Bloomberg: Housing Program Must Get Done

NEW YORK CITY-With the city once again facing a recession, as it did when the Bloomberg administration first revealed the New Housing Marketplace Plan in December 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday re-affirmed his administration’s commitment to the program.

“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.