{"id":360664,"date":"2026-09-30T10:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360664\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T10:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:32:08","slug":"dina-levy-has-a-very-bold-mandate-for-affordable-housing-in-new-york-city-commercial-observer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360664\/","title":{"rendered":"Dina Levy Has a Very Bold Mandate for Affordable Housing in New York City \u2013 Commercial Observer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dina Levy started her career organizing tenants to fight for better living conditions in dilapidated apartments.<\/p>\n

Now she has the power to hold landlords accountable for long-awaited repairs as New York City\u2019s latest commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). A former senior vice president at Homes and Community Renewal, New York state\u2019s affordable housing finance agency, Levy joined the Mamdani administration in January with a mandate to enact the new mayor\u2019s housing agenda, work with the private sector to meet the city\u2019s dire housing needs, and ensure that tenants at all income levels have access to safe and affordable homes. <\/p>\n

SEE ALSO: The Plan: Tribeca\u2019s 50 Hudson Debuts First-of-Its-Kind Glass Brick Facade<\/a><\/p>\n

Levy sat down with Commercial Observer in early September to talk about her first near-year on the job. <\/p>\n

This interview was edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Commercial Observer: What has your workload been like for your first months on the job? <\/p>\n

Dina Levy: It\u2019s been a lot. It\u2019s been very, very busy. Partially, that\u2019s because we\u2019re a new administration with a new mayor. There was a high level of new things happening in the first six months. We\u2019re working on the new housing plan, this new initiative to cut the time it takes to approve affordable housing, and the executive budget. <\/p>\n

That was all happening as I was coming in to really dig in and learn the agency, get to know everybody, and start to figure out what our priorities both internally and externally are. So this has been an unusually busy six months because of all the newness and excitement around the new administration.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to join the Mamdani administration?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been working in housing my whole career. It\u2019s hard for me to think of a time when there was more energy, enthusiasm, excitement and openness to really pushing the bounds to make impacts on affordable housing. This mayor is uniquely focused on affordable housing \u2014 probably, at least in my lifetime, it\u2019s hard to recall an equal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s only 34! What\u2019s it like to work for a young mayor?<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t thought a lot about his age. His ideological commitment to new housing is unparalleled. And his openness to trying new things. <\/p>\n

A lot of what attracted me was that folks who have been around longer can get stuck in the way they view what\u2019s possible and not possible. There\u2019s a lot of new energy coming out of this administration, this mayor and people around the mayor. That\u2019s exciting. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s an openness to trying new things and being innovative. We\u2019re also in a moment where there\u2019s extreme recognition around the country that we\u2019re in a housing crisis \u2014 not just in New York City but everywhere.<\/p>\n

You started your career as a tenant organizer. How have you sought to infuse that perspective in your work now? <\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s extremely helpful to have that tenant organizing experience when you come into government and start to work on housing from the other side. It\u2019s easy to not sympathize if you haven\u2019t had the experience of actually doorknocking and actually being in buildings with tenants suffering from poor conditions and worried about rent increases. <\/p>\n

To have that perspective now that I\u2019m in government from the other side is helpful in keeping that in mind as we make decisions.<\/p>\n

Has that changed your approach?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s changed. I have a recognition of what it feels like when you don\u2019t really know if the government is on our side. I am mindful that our job is to remind people we\u2019re here to serve them, that we should be making decisions to keep them at the forefront of our mind. <\/p>\n

It helps with empathy and thoughtfulness of that decisionmaking. And also communication. Sometimes we speak in those bureaucratic platitudes that average people have trouble following. So, to be speaking clearly and directly for the people we are here to serve is critically important in government.<\/p>\n

You had a top role with the state at Housing and Community Renewal (HCR). How does HPD compare with the state housing agency? <\/p>\n

Even though HCR covers the entire state, it\u2019s frankly much smaller of an agency in terms of its budget and staff. To some extent, it is a lot to recognize the magnitude of the work HPD has to do to keep affordable housing going in New York City. I would say HCR was interesting because you had this diverse market across the state with rural, urban and suburban communities, and manufactured home parks.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re working at the state level the housing challenges can be very different. But there\u2019s something nice about being back in New York City. Even though you don\u2019t have a diversity of housing stock, you have that notion of place-based progress. The needs and bounds of the city are pretty clear, the housing stock is pretty consistent, and it gives you the ability to really focus on what we do to advance affordable housing and protect tenants and do a better job of enforcement.<\/p>\n

The city plans to build 200,000 affordable homes over the next decade and is looking to the private sector to build another 500,000 units. Where are you going to put that volume of new housing without tearing down one-story buildings? <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a number of different strategies. The LIFT [a Mamdani initiative called the Land Inventory Fast Track tracker] identified all public land that the city owns. There are a very large number of public sites that can be converted into affordable housing. Some of that land may be vacant, some may have commercial or other types of industrial uses. But there is a huge opportunity to build on public sites. <\/p>\n

