As city Comptroller Brad Lander calls on New York to bump up its investment in affordable housing for poor and working-class residents, he shouldn’t escape criticism for how little the city’s five pension funds, which he oversees, have contributed to the cause.
Lander is the investment adviser and custodian of the nearly $264 billion in retirement assets for teachers, firefighters and other such public employees. As recently reported, pensions have distributed 1% of their assets to the creation of affordable and worker housing in the two years ago since Lander began shepherding them, according to city records. That’s down from the 1.4% distributed in 2018 and is under the 2% that pensions can put into economically targeted investments.
While running for his seat, Lander promised to “reinvigorate” the investment program in order to put more money toward the creation of affordable housing. And his office says the investments haven’t grown because many are longer-term, fixed-income assets that shed value when mortgage rates jumped starting in 2022.
Lander recently stood with members of the City Council’s progressive caucus to call on the city to put an additional $2 billion through four years toward “permanently affordable housing,” including preserving thousands of rent-stabilized units. These funds, however, would come from municipal borrowing and not the city’s pension funds.
The city’s pension funds have invested only about $4.5 billion in the economically targeted investments program in its over 40 years of existence. And even though “We need more affordable housing!” is a popular rallying cry these days, the comptroller should make sure his own backyard is clean before he criticizes someone else’s.
Days before Lander and the progressive caucus issued their call, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration announced that it is partnering with the Building and Construction Trades Council and Midtown-based Cirrus Real Estate Partners to launch a more than $400 million fund supporting affordable housing in the city. As senior reporter Eddie Small noted, the funding is meant to help build housing that would be affordable to trades council members, who typically work as plumbers, fireproofers or in other areas of construction. This is the mayor’s latest effort to boost housing production in the city and meet his goal, announced in December 2021, of building 500,000 new homes over the next decade.
Calling for more affordable housing is always a good thing. This is a topic that should stay top of mind for city and state officials until the abysmal 1.4% vacancy rate for rentals, the lowest it has been since 1968, is rectified. But there is a big difference between talking and taking action.
If the city’s pension funds are authorized to invest in affordable housing, then they should. And the city comptroller must see to it that they do. Anything else is just words.
The Editors , 2024-03-18 17:51:19
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