As his first 100 days approach an end, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is gearing up to expand and create new housing initiatives, including outreach to various communities via community and ethnic media outlets. Last week, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) hosted several Asian media outlets in an exclusive briefing.

As Mamdani’s rent freeze program—- which would freeze the rent of nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments in the city, becomes a more promising reality amidst his appointment of six of the nine members on the Rental Guidelines Board, affordable housing champions are ramping up their fight to take on one of the most challenged cities.

Present at the meeting were local publications such as The Polis Project, the South Asian Times, and other in-language community media like Sing Tao and Khasokas. 

The HPD is focusing its sights on other initiatives for the upcoming year as part of the administration’s “ambitious” housing agenda, said Commissioner Dina Levy.

Though she is just 10 weeks into her appointed role, Levy has several decades worth of experience in the housing sector. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of Homeownership and Community Development at Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), New York State’s affordable housing agency and senior advisor to the New York Attorney General and as Director of Organizing at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB).

Some of HPD’s imminent priorities include finding ways to improve systems such as Housing Connect, a lottery system that places eligible applicants into affordable housing units across the five boroughs. Throughout the program’s existence, criticisms have arisen regarding high income requirements for units based on the developments’ Area Median Income (AMI), and placement process. Additionally, demand for the units is extremely high, and the process is slow. Of the 10,000 units Housing Connect posted on their website in 2024, nearly six million people applied. Levy said the onboarding process for a unit can take over 100 days for tenants.

“We’re not getting folks into vacant units as quickly as we’d like to,” Levy told The Polis Project. “We’re not getting folks out of homeless shelters and into our mandatory set aside for homeless families fast enough, so the question is, systematically, what could we be doing better to make those processes work?” 

In regards to the actual affordability of the units, however, little is set to change.

“It depends how much money, frankly, we’re putting into a project, whether it’s a light touch – just a tax abatement, or a deeper touch. And we’re putting in a million dollar subsidy, in which case we want to see lower income units in exchange for that,” Levy said.

Another item on HPD’s agenda is expanding protection rights for tenants, an initiative they started working on through Rental Ripoff Hearings.

However, as ICE raids ramp up across the country and as close as LaGuardia airport, Levy and  Jenny Weyel, Assistant Commissioner for Neighborhood Development and Stabilization, said HPD is also rolling out videos in different languages to inform tenants of how they can distinguish HPD inspectors wanting to enter their home from ICE agents wanting to enter without a warrant.

“We also have worked with the City Human Rights Commission and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs to create more informational materials that are available in several languages to help tenants, especially immigrant tenants, understand their housing rights,” Weyel said.  “We do have a division that is called the anti-harassment unit. That is a team of lawyers who do proactive litigation where there is suspected harassment of tenants, then that would include harassing tenants because of immigration.”

Lastly, Levy said their priority will be to simply build more units and bring down the cost of construction. A new report for an initiative ordered by Mamdani called Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development (SPEED) is expected to be published in the next few weeks. The program was introduced as part of his housing agenda to address the city’ s historically low vacancy rates by improving the production rate of new, affordable developments.

“We have to figure out a way that, as government, we can help do something to drive down insurance, but also taxes and utilities, that is really going to be critical for preserving the subsidized, affordable housing stock that we regulate,” Levy said. “Owners are struggling. We want to make sure buildings are maintained in really good condition and find new ways to partner with those private owners who may need intervention from the government in a way that they haven’t had to historically,” she added.

HPD leadership also spoke about  their headquarters, 100 Gold Street in the Financial District, being partially developed into affordable housing units.  “Part of the reason we’re allowing some of the housing that’s going to be built here to be market rate is it will pay for HPD’s relocation and our new offices,” Levy said.

While the administration faced criticism over excluding mainstream and community media outlets from the mayor’s first City Hall press conference in favor of influencers, these meetings with community and ethnic media seem to be trying to build a better relationship as Mamdani’s affordability-first agenda starts to take shape.