Q&A
Priorities for NYC's increased capital capacity
0:24:37
·
178 sec
Comptroller Lander discusses the main priorities for New York City's increased capital capacity, emphasizing housing as the top priority.
- Housing is mentioned as the primary focus, with Lander stating 'Housing. Housing. Housing.'
- Other important areas mentioned include school accessibility, climate resilience, and the plan to build borough-based jails and close Rikers Island.
- The discussion touches on the city's administrative capacity to deliver on the new capital capacity, particularly in the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).
- Lander notes that while HPD has filled staff vacancies, there are other challenges such as knowledge loss, need for new technology, and process bottlenecks that need to be addressed.
Justin Brannan
0:24:37
Thank you.
0:24:39
What do you think the city's main priority should be with its, now increased capital capacity?
Brad Lander
0:24:46
Housing.
0:24:47
Housing.
0:24:47
Housing.
0:24:48
I mean, there are other important issues.
0:24:50
I, you know, the I mentioned, the accessibility in our schools, $450,000,000 would go a long way to making our schools more accessible.
0:25:01
Climate resilience is is critical.
0:25:05
The Department of Environmental Protection was asking only for $22,500,000 to modernize some of the critical catch basins that clog during extreme rainfall, but they've got a much more ambitious program that is necessary to protect us from those extreme rainfall storms that we've seen as well as from coastal storms.
0:25:24
So I think, you know, whatever.
0:25:26
The schools and accessibility is important.
0:25:27
Climate resilience is important.
0:25:30
And I continue to support the plan to build the borough based jails and and close Rikers Island.
0:25:37
But the the number one need from my point of view in kind of capital and infrastructure is affordable housing.
0:25:43
It is housing affordability that most threatens the city's growth if it can't be a place where families can can live and and stay.
0:25:51
And, you know, and so, the council's 2 and a half 1000000000 over 5 year request, I think, is a good one.
0:25:57
We do need, you know, to enable the private sector to build more housing.
0:26:02
But, realistically, if if a how chunk of that housing is going to be affordable for working and middle class families and to help us end homelessness, it is going to and have to involve city capital subsidies.
0:26:14
So I'm a big supporter of of that investment.
Justin Brannan
0:26:17
Do you think the administration has the staffing and and administrative capacity to deliver on that new capital capacity?
Brad Lander
0:26:27
We did a report recently on HPD's capacity questions.
0:26:31
And one interesting thing we found, we went in thinking that fake staff vacancies were really the issue, but the report concluded that they had actually done a pretty good job of filling staff vacancies after the pandemic.
0:26:43
But we found a bunch of other pain points in the development process.
0:26:46
There was some significant, knowledge experience loss because the folks that left during the pandemic had been there a long time.
0:26:54
So there are some critical training issues.
0:26:56
They need new technology, and we've recommended some really modest increases that would go a long way in HPD's technology and some development pain points as well.
0:27:06
It didn't use to be the case, for example, that the city's Office of Management and Budget essentially, you know, review re underwrote every affordable housing deal, that kind of gave program parameters.
0:27:18
So we've got a set of recommendations for what HPD could do to move faster, to get the money out the door, but we can't let it be that, you know, they didn't get the you know, the the staff capacity is limited, so the money didn't get out the door.
0:27:30
So next year, we project less in capital.
0:27:32
We have to go ambitiously in the other direction.
