06 | CONCLUSION & CALLS TO ACTION

Conclusion & Call to Action

The election of the next mayor of New York City comes at a pivotal time for the City.

There was an unchecked affordable housing including stabilizing and improving NYCHA, shortage even before the pandemic and decreasing housing poverty and homelessness, economic recession hit the nation. Record levels and increasing housing affordability, using the of New Yorkers are experiencing homelessness, metrics and outcomes we have laid out and housing instability, and rent burden, and NYCHA using tools in housing construction, preservation is in a crisis of mismanagement, insufficient and homeownership. Building a large number of resources, and eroded resident trust. In addition, affordable housing units is not enough – we need New York City has yet to address decades of to make sure that housing is meeting critical racism, disinvestment, and structural barriers that needs and creating a more just and equitable city. disproportionately placed its Black and Latinx populations and communities in states of poverty, As candidates develop housing platforms, we insecure housing, and homelessness. Finally, the encourage you to connect with United for health and economic effects of COVID-19 have Housing stakeholders and the members of the made housing insecurity even worse with hundreds broader community. Our stakeholders have of thousands of renters and homeowners having decades of experience navigating the city’s most trouble paying rent challenging housing issues, and mortgages. and the community can tell you in their own words We challenge all of the mayoral candidates to We challenge all of the what it will take to improve housing in the city. We look speak up in support of mayoral candidates to forward to connecting with an inclusive and just affordable housing agenda for the City. speak up in support of an inclusive and just you during the campaign, including our mayoral forum, in 2021. The candidates must make connections between housing and affordable housing agenda for the City. To everyone else reading this report, there is more outcomes like health, work to be done. We education, racial encourage all readers to equity, and economic articulate your affordable recovery and take housing narratives, stances on the challenging policy and budgetary concerns, and ideas directly to the various tradeoffs that we have outlined in our report. mayoral campaigns. Do it on social media using the hashtag #U4Housing and we will amplify it. In order to address these challenges, our coalition We also encourage everyone to exercise their agrees that the next mayor will need to invest $4 vote for mayor with a clear understanding of who billion per year in housing and $200 million on will propose the boldest yet most implementable rental assistance at a minimum and we are calling approach to resolving NYC’s housing and on all mayoral candidates to endorse at least this homelessness crisis. And finally, we encourage much spending on housing. We also challenge you to hold the elected mayor to account by candidates to develop your own affordable housing staying abreast of the issues and supporting or policy platform that charts out substantial progress joining housing advocacy at the local level through on the issues in this documents’ guiding principles, the United for Housing campaign.