Secondarily, there\u2019s quite a bit of undeveloped privately owned land on which new affordable housing can be built. There is also a fairly large portion of the housing stock that is market-rate housing that can be built through tax-exempt housing programs like 421-a and now 485-x, where a portion of the units can be set aside as affordable in exchange for tax breaks. <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s also what I would describe as innovative opportunities to build on existing public resources like library sites. We\u2019re talking about building affordable housing on a parking lot that\u2019s part of a Mitchell-Lama campus. <\/p>\n

What about the New York Police Department, which has a number of these lots?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We just announced a new project<\/a> in the Lower East Side, a new project going up on a NYPD parking lot at 324 East Fifth Street. All the public agency sites are being looked at for affordable housing. We think we\u2019ll get about 25,000 units just on those public sites.<\/p>\n

How will you pursue modular housing in the city\u2019s affordable housing goals?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve worked with a number of developers on a bunch of modular projects, and we\u2019ve seen some savings that we think are meaningful. But we are still committed to pushing the envelope to get even greater savings. So far we\u2019ve seen roughly about 10 percent to 15 percent in savings. We think we can maybe double that. We are in the process of working with the developer partners who have tried modular and looking at some design changes that we think, combined, might actually get us to that bigger 20 percent or 30 percent of savings, and that\u2019s the goal.<\/p>\n

Is there anything new on the financing side the city will be trying or other strategies?<\/p>\n

One is a change that happened at the federal level involving low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC). The LIHTC program, which has 4 percent bonds and 9 percent bonds, has been a major driver on how affordable housing gets built. <\/p>\n

There was a change at the federal level called the 50 percent test, which became the 25 percent test, which nearly doubled the capacity of the LIHTC program, enabling us to issue tax-exempt bonds to enable the construction of affordable housing. That\u2019s been a huge boon to finance production, not just in New York City, but the whole country.<\/p>\n

Then there are some mixed-income sites, where there is an ability to stretch what we can produce using a cross-subsidy model. Some of the affordable units are supported by the higher market-rate units, and that increases our capacity to produce without having to put in the same level of subsidy. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re also looking at financing small to mid-size new construction. Those are deals too small to benefit from the tax credit program. We\u2019re looking at private financing from banks and community development finance institutions, in addition to our subsidy to do a 50-unit affordable project where the zoning and density is more consistent with the fabric of certain neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019re doing a ton on homeownership. We have a program called Open Door, typically always limited equity co-ops, and we are also creating a new program for conversion of privately owned, non-affordable rental buildings into affordable cooperatives. And we\u2019re increasing our down payment assistance program that will enable individuals to go into the private market and purchase homes.<\/p>\n

Next year, we\u2019re looking to build 300 units through the Open Door program. We\u2019re looking to do 150 units next year through the new conversion program, Our Home, which is converting small rent-stabilized buildings to co-ops. <\/p>\n

And we\u2019re looking to increase down payment assistance from 175 families to 300 families this year, and another 300 next year.<\/p>\n

How will you be reducing the red tape for nonprofit housing operators who work with developers? Are there any kinds of innovations you\u2019d like to see?<\/p>\n

There is a new collaborative effort with us and the Department of Buildings that will be a working group on how to bring down the cost of construction. A lot of that includes getting rid of red tape. So, making sure we don\u2019t have duplicative reviews in order to get permits or approvals; how many agencies you actually have to touch and how to minimize that so that it\u2019s more of a straight line. De-duplicating efforts is a big focus right now.<\/p>\n

The SPEED effort [Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development, another Mamdani initiative] is dedicated to identifying efficiencies in our process workflow. It\u2019s a multi-chapter report on many different ways that we can make government more efficient, more effective, easier to work with, and to move more quickly. <\/p>\n

A big portion of that for this agency will be reforms to the housing lottery system, which has struggled to move at the pace it needs to move at. We have proposed significant reforms over the next six to 18 months to really reform how quickly, once we build a building or finance a new building, how long it takes to get leased up. <\/p>\n

Now that the Rent Guidelines Board<\/a> (RGB) approved a rent freeze<\/a>, some rent-stabilized owners may decide to sell their properties. What role does HPD have in acquiring and managing distressed properties or ensuring they are maintained properly?<\/p>\n

I want to challenge a little bit about the impact of the rent freeze on rent-stabilized building owners. <\/p>\n

Historically, even if there is an RGB rent increase it\u2019s 2 percent or 4 percent. What we\u2019re seeing now causing stress is not about whether or not rents can go up by those small margins, but whether the expense side of the ledger can be brought under control. What we\u2019re seeing is this huge spike in expenses \u2014 primarily, but not exclusively, driven by insurance<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Secondarily, taxes and interest rates are high. So, if you got a mortgage during COVID with a 3 percent rate, that\u2019s resetting and now you\u2019re seeing 8 percent. These are the kinds of stressors pushing the rent-stabilized housing stock. I think a lot of our focus needs to be on how to get the expense side under control. A big one would be insurance, taxes and utility.<\/p>\n

