When buildings reach the end of their public subsidy agreements, usually after 20 or 30 years, owners are no longer required to charge below market rates for the units.
Almost 60 percent of the city-subsidized housing developed between 1987 and 2007 – 169,561 units – is at risk of going market rate, according to a 2010 report by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, an umbrella advocacy organization for neighborhood housing groups.
A New Database
To help those advocating to renew subsidy programs for these buildings, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a New York University real estate think tank, released a new database, the Subsidized Housing Information Program, earlier this year. Furman has collaborated with the city to compile data on buildings whose public subsidies are expiring.
The database combines lists of subsidized units from city, state and federal government agencies, and currently includes more than 300,000 rental and co-op units in about 2,600 properties. Furman Center officials hope to arm housing advocates, non-profit developers and tenants in subsidized housing, with timely information, to help them organize and advocate to renew subsidies before they expire.
SHIP allows users to research the history of subsidies for an individual property, the start and expiration dates of subsidies, and which subsidies might be available for the building.
However, the database is not designed to help apartment-seekers looking for a subsidized home, and it will not necessarily include buildings before they are occupied, when applications are usually due. Various public agencies list units available for rent or sale, but there is no centralized database for subsidized housing stock in New York.
Below, Vincent Reina, the Herbert Z. Gold Housing Fellow at Furman Center, explains more about the SHIP database.
(1) “What is the Subsidized Housing Information Project?”
(2) “What is the main goal of the database?”
(3) “Why are you creating a Subsidized Housing Information Project?”
(4) “What problem are you trying to solve with the Subsidized Housing Information Project?”
(5) ”Can you give us an example of when this system would be useful?”
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