Over the past six years, HPD and our sister agency HDC, in partnership with other key organizations, has created or preserved the volume of affordable housing that previously took the City 20 years to achieve. By any measure, this is an amazing accomplishment.  But we know that we can and must do more. 

The changing economy means new challenges for New York City’s neighborhoods and families.  And it means that the tools we use to create and preserve affordable housing have to adapt.  This is nothing new –the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has consistently been a part of New York’s rich tradition of finding underlying opportunities in both boom and bust times. 

In the 1970s, when the City was on the brink of financial ruin, the Department moved aggressively and decisively to turn abandoned properties into the homes that spurred revitalization of many of our historic neighborhoods across New York City. 

When we launched the New Housing Marketplace Plan in 2003 we did so in the face of another kind of crisis — one of housing affordability.  To meet the challenge, the Mayor launched the most aggressive and extensive affordable housing plan in the nation. To date we have successfully created and preserved nearly 100,000 units of affordable housing, on pace to meeting the plan’s ambitious goal to fund 165,000 units by 2014.

As we all know, the world changed drastically last year.  Broader economic troubles brought shrinking credit markets and a mortgage foreclosure crisis.   And while the economic reality poses challenges, it only makes the need for the New Housing Marketplace Plan stronger.

In this update to the New Housing Marketplace Plan, the Department addresses the current crisis head-on. The new plan not only updates and adapts existing programs, but also launches new initiatives to meet three critical goals of strengthening neighborhoods, expanding the supply of affordable and sustainable housing, and stabilizing families by keeping them in their homes.

Staying on track to meet the goals of the New Housing Marketplace plan is crucial to spurring our short- and long-term economic recovery and to ensuring that New York remains a vibrant, sustainable and affordable City for all New Yorkers.

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