"As I said to you six Decembers ago, New York's commitment to affordable housing is strong, it is unshakable and I believe it is essential to our recovery and our future," Bloomberg said in a keynote address at the annual New York Housing Conference and National Housing Conference awards presentation. He pointed out that when the NHMP was first announced, "there were many people who had questions about whether we could do it" in the post-9/11 slump. "We were aware of the challenges we faced" and found ways to overcome them.

Bloomberg said the construction of thousands of affordable housing units helped restore confidence in the city after 9/11, and noted that for the fourth year in a row, the city issued in excess of 30,000 permits for housing construction. "Our city has kept growing, and that isn't the case in a number of cities," he said.

In September, the program passed the halfway mark of the expanded NHMP, which seeks to create and/or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2016. However, Bloomberg noted that the month was also marked by the Wall Street meltdown, which has led to a new slate of challenges. For one, the value of low-income housing tax credits has plummeted in the past few months.