Overview

Publicly owned land is an invaluable and increasingly scarce resource in New York City. ANHD and our member organizations have been working to ensure that the City designates its public land to be used in the public’s interest, in perpetuity, and with both local and citywide needs in mind.

The Project

Public site development presents a critical opportunity to offset speculation and gentrification, helping to stabilize communities and provide affordable housing and other spaces that meet community and citywide needs.

Rather than sell public sites to profit-driven developers, the City should be putting public land into the hands of non-profit and community-controlled entities, whose missions align with the goal of ensuring that the land be used for the public’s benefit. Additionally, the City should be using public land to meet goals such as deep and permanent affordability, which can be more difficult to accomplish on private sites where the City has less control.

ANHD and our member groups are working with city agencies who own public sites to make reforms to the RFP eligibility and selection criteria in a way that recognizes and affirms the strengths that mission-driven developers bring to the development process.

Recents Blogs and Media

Blog
November 1, 2017
New York City took an unannounced, but important step towards making the affordable housing it finances “permanently affordability.” In the most recent round of Request for Proposals (RFPs) issued by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the City created a new regulatory requirement that will allow HPD to ensure that all affordable housing built on city-owned land through a Request for Proposals process will keep the affordability benefit in perpetuity.
Blog
October 17, 2017
Non-profit affordable housing developers have played a key role in New York City housing plans since the beginning of the modern, city-backed affordable housing model. The role of for-profit developers has grown over the years, leaving community development practitioners to question whether affordable housing development has become overly reliant on for-profit developers and whether the level of public benefit created by these projects has diminished.

Related Resources

A five part blog series analyzing Housing New York, the Mayor’s new ten-year plan for affordable housing development, chapter-by-chapter.
An analysis of the potential impact of replacing the City's Voluntary Inclusionary Zoning policy with a new Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning Policy
An analysis of prior losses, and potential gains of affordable housing for Brooklyn’s CB 7.
An analysis of prior losses, and potential gains of affordable housing for Queen’s CB 1.
An analysis of prior losses, and potential gains of affordable housing for Manhattan’s CB 11.
An in-depth analysis of the opportunity of Mandatory Inclusinary Housing, and what has been lost in the current Voluntary Inclusionary Housing policy.
A breakdown of the benefits received by the real estate industry and their corresponding affordable units produced in rezoned areas
An evaluation of Mayor Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace program

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