Affordable housing in NYC is becoming almost as endangered a species as the mountain gorilla or the whooping crane. And way too often when someone advocates "affordable housing" it is no such thing but rather an excuse to give developers like Ratner a free pass to tread on personal property rights and destroy entire NYC communities. But the Mitchell-Lama housing program seems like something that NYC would be stupid to abandon.

This comes from Assemblyman Jonathan Bing's newsletter:

The New York State Mitchell-Lama housing program was created in 1955 to build affordable housing for moderate-income residents. Today, many limited-profit housing companies are exercising their option to buy out of the program, forcing middle-income working families who cannot afford the new rents out of their residences. A recent report by NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson stated that as many as one-third of the 140,000 apartments built under the program have left or are in the process of leaving the system largely due to skyrocketing housing prices.

In his second year as Chairman of the Assembly Subcommittee on Mitchell-Lama Housing, Assemblyman Bing has been working on a number of fronts to preserve affordable Mitchell-Lama residences, including:

* Authoring two bills that passed the Assembly in 2006 to close a loophole in the NYC Administrative Code that allows landlords to significantly increase rent by contending that merely buying out of the program qualifies as a "unique and peculiar" circumstance (A. 10596); and to prevent abuse of shareholders' absentee ballots and proxy votes in Mitchell-Lama dissolution proceedings (A. 11663). Both of these bills have been re-introduced in 2007 (A. 352; A. 353) and have already been reported out of the Assembly Housing Committee. Other legislation in this area is in the drafting process.

* Participating in a panel at the upcoming March 3rd citywide conference on the Mitchell-Lama program hosted by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and the Mitchell-Lama Residents Coalition. The conference will take place at the Lynch Theater of John Jay College, 899 Tenth Avenue between West 58th and 59th Streets, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Assemblyman Bing also participated in a February 25 rally to save Mitchell-Lama housing on the City Hall steps organized by ACORN and the Working Families Party.

* Holding an August 2006 hearing co-hosted by Assembly Housing Chairman Vito Lopez on the future of Mitchell-Lama housing at which 30 people from throughout New York City testified.

* Meeting with Co-Op City resident leaders on February 22 in the Bronx at the invitation of Assemblyman Michael Benedetto to discuss housing issues at the largest existing Mitchell-Lama development in the State.

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