing crisis – but we’re falling short due to high staff turnover and longstanding bottlenecks. For example, despite the agency’s herculean effort to staff back up in core program areas, HPD lost 1/3 of staff between April 2020 and October 2022. The high staff turnover and loss of institutional memory makes it challenging to clear the agency's backlog of affordable housing projects. And HPD needs a technological upgrade, too. HPD has digitized some of its internal processes that were done exclusively via paper forms prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, antiquated or deficient systems still exist. Updating this will surely help clear the backlog. Running behind: To keep up with Mayor Adams’ goal of developing 500,000 housing units in the next 10 years, HPD would need to increase last year’s production by 42%. Right now, HPD’s inefficiencies are causing real problems for New Yorkers, especially when it comes to wait times. It's been taking HPD longer to lease-up affordable housing units. The median time to approve an applicant for lottery unit increased from 163 days to 192 days. That means some units are sitting vacant for an average of over 6 months before a tenant is even approved to move in. As my office [recommends]( in our report, HPD leadership should continue its ongoing work of re-evaluating and streamlining certain development processes. The City must also dedicate resources to grow the capacity of new HPD staff and make overdue technological upgrades. Acting on [these recommendations]( HPD can build on its historic mission to meet the housing affordability challenges facing New Yorkers. Thanks, Brad [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Link]( [New York City Comptroller's Office]( Copyright © 2024 New York City Comptroller's Office, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 1 Centre Street, New York, NY 10007 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.