City is Advertising Over 700 Affordable Rental Apartments Across the City

New York City Housing Commissioner Shaun Donovan today announced that a record number of affordable housing lotteries are open and accepting applications. HPD is currently advertising lotteries for rental apartments in eleven affordable housing developments across the city. In total, 457 affordable apartments for a range of family sizes and incomes are being advertised by HPD. The City’s Housing Development Corporation is advertising a further 257 affordable units for a combined City total of 714. The developments include 101 affordable units on the rezoned Greenpoint waterfront, 58 apartments in a green building in Harlem named after former Mayor David Dinkins and his wife Joyce, 31 newly rehabilitated apartments in Melrose, the Bronx, and many others. The units are all part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s 165,000 unit affordable housing plan. At a cost of $7.5 billion, the ten-year plan is the largest municipal affordable housing plan in the nation’s history. Since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002 more than 250 lotteries have been held. 

“This record number of open lotteries shows the progress we are making on realizing the Mayor’s historic commitment to build and preserve enough affordable housing for 500,000 people – more than the population of Atlanta,” said Commissioner Donovan. “I encourage New Yorkers who need affordable housing to regularly check our listings and sign up for our email alerts. Sending in an application could be the first step towards moving into a new affordable home.” 

All of the new and renovated affordable housing funded by the City is sold or rented through an open lottery system to ensure fair and equitable distribution of housing to eligible applicants. New Yorkers interested in applying for the affordable housing can visit HPD’s website at www.nyc.gov/hpd and register to receive emails every time a new lottery is opened.  Interested applicants can also call 311 and ask for the affordable housing hotline. The can also call the hotline directly using the following numbers:

• English, 212-863-5610
• Spanish, 212-863-5620
• Mandarin, 212-863-8924
• Cantonese, 212-863-8925
• Russian, 212-863-8936
• Haitian Creole, 212-863-8939
• Korean, 212-863-8979

When users call the hotline they will hear a recorded message explaining the type of information available in the recordings, giving instructions on how to connect to listings for specific boroughs and how to obtain an application for each lottery development. The hotline is updated every time a new lottery is opened.

HPD works with real estate professionals and community sponsors who market apartments.  When 70 percent of the development is completed, ads are placed in city-wide and locals papers and are sent to community boards and elected official’s offices in the district where the building is located. In order to participate in a lottery, interested applicants have to contact building managers or sponsors directly using the contact information specified in the ads, fill out an application and mail it in. Applicants should carefully read the instructions shown in the ad. There are no brokers' fees and no application fees. On a selected day the developer and HPD staff go to the Post Office to pick up all the envelopes received. Envelopes that are pulled out are registered on a log sheet.

Some preferences have been established in the selection of candidates: there is a 50 percent community preference, a 5 percent preference for municipal employees, a 5 percent preference for mobility impaired and a 2 percent preference for hearing/visually impaired. Incomes and household size eligibility: The housing units available through the lottery are created under several programs, each with different income requirements. Applicants may be eligible for one or several open developments, depending on their income and family size.

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development's (HPD) mission is to promote quality housing and viable neighborhoods for New Yorkers. The department is the nation’s largest municipal housing development agency and is implementing Mayor Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan to build and preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing over ten years. The New Housing Marketplace Plan is the largest municipal affordable housing effort in the nation’s history. As part of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC HPD is working to create homes for almost a million more New Yorkers by 2030 while making housing more affordable and sustainable.  HPD also encourages the preservation of affordable housing through education, outreach, loan programs and enforcement of housing quality standards.

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