For the borough of Queens, the HDC will grant $49 million for three individual projects. One of those projects is a planned, 184-unit apartment building that will be built on a parking lot. The Project will provide housing for low-income seniors. Projects in Staten Island will also receive $25 million in financing from the HDC. The money will be used to redevelop the public housing project, Markham Gardens, into a 240-unit mixed-income area that will contain 23 three-story buildings.

"These programs are attracting private capital, and private developers, into affordable housing at a rate never seen before in New York City," said HDC president Emily Youssouf in a statement. "The 25,000 apartments that we have financed under the New Housing Marketplace Plan are the very results of this innovation."

The Mayor's New Housing Marketplace Plan was launched in February 2006. The initiative calls for the construction and preservation of 165,000 affordable housing units by 2013. This year's plan more than doubles the initial plan from 2002, which aimed to build and preserve 68,000 units by 2008. At the same time the Mayor revised the affordable housing plan, he assembled a task force to look at 421-a, a tax incentive program initiated in 1971 to jump-start housing development. The task force offered its recommendations in October, and together with Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Mayor has drafted new legislation.

Under the new proposed law, 421-a will enlarge the geographic exclusion area from the current Manhattan parameters to areas including lower Manhattan, DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights and Williamsburg. Developers working within the GEA are offered tax abatement if 20% of the project is for those residents who make up to 80% of the area's medium income.

The new legislation also calls for the elimination of the negotiable certificates program and the creation of an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that will aim at the City's 15 poorest areas. The certificates program will require developers to have affordable housing as part of the existing project in order to receive tax abatement, and will not allow them to buy certificates sold by other developers outside the GEA. According to a release from the major's office, "The result would increase tax revenue to be used for a dedicated $400 million Affordable Housing Trust Fund and generate $300 million for the Mayor's New Housing Marketplace Plan."

The bill also sets a 'luxury cap,' which will limit the total 421-a tax benefits a market-rate unit can receive. The current law sets no limit to the amount, but the new version calls tax abatement for only the first $65,000 of the apartment's assessed value. Additionally, only developers who provide affordable housing will be eligible for twenty-five years of tax benefits.