For months, the campaign to pass charter reforms to speed the construction of housing has flown well under the radar of most New Yorkers, drowned out by coverage of the mayor’s race.
Now those reforms are front and center as Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani’s stubborn refusal to take a position on them has focused attention on the many contradictions in his ambitious affordability program — which envisions building 200,000 affordable units over the next decade using union labor — and whether he is willing to make tough choices and confront the economic realities of his platform.
The charter reforms burst into the spotlight last week when Mamdani declined to take a stand on the charter proposals in the final candidate debate, and then continued to punt in subsequent media appearances.
In an interview on WPIX TV that aired Friday, Mamdani tied his indecision to his commitment to make sure new affordable apartments are built by union labor.
“The reason I have not come to a decision is because I haven’t come to a decision, not because of who I am willing to placate,” he added.
The housing charter proposals — measures 2, 3 and 4 — are designed to speed the development of more affordable housing by bypassing City Council approval for some projects and allow others rejected by the Council to be approved by a panel composed of the mayor, City Council speaker and borough president.
The reforms have wide backing from housing groups, elected officials including city comptroller Brad Lander — whom Mamdani cross-endorsed in the primary — and most of the borough presidents as well as real estate interests. They are being opposed by the Council because they would reduce its power, and by some unions that see the Council’s leverage over projects as the best way to win guarantees that projects are unionized both in construction and in staffing.
But those requirements come at a cost.
“There is no question that union labor does cost more and that if everything we do is going to be union labor, you’re going to have to find ginormous savings elsewhere,’’ longtime affordable housing developer and New York City Housing Authority Chair Jamie Rubin said on the City Hall Free for All podcast this week. “It’s not going to be so easy to find those.” (Rubin is also a funder of the podcast.)
Mamdami’s housing plan asserts that the city can build affordable units for $500,000 apiece using union construction workers. But many projects built with less costly non-union labor already cost more than that.
Using union labor puts the cost of an affordable unit at a minimum of $800,000, according to the Real Estate Board of New York, with the price tag likely to reach $1 million in most of Manhattan or the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront.
Mamdami’s plan also calls for investing $100 billion in housing, $70 billion of which would be borrowed and paid back with a tax increase. Any borrowing and tax must be approved by the legislature and governor, and faces daunting odds. More likely, the new mayor will find he has much less money to spend than he’s promised.
“Anything that adds to the cost of housing will reduce the amount that can be built — full stop,” said Howard Slatkin, a longtime official with the Department of City Planning who now runs the pro-housing non-profit Citizens Housing & Planning Council.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio declined to impose union requirements as he ramped up affordable housing funding because of the added cost, according to a top deputy involved.
“Bill de Blasio, a very serious progressive, allowed me and my team to pretty much piss off
unions because his position was ‘I would rather have our dollars go further and do more,’ ” said Alicia Glen, his deputy mayor for housing and economic development for most of his term, in the City Hall Free For All interview alongside Rubin.
She noted that unions still had a place in de Blasio’s New York: the buildings themselves were often staffed by union labor and the union construction workers still controlled the market for most office and some hotel construction. Further, projects receiving certain tax breaks were required to pay union-scale wages.
Manny Pastreich, president of the service workers union 32BJ SEIU, told THE CITY earlier this month that the union opposed the proposed charger reforms because the current approval process, culminating in a Council vote, allows unions and local lawmaker to team up and bargain labor agreements for projects, along with community benefits.
Anyone claiming that higher priced union workers makes the projects too costly is “a lying silly goose,” said Kevin Elkins, political director of the NYC District Council of Carpenters. He points to apartments built at Atlantic Yards and a joint venture between the building trades and the real estate fund Cirrus to build affordable housing.
The charter debate and the focus on union labor comes as the Council readies to pass legislation that would create a minimum wage for affordable housing construction.
The bill, introduced by Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa of Washington Heights, a Democrat, would impose a $40 hourly minimum for combined wages and benefits, and require a percentage of jobs to be targeted for residents of low-income areas.
Though the bill has a supermajority support from 43 members of the Council and the endorsement of Laborers Local 79 and the Mason Tenders District Council, it has not yet been brought to a vote. Lawmakers are still hammering out specifics with the Eric Adams administration, a source familiar with the discussions said, noting that costs are the primary concern for the outgoing mayor.
The city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development estimated that the Council bill would add $500 million a year to the cost of building affordable housing but the New York Housing Conference says the amount is likely to be far greater given Congress’ expansion of the federal low income housing tax credit this summer, which will allow the city to increase subsidized production by nearly 40%.
If the bill applies to rehab work on existing buildings, added executive director Rachel Fee, it would represent a major burden on a housing sector whose finances are deteriorating.
Mamdani is likely to find the pressure to endorse the charter reforms increasing as election day nears.
“An unprecedented number of New Yorkers were propelled to the polls this June because our housing crisis is a house on fire,” said Amit Singh Bagga, a Democratic strategist leading the coalition supporting the proposals.
Fee notes that the charter reforms would be a huge benefit to a Mayor Mandani given his campaign promise to dramatically increase housing production.
Slatkin echoes that view.
“Regardless of who is elected, a new mayor is going to have to deliver on ambitious goals with whatever system and process is approved by the voters,” he said. “I would hope the voters give the mayor the biggest toolkit possible to tackle the housing issues.”
Additional reporting by Claudia Irizarry Aponte
