City Council hearing spotlights ‘Community Land Act’ package as route to permanently affordable housing

Council Member Pierina Sanchez, chair of the New York City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings, opened a hearing on social housing and a package of local bills the council and advocates call the Community Land Act. "Simply put, social housing is housing built for the public good, not as a product whose goal is simply to maximize profit," Sanchez said, framing the hearing's purpose to explore how the proposals would create and preserve permanently affordable, community-controlled housing.

The bills discussed include Intro 78 (public land disposition priorities for mission-driven nonprofit developers and community land trusts), Intro 902 (a Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPPA), Intro 570 (a municipal land bank), companion measures to expand statutory recognition and regulatory tools for community land trusts, and council resolutions urging the state to enact a Social Housing Development Authority and a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). Public Advocate Jumaane Williams told the committee that the proposals would help tenants, saying the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase concept "would place these properties in the hands of those who have a vested interest in maintaining residents in their homes."

Council members pressing the legislative case argued public land and…