New York, NY – January 16, 2025 – Last year, leaders in Albany recognized the state’s affordability crisis and took meaningful steps to encourage more housing supply. At that time, we at Enterprise Community Partners stressed that leaders must not consider the work finished after one session, and instead needed to follow through with additional action. As details emerge from this week’s State of the State address, we are pleased to see several proposals to further encourage supply, reduce poverty, and combat inequities in housing policy. We also reiterate that the work is not finished, particularly regarding homelessness.
While New York State has seen historic affordable housing production as part of the Five-Year Plan, clearly more needs to be done and much more quickly. Affordable and supportive housing production will be bolstered by announced measures to double the State Low-Income Housing Credit, increase funding for supportive housing programs, and streamline environmental review rules which are misused to block needed projects.
We applaud efforts to make homeownership more affordable and accessible, including tax incentives to support efforts by nonprofits, land banks and community land trusts, as well as downpayment assistance. Additionally, we are long overdue in meaningfully tackling appraisal bias, a persistent fair housing issue that we are heartened to see prominently discussed in the Governor’s plan.
The cost of property and liability insurance continues to threaten the viability of affordable housing projects and eat up support for the future pipeline. Market-based solutions available to some owners such as insurance captives offer a possibility of reduced and more stable pricing, but the barriers to entry can be high. Support for nonprofits to be able to meet the requirements will help. In addition, the Department of Financial Services must find ways to ensure that affordable housing operators that take meaningful risk reduction measures are seeing those efforts reflected in lower pricing by their private insurance carriers.
However, in other areas we must be much bolder. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s point-in-time report found that New York State has the highest per-capita homelessness rate in the nation. In 2024, we saw a 53% increase in homelessness from the prior year. We call on the Governor to finally adopt and fund the Housing Access Voucher Program to meaningfully tackle homelessness and housing insecurity. In addition, we need resources to ensure that those who have existing vouchers have the support they need to find and secure housing, and that landlords are incentivized rather than punished for participating in rental assistance programs. We encourage funding for housing navigation and related supports to reverse negative trends regarding voucher utilization and placement timeframes.
Housing remains on the agenda in Albany. We must continue to meet the moment and tackle the crisis on all fronts.
About Enterprise Community Partners
Enterprise is a national nonprofit that exists to make a good home possible for the millions of families without one. We support community development organizations on the ground, aggregate and invest capital for impact, advance housing policy at every level of government, and build and manage communities ourselves. Since 1982, we have invested $72 billion and created 1 million homes across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands – all to make home and community places of pride, power, and belonging. Join us at enterprisecommunity.org | Twitter: @EnterpriseNow