Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone Proposes New Affordable Housing Ordinance

Mayor Asserts Measure will Replace 'Punitive' Federal
Court-Imposed Housing Requirement

New proposal Intended to Encourage Development of Middle-Income
Workforce Housing Throughout the City

YONKERS, NY — With a federal court-imposed housing ordinance set to expire at the end of
the year, Mayor Phil Amicone today unveiled a new affordable housing proposal
that will encourage developers to create more middle-income work force housing
throughout the city of Yonkers. 

The new ordinance, sent to the City Council for its
consideration on Monday, is intended to replace what Amicone called the
"harsh, punitive and onerous" affordable housing requirement that was
imposed by a federal judge as part of an historic desegregation lawsuit brought
against the city in 1980. 

"The long-awaited expiration of the existing housing
ordinance presents us not only with an opportunity to finally put an end to a
troublesome chapter in the history of our city, but also with an excellent
opportunity to fix the well documented problems with the current law and
implement a new one that will actually encourage the creation of new affordable
residential units throughout Yonkers, something that our community desperately
needs," Amicone said in a memo sent to the City Council.

Amicone's new affordable housing ordinance proposal does the following:

* Requires a minimum of 10% of newly constructed units in
multifamily residential developments to be set aside as affordable

* Defines "affordable" as 80% of the

Westchester County

area median income (AMI)

for rental units & 120% of the county AMI

for ownership units

* Establishes a "Yonkers Housing Trust Fund" that
will serve as a funding source for the creation of new affordable housing

* Ends "segmentation" of the community by
establishing a citywide policy, i.e. the same affordable housing requirements
for all parts of the city

* Establishes preferences for the city's critical workforce
(city, school district and hospital employees including police officers,
firefighters, teachers, nurses, and other city workers)

Amicone's memo continued, "This new proposal will fix
the problems with the existing ordinance by reducing the onerous restrictions,
adjusting the income requirements to include more middle-income families and
creating more of an incentive for the private sector to develop work force
affordable housing throughout the city." 

The current court-imposed housing ordinance mandates that a
minimum of 20% of any new residential development units constructed in most
parts of the city (everywhere but Southwest Yonkers) be set aside as low-income
affordable housing, a requirement so onerous that it made the cost of
constructing new housing prohibitive to the private sector.  The existing
law also prohibits the construction of any low-income housing in Southwest
Yonkers, thereby segmenting one part of the community away from
the rest of the city.

Most other municipal affordable housing ordinances
throughout the area have minimum affordable unit requirements of around 10%,
well below the 20% currently required in Yonkers. 

Amicone went on to point out that, other than the 600 units
of court-imposed affordable housing that were constructed throughout the city
as part of the federal desegregation order, not a single affordable housing
unit was developed under the existing ordinance since it was first imposed in
early the 1980's.  "Clearly, the court-ordered housing plan just
didn't work," the mayor said.

By contrast, the new proposal would allow developers a great
deal more flexibility in meeting the city's affordable housing needs, creating
more of an incentive to construct work force housing according to Amicone.

Proposed Flexibility
Incentives for Developing New Affordable Housing:

* Allows developers to construct affordable units on-site or
off-site, or a combination of on- & off-site affordable units

* Provides an alternative to constructing affordable units
by allowing developers to contribute a significant portion (one-third, or 33%)
of a project's per-unit development costs to the "Yonkers Housing Trust
Fund"

* The "Yonkers Housing Trust Fund" would then be
used as a funding source for the construction of new affordable housing

* Opens up income requirements to include more middle-income
workers

"We all agree that the creation of more affordable,
middle-income, workforce housing is a priority for our community.
However, we must acknowledge that the existing court-imposed ordinance did
absolutely nothing to encourage the free market creation of new affordable
housing.  This new proposal will fix that and allow more of our hard
working, middle-income families an opportunity to continue to live and work in
our great city," the mayor's memo concluded.