Do you have any role on the expense side?<\/p>\n

One of the initiatives we rolled out is a new $100 million effort to create a city-backed insurance vehicle targeted for affordable and rent-stabilized housing owners that will significantly reduce insurance premiums. The target is 20 to 30 percent reduction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the process of onboarding an operator for the program. The goal is to insure 20,000 units by the end of 2027 and 100,000 units by 2030. Bringing insurance premiums down by 20 to 30 percent would be far more impactful than the most generous rent freeze from RGB.<\/p>\n

What response have you gotten for your city-backed insurance pilot? Why is the city doing this, and when will it be up and running?<\/p>\n

The response has been even better than we hoped. We issued the request for expressions of interest, and we got 22 responses to that. We\u2019re now in the process of reviewing those responses and holding meetings with the respondents. We expect to select one or more entities by the end of the calendar year and potentially have a launch in the first quarter of 2027.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"Dina
\n\t\t\tPhoto:: Emily Assiran\/For Commercial Observer\t\t<\/p>\n

What programs would the agency use to aid struggling owners?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re spending a lot of time on the expense side of that question. There\u2019s a lot of talk about rent freeze or no rent freeze, but I think the important point here is that expenses have shot up significantly across all types of housing. Insurance alone has gone up almost, depending on who we are talking to, 200 percent. So there is no rent increase that\u2019s going to correct for that. \u2029And what we need to do is get expenses under control. <\/p>\n

For that reason, we\u2019ve launched this city-backed insurance initiative. We are working very hard on thinking about ways to reduce tax liability for rent-stabilized buildings, and we are bringing back the J-51 program, which will be extremely meaningful for owners who need to make repairs, particularly in vacant units, in order to get them back online and improve their cash flow.<\/p>\n

In your recent testimony at the City Council, you said J-51 would help vacant units get back online. But some attorneys and industry leaders are having trouble understanding how the current law can be helpful with vacant rent-stabilized units. How will you be able to get these units online?<\/p>\n

One of the keys to using J-51 involves some of the improvements made in the state legislation that reauthorized J-51 this year, including to the cost schedule, which is how we sort of size the reimbursement for expenditures laid out by landlords. Historically, we were paying a percentage of the cost, and now the cost schedule will be 100 percent. \u2029So landlords will be fully reimbursed for what they spend to get their units back online. We\u2019re also updating cost schedules to make sure we\u2019re using reasonable estimates for what these repairs actually cost, and we intend to do very aggressive outreach and marketing to rent-stabilized landlords to make sure they\u2019re taking full advantage of the new law.<\/p>\n

Some officials in City Hall want to see more government-owned social housing throughout the city. Do you have any thoughts about how HPD would take a role in that?<\/p>\n

I think social housing is interesting because it doesn\u2019t have a single definition. When you talk to anybody about this, they have differing definitions. Social housing generally tries to get at the idea that profit is not the driving force, or it could be community control as the driving force. <\/p>\n

A community land trust where you are separating land from housing and making sure the land is retained as affordable is one aspect. Limited-equity co-ops, where tenants are controlling and owning as a cooperative \u2014 their building is a form of social housing. But I also think you can have social housing in which there are partnerships between nonprofits and for-profits in which tenants have active decision-making roles in what\u2019s happening in the building.<\/p>\n

I think New York City is quite famous for its advancement of limited-equity co-ops. Other urban cities have tried to replicate it with not the same success as New York. We\u2019ve had an innovative front seat in what it means to create a very healthy robust market of limited-equity co-ops. I get calls all the time from other cities asking, \u201cHow do you do this, how do you finance this?\u201d It\u2019s not as complicated as folks make it. It does need to be done mindfully because you have tenants running a business and you want it to succeed. <\/p>\n

Moving to a co-op should be a thoughtful decision by the participants, but it\u2019s a very unique-to-New York City model that has been very successful. <\/p>\n

I also think land trusts play a critical role here. There has been a wide proliferation of land trusts in New York City. We have a few dozen of them now. We have to be thoughtful about how many land trusts there should be, where they should be, how they should collaborate, and how we support them. It also has become a very helpful model in terms of creating permanent affordability and taking speculation out of the housing market.<\/p>\n

