Block by Block Report

This crisis threatens New York’s very character as a place of opportunity and creativity, where all are welcome.

Block by Block reflects our steadfast belief that solving the housing crisis means letting our agencies and partners innovate and putting the public sector in the driver’s seat.

Together, these changes will allow new neighborhoods to grow and will allow existing neighborhoods to become stronger with more affordable housing and greater amenities.

This administration strives to build a new coalition of New Yorkers for whom these loaded words can inspire hope and possibility.

Rent in our city is too high – and too many people are not getting what they pay for.

No one is better suited to hold a negligent landlord accountable than the people who live with the problem every day.

The goal will be to ensure that these buildings are transferred out of these bad actors’ hands and conveyed to responsible preservation purchasers who are supported by both tenants and the administration.

But there is power in numbers: tenants’ unions provide a way to advocate for collective interests – when tenants come together as a group, it is easier to address shared issues.

Calling 311 only to have your complaint disappear minutes later with no explanation builds resentment and frustration.

The list of rent-impairing violations has not been updated in decades, and many serious violations that threaten New Yorkers’ health and safety are not considered 'rent impairing.'

These tenant associations will play a critical role in strengthening the City’s ability to proactively address unsafe living conditions and even facilitate transfer of distressed buildings to more responsible owners.

CRI will serve public housing residents who are experiencing critical, long-standing conditions in their homes that impact habitability, including major structural damage, missing or unusable fixtures or cabinetry, significant floor or ceiling damage, or other serious deficiencies identified through inspection.

Where owners threaten to call ICE or otherwise retaliate against New Yorkers who report housing code violations based on their immigration status, the City will take swift action to hold those landlords accountable.

Currently, for every $100 increase in annual insurance costs, the City must invest $1,200 in additional City capital subsidy when completing a new affordable housing project.

To date, there has been little to no engagement with the program and there are still no eligible, completed applications.

The program is at an inflection point. Most developments are over 50 years old and are reaching their first major capital investment cycle, at a time when they need more than a typical moderate rehabilitation.

The portfolio’s capital needs are significant and risk accelerating without action.

Ultimately, the proposed legislation will stabilize some of the most distressed buildings in the city and hold many of the worst landlords accountable.

10% of households in the borough are subject to an eviction filing every year, and 26% of households reported three or more key maintenance deficiencies in their home.

With a housing stock that spans all five boroughs, NYCHA is a city within a city.

Despite significant improvements in service delivery since the initiation of the HUD Agreement, no amount of reform can wholly counterbalance the systemic disinvestment in public housing by the federal government that NYCHA has experienced over the course of the last six decades.

A development’s residents must opt-in to the Trust through a certified voting procedure.

The MLRR program brings together all necessary trades – plumbers, plasterers, bricklayers, carpenters, and painters – to fully resolve leaks and restore apartments in a coordinated effort.

However, elections for Resident Association members typically see only 3-5% voter turnout, and only a small number of residents regularly attend Resident Association meetings.

The lead and asbestos work is time-consuming and costly: the average cost to make each apartment move-in ready is about $59,000.

Resident Associations play a key role in developing community plans that memorialize a vision for design, property management, social services, and more.

This 'Build First' model applies lessons learned from failed past programs, like HOPE VI, by minimizing displacement, while replacing existing NYCHA apartments one-for-one and adding new housing.

This means that the SMRRT loan will enable value created by new mixed-income housing development to flow back to the public sector – supporting future affordable housing project financing and preserving the long-term public benefit of new housing.

Research shows that a child in a low-income household with a college savings account of just $1,500 is three times more likely to go to college and over four times more likely to graduate than a child without an account.

The vacancy rate was less than one percent for apartments renting for all but the highest-quartile of rents; a mere 0.4% of the lowest-rent apartments was available.

For these households, HPD will size their monthly rent at 25% of their monthly income.

These new projects will include an inter-generational pilot initiative to build senior-restricted apartments alongside non-age restricted apartments – intentionally creating multi-generational communities within a single housing development.

This first-of-its-kind project to serve formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with complex medical needs had been long delayed before Mayor Mamdani took office in January 2026.

This program will aim to facilitate development of smaller building types for which developers often struggle to secure sources of financing or reach economies of scale.

The comprehensive 1961 rezoning reduced citywide housing capacity by 80 percent and marked the start of decades of regulatory change — historic districting in the mid-1960s, environmental review in the mid-1970s, modern-day Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) in the late-1980s — that made housing far harder to build.

Some high-cost, resource-rich neighborhoods, like parts of the Upper East Side, the West Village, and Park Slope, are even losing housing as wealthy New Yorkers combine existing apartments faster than new apartments are built.

Citywide TOD will also look at the housing potential locked up in required but underutilized surface parking lots in areas well-served by mass transit.

