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HPD's role in wage assumptions and project underwriting

0:36:52

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Council Member De La Rosa inquires about HPD's assumptions regarding wages and fringe benefits for construction workers during the underwriting process for affordable housing projects. Lucy Joffe explains HPD's approach to understanding wage structures and market conditions.

HPD's limited access to detailed wage and benefit breakdowns is discussed.
The variation in how wages and fringe benefits are represented in different projects is explained.
HPD's efforts to understand current market conditions and expected wages for lowest-paid workers are highlighted.

Carmen N. De La Rosa

0:36:52

So when you all are doing sort of like the underwriting, especially on affordable housing projects, does HPD make assumptions about the wages for construction workers, and do those assumptions include information about health insurance and other fridge fringe benefits offered by general contractors, subcontractors, etcetera.

Lucy Joffe

0:37:11

Yeah.

0:37:11

So across prevailing wage projects and non prevailing wage projects, Employers will sometimes pay someone separate.

0:37:20

Here is your wage and here are your fringe benefits.

0:37:23

Sometimes that is a combined wage that meets the, for example, in federal prevailing wage, the requirement on both sides.

0:37:30

So those numbers can be represented differently in different circumstances.

0:37:34

So we don't always have access to whether or not that is inclusive or separate on a non prevailing wage project.

0:37:40

But for purposes of figuring out the costs, we have done a lot of work to try to understand where we think the market currently is and what we would expect the lowest paid workers to be currently paid, whether that's being paid separately from benefits or inclusive of because those can vary in the different types of relationships or workplace relationships that are established.

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Inquiry about fringe benefits for non-union construction workers on HPD projects

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HPD's limited role in wage negotiations between contractors and workers