NYC budget expected to include $2 billion for affordable housing. Here are the details.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council plan to announce a budget deal Friday that will allocate an additional $2 billion in capital to building and preserving affordable housing over the next two fiscal years, sources familiar with the budget negotiations told City & State.

The new housing allocation, which was first reported by the Daily News, is one of several big budgetary developments that broke Thursday. In a joint press release sent out Thursday night, Mayor Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced the city’s library systems and cultural institutions would get a respective $58 million and $53 million in cut funding restored. While only an informal promise for now, the Adams administration and City Council are expected to ceremonially shake hands over the budget agreement Friday, bringing a tense season of negotiations nearly to an end just before the June 30 deadline. 

Approximately $1.3 billion of the new housing commitment will be allocated to the Housing Preservation and Development department – about $792 million of which will go toward building affordable multi-family buildings and housing for low- to extremely low-income New Yorkers. Another roughly $150 million will go toward homeownership construction and renovations, and about $278 million to preserve and build supportive housing, according to details shared with City & State.

The $700 million to be allocated to the New York City Housing Authority will largely go toward preserving and renovating public housing through the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program and the Public Housing Preservation Trust. Half of the total $2 billion commitment is earmarked for the coming 2025 fiscal year. The other $1 billion will be set aside for 2026.

The additional funding comes in wake of the City Council calling for an additional $3.66 billion in capital funds for HPD over the next five years, including a $732 million annual increase in “affordable housing and homeownership programs to meet affordability needs.” The Adams administration has also pushed for more resources to build and preserve affordable housing.

Early in his tenure, Mayor Adams announced a “moonshot goal” to create 500,000 units of new housing over the next 10 years. He’s since rolled out a number of initiatives related to affordable housing. City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, Mayor Adams’ ambitious housing proposal, which is currently going through the public review process, seeks to tackle the city’s housing crisis by changing land use rules to spur development and create a “little bit more housing in every neighborhood.”

Asked by reporters in March about the City Council’s requests for additional housing funding, Mayor Adams pointed to the city’s 1.4% historically low vacancy rate. “We have an inventory problem, you know?” he said. “We want to look at all of these ideas. We have to build more. Anyone that is saying, starting off a conversation without building more, they have a flawed plan.”

The additional funding significantly increases the capital budget for HPD and NYCHA to a combined $4.2 billion next fiscal year, up from the prior $3.15 billion – higher than any other recent budgetary cycle. 

The full budget will likely be passed by the City Council Sunday afternoon – an unusually down to the wire move. The new fiscal year starts July 1.