NYC NOW - February 21, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

New York Attorney General Letitia James is willing to seize Donald Trump's buildings and assets if he's unable to pay off the penalties imposed on him by a judge last week. Plus, First Lady Tammy Murphy opposes her husband on the campaign trail in Newark. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with reporters David Brand and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky about an analysis that finds close to 70% of New York City’s new affordable apartments are studios or 1-bedrooms, making affordable housing even harder for renters with families.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WNYC, I'm Jene Pierre. New York's Attorney General says she's ready to take action against Donald Trump if he fails to pay the fines against him. Last week, a judge ordered Trump to pay $354 million following a civil fraud trial over his business practices. Attorney General Leticia James says she's willing to seize Trump's buildings and assets. in New York if he's unable to pay off the penalties. If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment,

then we will seek, you know, judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets. Former President Trump also owes $100 million more in additional interest. Trump and his associates were accused of defrauding money lenders by inflating his net worth. He's called the case a sham and has vowed to appeal. New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy made a Senate campaign stop in Newark this week, where she announced her opposition to a gas-powered energy plant. It's the first time she has publicly opposed her husband.

WNYC's Nancy Solomon has the details. In her bid for the U.S. setting, Tammy Murphy stood alongside environmentalists and community activists to call for an end to a proposed fourth power plant in Newark's ironbound neighborhood. But she didn't mention that the governor supports it, After her prepared remarks, she faced off against a perplexed gaggle of reporters. I'm not here to stand up and speak for the administration. That's not my role here today.

And if that's the essence of your questions, with all due respect, that's the end of the conversation. The proposed plant would burn natural gas to generate backup electricity to run a sewage plant that flooded during Superstorm Sandy. New York City is building a record number of subsidized housing units for lower middle-income renters. a strategy Mayor Eric Adams has often touted. But an analysis out of the WMYC newsroom shows a large percentage of those units don't easily accommodate families.

More on that after the break. Affordable housing is hard to find in New York City, even though the local government is subsidizing more of it than ever before. But a WMYC analysis finds that close to 70% of those new affordable apartments are studios or one bedrooms. That makes them too tight

for the millions of New Yorkers with families who need the additional space. For more, my colleague Michael Hill talked with WMYC's David Brand and Jacqueline Jeffrey Wollensky. How does the system for building this affordable housing,

how does that work? Well, we hear that term affordable housing a lot, but there's actually a definition. So housing is considered affordable when the family or the individual living there is spending no more than 30% of their income

on rent and utilities. But housing's expensive to build, and so developers and landlords aren't in the business of keeping rents low. You know, that's where the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, or HPD comes in. They oversee the city's affordable housing program, and they give subsidies, low-interest financing, and other breaks to developers in exchange for keeping rents capped in those apartments at a percentage of tenant income.

So, for example, someone earning $50,000. a year, that's $4,200 a month, their rent will be capped at around $1,250 to meet that 30% threshold. People apply for those apartments through a lottery here in New York City, but demand is massive, and HBD says there are nearly 900,000 current applicants. Jacqueline, we always hear a lot of talk from politicians about affordability for families. What exactly have you found about the kinds of apartments being built under the Affordable Housing Program? Well, you're absolutely right about hearing a lot of talk. You know, if we look back to this housing plan that New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched back when he took office, he mentioned families a lot.

He specifically said that the city is, quote, hemorrhaging black and brown families in particular because of the affordability crisis. So just to have a clean demarcation, we decided to look at data on the city's affordable housing program from the beginning of the Adams administration. Obviously, a lot of those projects were in the pipeline before he took office, but it does give us a nice bird's eye view of progress on affordable housing, built or financed since 2022. And looking at the data, we found not just a lot of studios and one bedrooms, which aren't great for families, but also that the proportion of those small apartments really varied drastically from neighborhood to neighborhood. For example, there were huge tracts of Manhattan, like the village, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, Upper East. side where like nine out of 10 new units were for singles or couples, which of course makes sense based on census data.

Like we know that households tend to be smaller in those neighborhoods. But even in more residential neighborhoods, we saw proportions of studios and one bedrooms that just didn't seem to match the demographics of the neighborhood. For example, in Southern Queens, the average household runs between three and four people, but still like 96% of new units are studios. and one bedrooms. It's not like we don't need these small apartments. There's desperate need for more affordable housing across the board. It's just that it's especially tight for families. There are tens of thousands chasing a small number of affordable two and three bedroom apartments.

David, you talk with several families living in tight quarters, eager to get one of those, what sounds like, very few affordable housing units that are two or three bedrooms. I'm curious. What have you learned? What did they tell you? Well, I visited Larry Lopez at his apartment in Bedstein. He's a translator living with his wife and one-year-old. They have a two-bedroom apartment, but their landlord told him they have to get out by August. Lopez told me he's really struggling to find another two-bed at a price they can afford. He says they've applied for dozens of affordable housing lotteries, but he feels like it's a long shot because there just aren't enough of these family-sized units at a price they can afford. He says it seems like the housing

market is only working for wealthy people. There's so many people that do all these like smaller jobs, you know, that don't make $100,000 here. He grew up in Brooklyn, he says, it's a lot harder to find a place for his family. Jacqueline, what have city officials had to say about your findings? HBD says it's just meeting demand. It points to numbers showing that 80% of affordable housing registrants are single and two-person households.

Though some experts we talked to pointed out that it could also be families see how few two- and three-bedroom apartments there are, and they just don't think it's worth it to apply. I also talked to a number of city council members who said that the proportions of these different apartment sizes don't match the needs of each neighborhood. They felt like the city was prioritizing, cramming more smaller apartments into one building over a diversity of apartments of different sizes. Just as an example, I talked to council member Althea Stevens in the Bronx, and 77% of the affordable units in her district are studios and one bedrooms. And she told me that just doesn't meet the needs of her constituents. She's got multigenerational families.

She's got grandparents raising grandkids and all kinds of setups that just need a bit more elbow room to grow. And she said it's hard to even know where to start when it comes to changing that. That's one of the things that I'm always pushing for it. Why are we not making more two and three bedrooms? But understanding, right, when I'm speaking to developers, they're like, well, this is what HPD wants. Then HPD is like, no, that's what the developer wants. So it's a lot of pointing fingers. reality is, I think both of them are playing a game, right?

David, it's a tough housing market out there, as we know. And as you guys are reporting, what fixes are being proposed to create more housing for families? You're definitely right. The housing market is tough right now. The city just released its regular housing and vacancy survey earlier this month. They found that less than 1% of places priced below $2,400 were vacant and available to rent during the survey period.

That means it's a housing emergency. So there are several proposals right now, most prominently, I guess, a new tax break for developers who build new housing with some units for low and middle income renters. There are proposed changes to the building and zoning regulations that would potentially allow for more family-sized housing like we've been reporting on. And there's even a proposal for a new agency that would oversee publicly owned mixed income housing. It's called social housing.

So, you know, we'll see what happens with these proposals. But right now, the situation means there's a lot of competition for not a lot of apartments and rents are at record highs. And as we've reported, it could be especially hard for families with kids to find an affordable place to live. That's WMYC's David Brand and Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky, talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Junae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.