City Council Floats Liberty Bond Plan; Wants More Affordable Housing

NEW YORK CITY-City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and several Council members have released a plan that would completely revamp the Liberty Bond program for residential development in Lower Manhattan. At a press conference yesterday, the Speaker called on Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to use the $1.6 billion in Liberty Bond funding to build more affordable housing units.

“Given the condition and prospects for the City’s budget (a deficit projected to be at least $3.7 billion in Fiscal 2004) the investment of additional City capital dollars for affordable housing is not realistic,” said Miller. “But with Liberty Bonds we have an unprecedented opportunity to create more than 5,000 units of new housing, a substantial portion of which would be affordable to the families of public school teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses, clerical workers, hospital employees, and other hard working residents.”

Under the current plan, which is administered by the New York State Housing Finance Agency, 5% of housing units in Liberty Bond-financed buildings must be designated affordable. According to Miller, an annual family income of at least $94,000 is required to qualify for an affordable apartment under the current structure, which, he says, eliminates roughly 85% of New York City households. “This plan,” said Speaker Miller, “will benefit wealthy New Yorkers renting luxury apartments at the expense of thousands of low and middle income residents.”