Wall Street Meltdown: Affordable Housing Edition

The next casualty of the Wall Street Meltdown may be the Bloomberg Administration's plan to build 165,000 units of affordable housing. This is because, per the Daily News, "a $240 million fund that was a key element of the mayor's housing plan relies on some of the country's most troubled banks and securities firms." What financial institutions might those be? Oh, Washington Mutual, Wachovia and Fannie Mae. The News writes that relying on such solid pillars of finance for affordable housing is "strongly suggesting it may become a casualty of the still-evolving credit meltdown." Uh, yeah. (Also, how many ways can one say "screwed" and/or "fucked"?) The city has an estimated shortage of 100,000 to 300,000 units of affordable housing, according to the Pratt Center for Community Development. Director Brad Lander (who's a City Council candidate) says: "You don't have to worry, 'Is there a market for my project?' The worry is, 'Is there financing for my project?'" This is probably not news to the renters out there, but Pratt estimates that about 25% of the city's renters pay more than half their monthly income in rent. The city says its fund is safe. It's unclear it's the same official who deemed the Titanic unsinkable. Couldn't be. We think he's dead.
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