Dive Brief:
- New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Letitia James have announced a $150 million investment in a $1 billion AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) plan to create or preserve up to 20,000 below-market apartments through a union labor partnership — in direct contradiction of Mayor Bill de Blasio's stance that union wages aren't cost effective on large, affordable housing projects, the Observer reported.
- HIT's seven-year plan is to renovate and improve between 12,500 and 15,000 apartments in subsidized housing buildings and construct between 5,000 and 7,000 new apartments with nonprofit partners.
- The city investment, supported by de Blasio critic and Building and Construction Trades Council President Gary LaBarbera, will create 7,300 union construction jobs.
Dive Insight:
De Blasio has been at odds with LaBarbera over the union wage issue ever since LaBarbera started lobbying the state to make union wages a condition of developers receiving the popular 421a tax credit.
The mayor has estimated that paying union wages on his affordable housing project would mean losing up to 17,000 below-market-rate apartments overall.
Stringer, also a critic of de Blasio, told the Observer that he believes there can be more than one model for affordable housing and that union wages and below-market housing are not incompatible.
"You can build affordable, and you can build union, and we’ve been doing it for a long time," he said. "The announcement we're making today clearly shows you can build affordable housing, and you can do it by creating union jobs as well."