In other, wealthier and high-opportunity areas, outdated zoning has often served exclusionary ends, closing off neighborhoods to growth and limiting their racial and economic diversity.

The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, in addition to other streamlined processes such as the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP), will reduce the overall pre-development process by approximately 2.5 years.

Building the deck creates new public “land” that will support a new complete neighborhood to be built in phases over the yard.

100 Gold illustrates how smart structuring of asset disposition and housing policy can turn a fiscal liability into a multiplier—delivering housing, modern civic infrastructure, and long-term fiscal value for New York taxpayers.

The close relationship between housing quality, climate risk, and unequal outcomes underscores the need for a coordinated, place-based approach to climate adaptation.

The sale of NYCHA’s development rights was a win-win: NYCHA received approximately $19.5 million from the sale of its development rights in 2024, providing approximately 20% of the upfront financing needed to comprehensively rehabilitate Campos Plaza II.

As tenants of Our Home buildings become homeowners, they will gain control over the future of their homes.

The savings are so large, in fact, that some manufactured homes are an order of magnitude cheaper than similarly sized homes built with traditional methods.

However, if our only tool is punishment – generally leading to eviction for residents – then those units will simply stay in the shadows and will be less safe for residents and neighbors.

Those who are unable to get back on track risk foreclosure and losing the stable housing and equity they worked hard to build.

In neighborhoods like Canarsie, East New York, and Cambria Heights, homeowners pay double the effective tax rate of homeowners in much wealthier communities, including Park Slope and the East Village.

Programs such as the Street to Home pilot prioritize immediate placement into housing, allowing individuals the time they need to stabilize before completing administrative processes.

The shelter system must function not only as emergency relief, but as a bridge to permanent housing.

To date, the program has stably housed over 1,800 households to help end a cycle between shelter, hospital, and the street.

By embedding accountability mechanisms throughout the project lifecycle, the CJA advances a more equitable and transparent construction environment while ensuring that public investment in housing projects delivers meaningful economic benefits to New Yorkers.

Even one death on a construction site is one too many, and reversing this increase in work site fatalities continues to be DOB’s top priority.

Innovations such as robotics, sensor-enabled wearable equipment, and digital construction management tools can reduce hazardous tasks on construction sites, reduce time spent in extreme heat or cold, and enable safer, more predictable workflows.

But smaller elevators are common in new buildings throughout Europe and Asia, and AECR will explore how to incorporate international practices in New York City.

Establishing standardized technical specifications will allow builders to achieve efficiencies by reusing technologies, designs, and delivery models across projects rather than reinventing them each time.

In particularly egregious cases, over eight years can pass between the day a new affordable housing building is proposed to the day tenants are able to move in.

Pre-certification has historically taken an average of two years, even for modest housing projects like a proposal to build a four-story building with just six apartments.

The median time to complete applicant approvals for lottery projects in FY25 was 210 days – delays that deny housing opportunities to New Yorkers who need them most and make projects more expensive.

The lead and asbestos work is time-consuming and costly: the average cost to make each apartment move-in ready is about $59,000.

For far too long, affected tenants lacked coordinated City services and were forced to navigate a web of agencies and the American Red Cross without dedicated assistance.

Rent in our city is too high – and too many people are not getting what they pay for.

The goal will be to ensure that these buildings are transferred out of these bad actors’ hands and conveyed to responsible preservation purchasers who are supported by both tenants and the administration.

Calling 311 only to have your complaint disappear minutes later with no explanation builds resentment and frustration.

The list of rent-impairing violations has not been updated in decades, and many serious violations that threaten New Yorkers’ health and safety are not considered 'rent impairing.'

CRI will serve public housing residents who are experiencing critical, long-standing conditions in their homes that impact habitability, including major structural damage, missing or unusable fixtures or cabinetry, significant floor or ceiling damage, or other serious deficiencies identified through inspection.

Where owners threaten to call ICE or otherwise retaliate against New Yorkers who report housing code violations based on their immigration status, the City will take swift action to hold those landlords accountable.

Despite significant improvements in service delivery since the initiation of the HUD Agreement, no amount of reform can wholly counterbalance the systemic disinvestment in public housing by the federal government that NYCHA has experienced over the course of the last six decades.

The comprehensive 1961 rezoning reduced citywide housing capacity by 80 percent and marked the start of decades of regulatory change — historic districting in the mid-1960s, environmental review in the mid-1970s, modern-day Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) in the late-1980s — that made housing far harder to build.

Citywide TOD will also look at the housing potential locked up in required but underutilized surface parking lots in areas well-served by mass transit.

In neighborhoods like Canarsie, East New York, and Cambria Heights, homeowners pay double the effective tax rate of homeowners in much wealthier communities, including Park Slope and the East Village.