BILL NUMBER: S6545

SPONSOR: JACKSON
 
TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the private housing finance law, in
relation to increasing the bonding authority of the New York city hous-
ing development corporation

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

This proposed legislation would amend section 656 of the Private Housing
Finance Law to allow the New York City Housing Development Corporation
("HDC") to increase the maximum aggregate principal amount of its
outstanding notes and bonds from $13.5 billion to $14.5 billion.

 
REASONS FOR SUPPORT:

By the end of April 2019, HDC had approximately $12.3 billion of bonds
sold or outstanding. HDC expects to issue approximately $600 million for
its June issuance. After June, HDC would have less than $600 million of
unused bonding authority. HDC expects to issue approximately $350
million in both tax-exempt and taxable bonds over the next year to
              

preserve and refinance a portion of its Mitchell-Lama portfolios; to
support the Neighborhood Pillars program, a new initiative under the
Housing New York plan to provide financing for nonprofit organizations
to acquire and preserve affordable housing in existing buildings; and
for other preservation projects in the HDC portfolio. In addition, HDC
expects to provide financing for numerous new construction low income
projects as well as multi-year financing for several large-scale mixed-
income developments using both tax-exempt and taxable bonds totaling
approximately $700 million. Furthermore, HDC may use taxable or recycled
bonds totaling approximately $200 million in the next year to replace
the financing for FHA Risk-Sharing loans provided by the Federal Financ-
ing Bank (as such financing authority failed to be extended by the
Federal government). In a little over a decade, since January 1, 2005,
HDC has issued in excess of $20.8 billion in bonds to finance the
construction or preservation of over 158,000 apartments throughout New
York City. These include bonds to finance the preservation of thousands
of Mitchell-Lama apartments as well as Liberty Bonds to finance the
construction or conversion from non-residential use of thousands of
apartments in lower Manhattan.  This record has made HDC one of the
largest issuers of multifamily affordable housing bonds in the nation,
and frequently the top annual issuer.

Under the City's "Housing New York" plan, as of May 1, 2019, HDC has
financed the construction or preservation of more than 59,150 affordable
apartments in less than five years. HDC financed over 76,000 affordable
apartments under the City's prior housing plan, far surpassing its
original goals. HDC financing relating to the City's housing plan is
provided under a variety of new programs: (1) the Extremely Low and
Low-Income Affordable program ("ELLA"), which provides apartments for
low-income people earning 60% of the Area Median Income ("AMI") or less,
including deeply affordable apartments for people earning no more than
30%, 40% and 50% of AMI or apartments for the formerly homeless; (2) the
Mixed-Middle Income program ("M2"), which provides apartments for people
at a mix of income, 11.-K ludin Iffrme people, moderate-income people
earning 80-100% of AMI and middle-income people' earning '1 6116 (A, of
AMI; (3) the "Mix and Match" program, which provides apartments for
low-income and moderate- or middle-income people in the same project;
(4) the "50/30/20" program, which provides apartments for low- and
moderate-income -people in projects where half the project is rented at
the market rate; (5) ,the Mitchell-Lama Reinvestment Program which
anchors the affordability of the remaining Mitchell-Lama apartments; and
(6) the Neighborhood Pillars program. In addition, HDC has launched a
series of other initiatives that use the corporation's bonding authori-
ty, including programs using taxable bonds and recycled tax-exempt
bonds.

This legislation will enable HDC to continue to run programs that devel-
op and maintain affordable housing in New York City and plan for future
financings.