June is Democratic Primary month, and mailboxes are stuffed with glossy campaign postcards listing accomplishments and making promises, especially concerning affordable housing. “Housing affordability is not just my top campaign issue, it’s one of the most important issues for New Rochelle.” “As New Rochelle continues to grow, we need to ensure equitable and affordable access to housing for all.” Promises to “create truly affordable housing so our families are not priced out” and to “enhance our community’s affordability, creating more housing for owners and renters at all price points” are vague and meaningless without specific goals and objectives, possibly serving as “whitewash” (definition: to intentionally hide some kind of wrongdoing, error or unpleasant situation).

Is it possible that the plan to subsidize a supply of 6,000 to 10,000 new rental units was never intended to meet local demand for housing? What is the true need for affordable housing in New Rochelle? Are there better plans and programs and incentive structures that would address this need? Could the city be wasting an opportunity to provide even more affordable housing to its residents? Without specific plans and policies, the result will be More of the Same: more market rate and luxury apartments for rent. Which candidates are willing to connect local supply with local demand?

How great is the need for affordable housing among those who already live here.  How great is this “unpleasant situation”?

In 2018, the City commissioned a report on the need for affordable housing with the preface that “The City council of the City of New Rochelle is deeply concerned that there are insufficient opportunities for individuals and families of Low Income, Moderate Income, and Median Income to purchase or rent dwelling units in the City.” The report provides great detail about both the supply and demand for affordable housing in New Rochelle and explains the ranges of rent and income levels that constitute affordability. It is not only a good reference document, but there are a dozen recommendations of policies and programs for the City to implement.

Just recently, USCensus.gov issued demographic and housing information, also in great detail, that further reveals the high number of New Rochelle’s families in this “unpleasant situation” of living in unaffordable housing in the shadow of the downtown high-rise development projects aimed at high-income earners.

The US Census contains lots of statistics and information that can be overwhelming to review and analyze on the whole. However, it is also organized by zip code, and in the case of New Rochelle, to analyze the current need for affordable housing, one can focus on just two of the three zip codes of data. There are three zip codes in New Rochelle: 10801 in the center of the city where all the new projects are being built under the 2015 Master Plan; 10805 on the historic waterfront which has seen spot zoning and variance approvals to accommodate special projects; and 10804, a classic leafy suburb with mostly single-family homes and high household incomes, which covers almost half of the geography of the city, and has strict exclusionary zoning and land-use limits.

The demand for affordable housing in New Rochelle is revealed by diving into the demographics and housing needs of citizens in zip codes 10801 and 10805 only, and leaving out zip code 10804 residents (high-income, single family home owners whose demographic statistics skew the overall statistics for New Rochelle).  There is  good reason to do this: more than 80% of New Rochelle’s 80,000 residents live in zip codes 10801 and 10805, and nearly 100% of the rezoning approved by City Council and the new development is located in these two zip codes. In these two zip codes there are 23,000 households or families (out of 29,000 total).  Half of them earn less than$75,000, and according to the 2018 Hudson Valley report, most of them are already living in housing that is severely unaffordable, with rent plus utilities payments that exceed half of their incomes.

Digging deeper into the Census data to look at the greatest need for affordable housing, in zip code 10801 alone (again, where all the development is occurring) there are 5,884 households—families—who earn less than $50,000 per year, with 3,500 families earning less than $25,000 per year. Most of these families are renters; 35% of renters in 10801 have children under age 18, and 70% of renters are self-identified as Black and/or Hispanic. Compared to the other two Zip codes,  10801 has a significantly higher official poverty rate, at 14.3%, or approximately 2,000 households.  And 23% of the impoverished are children.  Many of these families are in desperate need of affordable housing.

Are the City’s programs and policies addressing this demand for affordable housing? Is the City Council aware of the mismatch in supply and demand, or are they whitewashing this “uncomfortable situation”?

When it comes to the “supply side”, developers are required to rent only 10% of the rental units they build to households earning 80% of Westchester’s median household income, which in 2020 was $99,500 for a family of four. The City’s de facto goal is to support the development of 10,000 rental apartments; 10% of 10,000 apartments is 1,000 affordable apartments. 

This bare minimum affordable housing requirement–that developers maintain rents for 10% of the apartment units they build at a level that is affordable to households earning 80% of the County’s median income (adjusted for family and unit size)–came into play through a legislative amendment passed by City Council in 2021.

Before then, and under the 2015 RXR Master Plan, developers could build affordable units outside of New Rochelle and qualify for New Rochelle tax breaks and be able to build additional, bonus floors.  It’s still the case that developers can buy their way out of this 10% requirement by putting a fraction (under 25%) of their cost to build a unit into a fund to be spent by the City. Developers can also purchase their 10% requirement from other developers who built in excess of the 10% threshold, rather than include affordable housing in their projects.

In the 2021 amendment, the City Council also approved some fine print: they agreed that monies paid into the Affordable Housing Fund and Community Benefits Bonus Fund could be used to pay City salaries, consultant fees, and marketing expenses associated with attracting more development. The amendment also dropped the requirement that the Development Director publish a report every five years (from and after 2015) as to what funds were collected and how they were spent. At the time this amendment was proposed by the Development Director (who was also Corporation Counsel and is now the City Manager) and put to the Mayor and City Council for approval, residents were arguing for a 20% affordable housing requirement, and were not focusing on the lack of transparency about how the funds would be spent. It’s still not clear what programs for affordable housing are viable and what levels of funding are supporting them.

In 2023, the City deepened the public subsidies to developers, extending the Industrial Development Agency’s (IDA) Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) tax relief from 25 to 30 years at a discounted rate of 70%.

Members of the City Council who are candidates in the current election should be asked to clarify their positions on affordable housing.  Specifically, where was your voice and vote when the Council was reviewing the Affordable Housing policies and programs being written by the City’s Development arm? Are there development and housing policies and programs that you would like to change?  If so, which ones?