By Serena Balani and Edward Lopez
Amid last-minute negotiations to reach a budget deal in Albany, Department of Housing Preservation (HPD) Commissioner Adolfo Carrión is asking state legislators to help low-income New Yorkers by rezoning large areas of the city.
“We have to become the city of yes and the neighborhoods of yes as opposed to the city of no and the neighborhoods of no,” he said in an interview with City Newsroom in late March, adding that the rising cost of housing and the low vacancy rate are pushing working-class families out of New York.
“If you are a family on the lower income bands, your chances today of finding an apartment that’s affordable for your family is near zero,” Carrión said.
Carrión wants the rezoning of high-cost areas around Central Park and in Midtown Manhattan to allow the construction of affordable housing. He’s also asking to turn commercial buildings in the Financial District into mixed-use, allowing the creation of residential units.
In neighborhoods including Morris Park in the Bronx, Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, and Todt Hill on Staten Island, Carrión is proposing to convert accessory units, like garages and basements, into additional housing. He is asking for partial tax exemptions to help homeowners and landlords carry out these renovations.
“We need a tax incentive legislature because the private sector is not going to simply, out of the generosity of their hearts, create this housing, ” Carrión said.
According to the latest Housing Vacancy Survey, New York City has a vacancy rate of 1.4% citywide. This is the lowest since the survey was carried out in 1968. This means that out of over 2 million housing units, only a little over 30,000 are currently vacant.
Last November, HPD began the Plus One ADU pilot program, providing funding to some homeowners to build accessory housing in their properties. Carrión also pointed out that his department already offers some landlords tax incentives and preservation programs for repairs, helping low-income renters stay in their homes.
The lack of incentives to build new units of affordable housing is, according to Carrión, contributing to the further gentrification of historically working-class and low-income communities.
Carrión was picked by Mayor Eric Adams to lead HPD two and half years ago. He worked in the Obama administration as regional director of the Housing and Urban Development Office in New York and New Jersey and as director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs. Before that, he served as Bronx borough president for eight years and as a City Council member for four. In 2013, he unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York as an independent.
Born in Manhattan to Puerto Rican parents who came to New York City in the 1950s, Carrión spent some of his childhood years in public housing, until his parents bought a home in The Bronx thanks to a low-interest mortgage from the Federal Housing Administration. This, he said, allowed his parents “to start to capture the American dream.”
“The best investment we can make in a family in this country is in their housing,” he said.
In his current capacity as commissioner, Carrión wants to give the same opportunity his parents had to the immigrants arriving in the city today.
“To make sure they have a good place to live so they can raise their families, and everything starts to turn around and work, and we all win.”
