New York Mayor Eric Adams wants to take the city’s unused office inventory and turn it into housing.
“We are throwing open the door to more housing with a proposal that will allow us to create as many as 20,000 new homes where the building owner wants to convert offices into housing but needs help cutting through the red tape,” he said at an Aug. 17 press conference.
It’s part of the $24 billion commitment that the city has made toward creating affordable housing.
“With these three initiatives, converting empty offices to homes, an Office Conversion Accelerator, and the Midtown South Mixed-Use Neighborhood Plan, we continue to use every tool at our disposal to increase the supply of homes for New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said.
State Help
The governor’s office sent a 12-page letter that several times rebuked the city for poor planning and coordination, which it said had led to the city being unable to make use of resources that the state had allocated for the huge influx of illegal immigrants. For instance, the state committed $25 million to provide 1,250 households with one year of permanent housing, but the city could only find 17 families willing to move, according to the letter.As a self-declared “sanctuary city,” New York is one of several across the nation that has said that it wouldn’t cooperate with federal law enforcement in deporting illegal immigrants. Since last spring, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has directed buses of illegal immigrants who enter from the southern border to New York, as well as to Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, and Denver; New York has seen that population grow to 95,000, which the mayor’s office estimates will cost city residents $12 billion within three years.
New York’s unique “right to shelter” law has only exacerbated the problem. The guarantee to such a right is a task that the city hadn’t been able to meet with the already existing 60,000 homeless population.
The city has asked, several times for the state and federal governments to help, yet it has stopped short of asking to close either the city’s or the country’s borders. Instead, local officials have requested work permits for the newly arrived illegal immigrants and additional funding to house, feed, and transport the growing population.
At the Aug. 17 press conference, Mr. Adams pushed back against Ms. Hochul’s claims, saying the governor “did her analysis on probably four areas that really, I think, to me, just need clarity on.”
He said the crisis was one that had just been “dropped into the lap of New York City residents” and said the governor could do more to help in the form of an executive order.
Earlier this year, the city tried to bus illegal immigrants from the city to municipalities north of the city, which almost unilaterally rejected the idea. In June, Mr. Adams sued 30 New York counties that had passed local executive orders to block New York City from housing illegal immigrants within their counties.
“I think it’s unfortunate, and we’re hoping that the governor will put in place an executive order that would prevent this from having to go from location to location,” Mr. Adams said.
“New York just cannot continue to take this flow. And, you know, all I can say is I’m hoping people can imagine what it’s like to every week come up with, you know, from 25 to almost 3,000 people finding new places, sporting fields, recreational centers, hotels. That is just not how you manage a city.”
The governor’s office wasn’t available for comment by press time.
The state has committed about $1.5 billion in resources for the city regarding the illegal immigration situation, and so far has advanced $250 million of the commitment. According to the letter, the state hasn’t applied to reimburse all $250 million yet.
