Council bills seek to peel back the curtain on NYC housing lottery

The City Council wants Mayor Bill de Blasio’s lottery numbers.

The body voted Thursday for a pair of bills aimed at the selection process for the city’s subsidized housing units, in which just a random handful of apartment seekers get picked from thousands of qualified participants for a coveted below-market apartment.

One of the proposals will obligate the mayor’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to generate annual reports on any changes or challenges the system experienced in the past year.

The other—more contentiously—will force HPD to divulge each September the race, ethnicity, income and household size of those applicants who hit the housing jackpot.

The agency will also have to reveal how many people applied for low-cost homes, how many people got selected and how many signed leases.

Activists have long argued that the incomes, rental histories and credit scores the city requires of affordable housing applicants limits the ability of poor people, nonwhites and single-parent families to score a subsidized unit. The bill’s main sponsor, Brooklyn Councilman Mark Treyger, said that constituents complain of getting left out of the hopper for “unclear reasons.”

“We will finally know exactly who qualifies for affordable housing, who does not and why,” the politician said. “We’d like to know what is working and what is not working, and to finally answer the question ‘affordable for whom.'”

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics/council-bills-seek-peel-back-curtain-housing-lottery