NYS Passes Bill Giving Closed Hotels New Life as Affordable Housing

By: Ilana Siyance

The global pandemic hit New York City hotels hard, shuttering some for good. Now, a new piece of legislation has been passed in Albany aiming to convert distressed commercial properties into affordable housing.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the bill allocates $100 million to New York’s Housing Trust Fund Corporation to finance the purchase of empty hotels and offices, and to redevelop them into rental apartments for low-income and homeless New Yorkers. The bill specifies that eligible properties are those owned and managed by nonprofit landlords. The apartments created would permanently remain affordable. Half would be made available to the homeless, and the other half to people making no more than 80 percent of the area’s median income.

New York is not the first state to take such an initiative following the pandemic’s devastation. California already created a new $600 million program last fall, to convert hotels and other properties into affordable housing. New York seems like a good candidate for the plan, as roughly 20 percent of NYC hotel owners said last year that they could remain permanently shuttered. In addition, the metropolitan area has an approximately 772,000-unit shortage of affordable housing for persons with income below 50% of median area income, as per a 2019 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The $100 million earmarked for the financing, however, won’t cover very many NYC conversions, as bringing old properties up to date with current residential code standards won’t be cheap. State Sen. Mike Gianaris, the Queens Democratic deputy majority leader who sponsored the bill, said he hopes the funding can get a further boost from the $2 billion in federal pandemic relief that has been set for NYS. “We have struggled with creating the right type of affordable housing in New York for decades,” said Mr. Gianaris. “Hopefully, this gives us a model going forward for how to really create housing for people who need it.”

Many affordable housing advocates support the bill saying the state should take a more direct role in building affordable apartments. “I think there is a more than symbolic victory here,” said Shelly Nortz, deputy executive director for policy at the Coalition for the Homeless.

As per the WSJ, the legislation, which passed both houses of the Legislature, still needs to be signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to become a law. A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo’s office said he is still reviewing it. Gov. Cuomo’s annual budget already includes $100 million for property conversions, but that comes with fewer guidelines than the new bill would impose.