Bloomberg’s affordable housing plan on track

With three years left, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious 10-year New Housing Marketplace Plan to create and preserve 165,000 affordable housing units by 2014 is on track, according to a new report released Friday morning by the city Independent Budget Office that follows the plan’s progress. The plan was originally to construct more than half of the projected 165,000 affordable housing units from scratch, but as a result of the recession and the housing market collapse in 2008, the city shifted its focus to preserving affordable housing units instead of building new ones, the report noted. Through the end of fiscal year 2011, the city was 124,418 units or three-quarters away from reaching its goal, mostly because of its shift to preserve units and its ability to take advantage of the changing financing environment and other federal stimulus funds and programs. To meet its goal the city must start creating or preserving roughly 13,500 units a year through 2014. “Given its historic production levels, and barring any further housing market collapse, the city is likely to meet its overall goal,” the report said.

- Crain’s New York