|
 Yonkers, NY - With a federal court-imposed housing ordinance set to expire at the end of the year, Mayor Phil Amicone has unveiled a new affordable housing proposal that will encourage developers to create more middle-income work force housing throughout the city of Yonkers.
The new ordinance, sent to the City Council for its consideration on Monday, is intended to replace what Amicone called the "harsh, punitive and onerous" affordable housing requirement that was imposed by a federal judge as part of an historic desegregation lawsuit brought against the city in 1980.
"The long-awaited expiration of the existing housing ordinance presents us not only with an opportunity to finally put an end to a troublesome chapter in the history of our city, but also with an excellent opportunity to fix the well documented problems with the current law and implement a new one that will actually encourage the creation of new affordable residential units throughout Yonkers, something that our community desperately needs," Amicone said in a memo sent to the City Council.
Amicone's new affordable housing ordinance proposal does the following:
· Requires a minimum of 10% of newly constructed units in multifamily residential developments to be set aside as affordable
· Defines "affordable" as 80% of the Westchester County area median income (AMI) for rental units & 120% of the county AMI for ownership units
· Establishes a "Yonkers Housing Trust Fund" that will serve as a funding source for the creation of new affordable housing
· Ends "segmentation" of the community by establishing a citywide policy, i.e. the same affordable housing requirements for all parts of the city
· Establishes preferences for the city's critical workforce (city, school district and hospital employees including police officers, firefighters, teachers, nurses, and other city workers)
Amicone's memo continued, "This new proposal will fix the problems with the existing ordinance by reducing the onerous restrictions, adjusting the income requirements to include more middle-income families and creating more of an incentive for the private sector to develop work force affordable housing throughout the city."
The current court-imposed housing ordinance mandates that a minimum of 20% of any new residential development units constructed in most parts of the city (everywhere but Southwest Yonkers) be set aside as low-income affordable housing, a requirement so onerous that it made the cost of constructing new housing prohibitive to the private sector. The existing law also prohibits the construction of any low-income housing in Southwest Yonkers, thereby segmenting one part of the community away from the rest of the city.
Most other municipal affordable housing ordinances throughout the area have minimum affordable unit requirements of around 10%, well below the 20% currently required in Yonkers.
Amicone went on to point out that, other than the 600 units of court-imposed affordable housing that were constructed throughout the city as part of the federal desegregation order, not a single affordable housing unit was developed under the existing ordinance since it was first imposed in early the 1980's. "Clearly, the court-ordered housing plan just didn't work," the mayor said.
By contrast, the new proposal would allow developers a great deal more flexibility in meeting the city's affordable housing needs, creating more of an incentive to construct work force housing according to Amicone.
Proposed Flexibility Incentives for Developing New Affordable Housing:
· Allows developers to construct affordable units on- site or off-site, or a combination of on- & off-site affordable units
· Provides an alternative to constructing affordable units by allowing developers to contribute a significant portion (one-third, or 33%) of a project's per-unit development costs to the "Yonkers Housing Trust Fund"
· The "Yonkers Housing Trust Fund" would then be used as a funding source for the construction of new affordable housing
· Opens up income requirements to include more middle-income workers
"We all agree that the creation of more affordable, middle-income, workforce housing is a priority for our community. However, we must acknowledge that the existing court-imposed ordinance did absolutely nothing to encourage the free market creation of new affordable housing. This new proposal will fix that and allow more of our hard working, middle-income families an opportunity to continue to live and work in our great city," the mayor's memo concluded.
 |
