The Homekey project at 1237 San Antonio Road has been in the works since fall 2023, when city and state leaders touted its importance in addressing the local and regional housing crisis.
I never expected to own a home. I wasn't born into generational wealth. I grew up poor. There was-and is-no big family inheritance coming my way. Not property. Not cash. Not stocks or bonds or whatever financial instrument one might trade or sell or leverage to join the landed class.
"We will continue his legacy," Mamdani said, referring to former Mayor Fiorella La Guardia's establishment of La Marqueta as a marketplace for affordable food in the 1930s.
My friends and I are early 30s professionals living in one of America's most expensive cities and making middle-class incomes. None of us can afford to buy or save for a home here. We all rent, but we're not broke. We save for kids and retirement and illness, but a home isn't in the cards. But recently, we think we might have found an unconventional loophole.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) needs an estimated $78 billion in capital repairs over the next 20 years across its more than 2,500 buildings, according to its 2023 Physical Needs Assessment. The hefty price tag-which increased by more than 70 percent since the previous assessment was conducted five years earlier, in 2017- "reflects deteriorating conditions of NYCHA's infrastructure following decades of federal disinvestment and significant price escalation in the construction sector over the last few years," housing authority officials said. Those costs include needed lead-based paint and asbestos abatement, upgrades to heating and hot water systems, plumbing, building facades and windows, and renovations to individual apartment interiors.
