By Joseph Vitale

During most of Bill de Blasio’s mayoral campaign last summer, his adoption of a Dickensian ethos helped persuade New Yorkers to support diverting New York’s narrative from a tale of two cities to a model of an affordable and unified city.

His words inspired voters who, despite varying income levels, equally wanted to see a new New York emerge, one with less segregation in neighborhoods and more opportunity across class levels. But close to a year in office, the mayor has learned that constructing a narrative to support the title can be both sluggish and messy.

On Friday, however, the former public advocate of the city made headway in paving a new cityscape when he announced that the construction of affordable housing units in high-rise buildings will be mandatory for any future real estate project requiring a zoning change from the city. This, in most cases, accounts for the development of buildings of at least six-stories on a property that requires a rezoning approval by the city.

The effort to require including affordable units elevates a once-optional Bloomberg-era program, called the Inclusionary Housing Program. The program, established in 2005, was set up originally to encourage real estate developers to include affordable housing units in luxury buildings.

The program, which runs on housing lotteries, allows residents whose incomes are just low enough — but not too high — to move into the luxury buildings. Thousands apply and only a fraction are selected. For developers, the program was an option, not a requirement. If at least 20 percent of units were affordable (as opposed to market rate) in a new construction project, developers could build more square feet than the zoning code would otherwise allow. The program also offered lucrative tax abatements that made opting-in cost effective in the long run.

Standing alongside de Blasio at a press conference last week, Carl Weisbrod, chairman of the City Planning Commission, made the new plan clear to developers looking to cash in on New York City properties. “You can’t build one unit unless you build your share of affordable housing,” he said after providing some, but not all, details of the upcoming program. “You can’t build just market-rate housing, period.”

Making the Inclusionary Housing Program mandatory may symbolize a significant leap in the right direction for de Blasio’s administration, which has pledged to create or preserve 200000 affordable units by 2024.

“I think developers understand that there was an election, and this is what we said we were going to do,” de Blasio said at the recent news conference in Brooklyn. “We’re going to build a lot more affordable housing, and we’re going to ask more of them.”

The ambitious program has been met with expected opposition, but, in reality, the mandates are an opportunity for de Blasio to capitalize on a number of setbacks the program has faced since its inception.

The first is the lack of development of affordable units in most of the areas designated in the program. Of the more than two dozen designated zones, 96 percent of the affordable units were in Manhattan’s West Side and a pair of Brooklyn neighborhoods, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Other neighborhoods designated for the program — which have seen rapid development in the past decade — includes Woodside, Flatbush, Astoria, Tribeca and Dutch Kills. Unfortunately, developers have made little headway in the areas, but mandating affordable units would allow for greater progress.

One of the primary reasons for slow progress is that many mid-size developers are opting out of the inclusionary program. Many have found the program to be time-consuming and not cost effective for smaller programs, as compared to the construction of luxury rentals in rapidly gentrified areas of the city. Since benefits are less intriguing, developers have passed over many neighborhoods for wealthy ones.

Mandating mid-size developers to include affordable units — and revising the program to make it simpler for them to do so — can be a step in the right direction and increase the number of units over the next 10 years.

According to an internal review of the program, only 2,769 units were installed in just under 10 years. De Blasio can take a number of additional leaps in achieving a more unified city by mandating inclusionary housing units. Not only can he add more units at a faster rate, he can take a number of steps to make the Inclusionary Housing Program more true to its name.

For starters, de Blasio can discourage the construction of “off-site” units that spatially separate affordable units from market-rate units. According to Lander’s report, “the vast majority of developments in Manhattan included affordable housing on the same site as the linked market-rate housing.” If a program overhaul takes place, de Blasio should consider preventing developers from constructing off-site projects.

It can also put an end to the so-called “poor doors” — separate entrances that residents in affordable units use to access separate parts of the building. While some of the fierce opposition it has faced may be  unnecessarily hyperbolized, encouraging developers to construct the units closer together will end some of the stigmas and make the project more inclusive.

Mandating affordable units in new residential developments is not de Blasio’s only plan for chipping away at the target number of 200000 affordable units. It may not even be the most effective in the long run. However, mandating the program can restore the public’s faith in the power of private investment.

More importantly, it can keep the wealthy’s desire to build up from forcing the poor to move out.

Joe Vitale, FCRH ’16, is an English major from Staten Island, New York. He is Managing Editor at The Fordham Ram.