How will rising interest rates and inflation affect your ability to deliver your affordable housing goals?\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the ways that we create affordable housing is by lowering interest throughout investment in tax credit subsidies and our own true subsidies. Our lending into a project by definition brings down interest. That\u2019s always been true. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been in markets where interest rates were more favorable or less favorable. It\u2019s been the government\u2019s role to do these public-private partnerships to bring down costs on debt, which is what allows us to create so much affordable housing. I hope we\u2019ve seen the crest of rising interest rates, and we do hope to see these things tempering a little but on their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How have you been navigating federal cuts, and how will you fill in those gaps?<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, we rely heavily on the federal government for Section 8. That has been very challenging because the Section 8 budget has not grown to meet the need. That puts us in a difficult position because it is a huge program that will be very hard for the city and state to replicate without the federal government. Section 8 is the No. 1 place where we have felt pain points.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the Continuum of Care, which is supportive operating subsidies paid for by the federal government that has been tied up in lawsuits for 18 months. The federal government is continually trying to retreat from the core of the program and attaches strings to how it can be used. That remains in active litigation, and, while the funds are still flowing, it\u2019s something we\u2019re watching and are concerned about. It\u2019s hard to plan if you don\u2019t know if the program is going to survive. <\/p>\n

The emergency housing voucher program was a special form of Section 8 allocated during COVID. They were supposed to go out to 2030, and they were suddenly cut with an end point this December. So we\u2019ve had to step up and convert folks on the federal subsidy over to a different type of Section 8 subsidy in order to make sure there wasn\u2019t a gap in services. We\u2019ve had a whole division that has had to work diligently to capture something on the order of 8,000 emergency housing voucher recipients to make sure they don\u2019t have any gap in subsidy.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the latest on rental ripoff hearings? What did you learn from the last round of them?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that there will be another round, but there was a full report issued in June. It was very cool to go and be able to hear directly from New Yorkers in each of the different hearings telling their story about what they see as their challenges as renters. <\/p>\n

I actually ran into a number of tenants who it turned out I was the organizer in their building two decades ago. Same building, same leadership in some cases. <\/p>\n

I think it was informative. It helped frame our notion of really chronic bad landlords. I was talking with tenants who I knew were struggling 20 years ago because of their owner\u2019s refusal to maintain their building in compliance with the housing maintenance code. Here we are 20 years later, and now I\u2019m in a very different seat. Same owner, same problems.<\/p>\n

So that really led us to frame out our thinking about Fix the City, an initiative to make sure these chronically negligent landlords are finally forced into compliance or are forced to sell their building. We want to use the enforcement tools in a very thoughtful and layered way to push for a change in behavior. Where we cannot make a landlord comply, especially if it\u2019s been years and years, or decades, we would push really hard for a preservation transaction: a sale of a building to a willing or responsible landlord.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t take property, but there are ways to use enforcement in a strategic and aggressive way when an owner is chronically and consistently negligent. There\u2019s the 7A program, where we can ask a court to appoint a different property manager. There are programs where we can really start going in and fixing the buildings ourselves and charging the landlord for those repairs \u2014 and fees and penalties. And, if the penalties aren\u2019t paid, we can sue the landlord. <\/p>\n

There are lenders who are involved here who have an obligation to make sure, if they are lending on buildings, that owners are maintaining them. So there are negotiations we can have with lenders that can lead to foreclosure, a technical default or a financial default. <\/p>\n

This is a relatively small universe of landlords. We need to be very strategic, and we need to be very aggressive.<\/p>\n

There are also common sense changes with how our code enforcement teams work. One is, we heard a lot about how folks wanting every unit that calls in for a heat complaint inspected. For a while, we had a system where, if we had multiple calls for a building, we would check a couple units but not every unit that called. Now we will be inspecting every unit where someone identifies a heat complaint during the heat season.<\/p>\n

We heard a lot about scheduling follow-up inspections. Going forward, we\u2019re going to adopt a protocol where, if we do not gain access on the first attempt, you can call HPD and schedule an appointment at a date and time when you will be home.<\/p>\n

What do you think of the 100 Gold redevelopment plan<\/a>?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not nearly enough housing or affordable housing in Lower Manhattan, and being able to put 4,000 units of housing, of which 25 percent will be affordable units, in Lower Manhattan is super exciting. So we are happy to move out of the way to make room for that housing<\/p>\n

You recently relocated to the city from New Jersey. How has that process been? Was it difficult to find a new home?<\/p>\n

My husband has been an angel. I was pretty occupied from day one in the job as well as wrapping up my time with the state. He was very kind, doing the heavy lifting to get us out of Jersey City and into Williamsburg, where we now occupy an apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We did it very intentionally. We liked being on the water and in a slightly quieter neighborhood. There\u2019s more going on in Williamsburg than in Jersey City, and in some ways that\u2019s great. More shopping, more choice, more food, more venues to go hear music. It\u2019s not quite as serene as Jersey City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dina Levy started her career organizing tenants to fight for better living conditions in dilapidated apartments. Now she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[134034,42598,72661,9,11,10,82],"class_list":["post-360664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-324-east-fifth-street","tag-dina-levy","tag-j-51","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}