EDITORIAL: Bill’s senior moment: De Blasio balks on a commitment made to elderly public housing residents

March 18-- Mar. 18--Back in the summer, under pressure from NYCHA tenant groups and members of the clergy, Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson brokered a budget deal that included a crucial commitment: a half-billion dollars to build public housing for seniors on vacant city land.

Don't take our word for it. The Council's press release touted "$500 million for senior affordable housing." The Wall Street Journal reported that "New York City has committed $500 million" to that end.

The elegant idea is to create small new apartments for elderly NYCHA residents -- freeing up the larger units where thousands, now empty-nesters, still live, and starting to dent the city's 200,000-plus wait list for public housing. Sounding very much like himself, de Blasio appeared at a rally outside City Hall and said, "Fairness means all the good people of the city can actually afford to live in their own city."

Fast forward. Last month, meeting with some of the advocates who had helped broker the commitment, the mayor's staff said it was pursuing six sites that would altogether accommodate between 525 and 855 apartments for seniors. Divide $500 million by that total, and you get a cost to taxpayers of between $580,000 and $950,000 a piece.

The normal economics of building, in which city dollars leverage over revenue, say that when land is free, it should take between $150,000-$200,000 in taxpayer dollars to produce a unit of affordable housing -- which is to say that for a half-billion dollars, de Blasio could deliver 3,000 or so apartments.

What happened here?

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