Dive Brief:
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In a bid to compete with for-profit landlords, a new housing group in New York City is attempting to bring a group of nonprofit developers into a single trust to gain influence in the city’s affordable housing market, according to Crain’s New York Business.
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The Joint Ownership Entity, or JOE NYC, is expected to roll out this spring and aims to own 3,000 affordable units across 50 projects.
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Under the plan, nonprofits place buildings into the trust and receive payments from the collective fund based on the value of their contributed property. Creating such a portfolio will help the nonprofit owners and developers compete for city and state funding as well as other financing.
Dive Insight:
JOE NYC is touted as one way to bring more low- and middle-income housing units online in New York City. Other measures being considered include a recent proposal to legalize the conversion of certain basements into apartments, which could add between 10,000 and 38,000 units without changing the city’s Zoning Resolution, according to the Citizens Housing and Planning Council.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has put forth a string of proposals aimed at fulfilling his pledge to provide 200,000 low- and middle-income housing units in a decade. That includes a recent move to allocate $1.9 billion to deliver 10,000 affordable properties for households earning less than $40,000 annually. De Blasio has also proposed a 2.5% sales tax on residential properties worth more than $2 million for the purpose of funding an affordable housing program for seniors sponsored by the city.
The state of New York added 25,000 affordable housing units annually from 2011 to 2015, yielding 65,000 construction jobs in the process, according to a report last week from the New York State Association for Affordable Housing as reported by Real Estate Weekly. Those additions provided a $54.5 billion boon for the state’s economy compared to the $39.6 billion infusion attributed to affordable housing construction from 2003 to 2010.
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