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Q&A
Council Member Brewer questions HPD on budget allocations and housing conversions
1:38:09
·
5 min
Council Member Gale A. Brewer engages in a detailed Q&A session with HPD officials, focusing on budget allocations, housing conversion initiatives, and vacancy issues in supportive housing. The discussion covers asylum seeker funding, HDFC conversions, SRO transformations, and the need for data on supportive housing vacancies.
- Brewer presses for specifics on how HPD will use potential budget increases and savings from asylum seeker programs.
- The conversation reveals ongoing efforts to convert HDFCs and SROs, though specific numbers for future conversions are not available.
- Brewer emphasizes the importance of addressing vacancies in supportive housing and requests a list of agencies with vacancies from HPD.
Gale A. Brewer
1:38:09
Thank you very much.
1:38:10
Congratulations, commissioner Tajani.
1:38:14
I I was at a tenant meeting with NYCHA earlier, but I did listen.
1:38:17
So you have more money as a result of the asylums.
1:38:20
Is it 50,000,000 in '26?
1:38:40
What are you gonna do with all that money?
1:38:42
Pardon me?
1:38:43
What are you going to do with all that money?
1:38:47
very good question.
1:39:02
So you didn't get all that money?
1:39:04
So HPD did not get all that money?
1:39:10
I know.
1:39:10
It goes back to OMG.
1:39:11
So alright.
1:39:12
So you don't have any of that money yet?
1:39:28
So you didn't get it.
1:39:29
Are you so you're not you don't know if you're getting any of it yet.
1:39:31
That's what I'm trying to understand.
1:40:01
Alright.
1:40:02
I'm just trying to understand how you're gonna build more housing.
1:40:04
My same question.
1:40:05
HDFCs or whatever the hell you call them now.
1:40:08
I asked about that in the preliminary budget.
1:40:10
Are we any further along?
1:40:11
That's homeownership.
1:40:13
Where are we with HDFCs?
1:40:14
Because what I guess I'm looking at between the HDFCs, the SROs, there's, like, you know, money left on the table, so to speak.
1:40:22
These buildings exist.
1:40:23
They just need to be converted.
1:40:25
Go ahead.
1:41:25
Alright.
1:41:26
I sort of understand what you said.
1:41:29
Not completely.
1:41:30
But you don't have any more units that have been converted or you don't have a number as to what you're going to convert in the next two six?
1:41:40
Alright.
1:41:40
How about SROs?
1:41:41
Do you have a number for SROs in terms of conversion?
1:41:44
Obviously, the Windermere being one.
1:41:46
Do you have others that you're trying to convert to be a permanent affordable housing?
1:42:07
I'm not sure they're support people, but go ahead.
1:42:40
Okay, but do you have any number for the number of SRO units that are available for conversion that you're working to convert?
1:42:47
Do you have a number for that?
1:42:51
Okay.
1:42:52
And then just finally, I don't know if it's you or somebody or if it's DSS, but there are a lot of vacancies in support of housing.
1:42:58
Is that your issue or some other agency?
1:43:00
It seems to me it should be the administration's.
1:43:02
There's a lot of vacancies in support of housing.
1:43:22
But you and DSS meet, I assume, on a regular basis.
1:43:24
Does anybody have a list of the agencies and nonprofits that have vacancies?
1:43:39
Can you get us that list of the vacancies in the nonprofits?
1:43:44
Can you get us the list of those agencies that have vacancies?
1:43:50
Thank you.
1:43:51
There's hundreds of them, FYI.
1:43:54
Thank you.
Gardea Caphart
1:38:24
Yes.
1:38:25
So, sorry.
1:38:27
So, yeah, overall, net, we did reduce the asylum seeker, budget because the population has been going down.
1:38:35
That, you know, just an adjustment, for one initiative for this year, but overall, we saw a net decrease.
1:38:45
Oh, council member, good question.
1:38:46
So It's
1:38:48
So the program, the sound initiative, secret initiative managed citywide, so whatever savings are recognized are moved around the program.
1:38:55
So while we may see savings on the HPD side, it's possible, you know, the way OMB manages how it's reallocated across the program citywide.
1:39:06
So as far as sound seeker funding, any savings does not go to HP
1:39:15
So we still do have asylum seeker money in our budget for the remaining programs that we have, but as far as any reallocations, they go to other agencies.
1:39:23
So
1:39:32
So we have funding from other sources.
1:39:35
So in terms of our additional budget that we mentioned, the increase we saw in with the NYC Fifteen program for border housing, so the agency is seeing an increase in our budget for other programs, but for the asylum seeker budget, those funds are specifically for that initiative, so we can only use for claiming purposes in order that can only be used for asylum seeker costs.
1:39:54
Okay.
1:39:55
So, any money that we don't spend in our budget for asylum seeker gets reallocated and doesn't go back to fund other
Ahmed Tigani
1:39:24
funding come from general, not specifically from Okay.
1:40:26
Yep.
1:40:26
We so there are two parts of this.
1:40:29
We're thinking through the cost of conversion still continues to be something that is an item we're working on.
1:40:37
We have new preservation programs.
1:40:39
Our focus really is on ANCP.
1:40:41
It's one of the ways that we use the affordable homeownership opportunity funds on the state level that help supplement our work on the ground in New York City.
1:40:51
That said, there was additional homeownership funds provided in the state budget that just passed.
1:40:58
So we do our assistant commissioners in homeownership opportunities are looking at ways we could do tenant to owner conversion.
1:41:07
The strongest I think the possibility of doing more with option D, 485X, is something we're looking at, but it's not going to work in every geography.
1:41:16
So we're going have to figure out a plan that has different tools for different geographies.
1:41:20
And they would for new construction 100% subsidized, they would be HDFCs.
1:41:36
We we don't have a number to what we're going to convert next to
1:41:50
We do have a number of developers who are coming to us about either converting SROs, you know, Class B buildings into Class A.
1:41:59
And as you know, we're also looking at expanding the use of shared housing, which is something we've talked about, City of and the numbers demonstrate
1:42:10
The numbers demonstrate we still need to also build for more singles and two person households.
1:42:15
So we are working on legislation now to come back to the council to develop that idea further.
1:42:22
So it's going both ways.
1:42:23
SROs, they're looking to convert into Class A apartments.
1:42:27
We're working on those conversions in the pipeline.
1:42:29
We're also looking at expanding the use of shared housing since there's also been a demonstrated demand for up to date, newly constructed, high quality, shared living environment.
1:42:48
I I don't have a number in for you right now, but we can come back to you with that data.
1:43:05
It's something that we work on with DSS.
1:43:07
I would probably defer to them on the referral process, but as we build units or there are projects that have a regulatory agreement with us, they're under Housing Connect requirements.
1:43:18
We get involved make sure lease up is happening.
1:43:30
Yes.
1:43:31
And now we're now yes.
1:43:32
So we can I could go back to DSS and work on putting that data for you?
1:43:37
We're brought in when it's projects under
1:43:42
I will go back to talk to DSS
1:43:48
I will go back to DSS and talk about this question.