Mayor de Blasio Announces Affordable Housing Milestone

Mayor de Blasio said his administration financed a record amount of affordable housing during the fiscal year that ended in June. 

He said the city financed more than 32,000 affordable homes this past year, and nearly 110,000 since taking office. Of those, about 30 percent are new construction, while the rest have been preserved through subsidy. The mayor said the city is on track to meet his target of 300,000 units by 2026.

De Blasio made the announcement outside of Destiny Armstead's brand new apartment on Wilton Avenue in the Bronx. "Even though I'm a working mom, I work every single day, it felt like it was impossible to find something within my price range," she said. Now Armstead, who works at Whole Foods, lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a new 60-unit building subsidized by the city and developed by the nonprofit Settlement Housing Fund. She pays $509 a month for rent. Her six-year-old son Destin showed off his missing front teeth as he grinned while giving de Blasio a tour of his new home.

Some critics said the new numbers are still not enough to address the city's housing crisis, particularly for the poorest New Yorkers. "Mayor de Blasio can trumpet the headline number all he wants, but very little of this housing is going to the people who need it most," the Coalition for the Homeless wrote in a statement. 

But the mayor said hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have moved into new homes or stayed in their current ones because of his housing plan. Since taking office, the administration has put more than $7 billion of subsidies into affordable housing. "There is real hope," he said. "This’ll be a long effort, but for more and more New Yorkers, this affordable housing is becoming a part of their lives.