GREENWICH VILLAGE — More than 78 percent of the buildings across the city that are receiving the 421-a tax break don't offer affordable housing, according to a new report out from New York University's Furman Center.
The report was first written up by The Real Deal.
Only 14.8 percent of the buildings currently getting the tax abatement have on-site affordable housing, while an additional 4.4 percent support affordable housing at a different site.
That 4.4 percent is composed of 37 buildings, mostly in The Bronx.
The data comes from the Furman Center's interactive CoreData.nyc mapping project, funded in part by the City Council, which pulls information on the city's subsidized housing from various city, state and federal sources.
An explanation of the data is available on the Furman Center's website, and an interactive map allows users to see specific properties across the city.
According to the data, 4,492 properties in the city receive the 421-a tax abatement. They contain 146,134 market-rate and affordable apartments.
Of the nearly 5,000 properties benefiting from the program, more than 3,500 offer no affordable housing units.
The 421-a tax abatement program was launched in 1971 to give developers a tax break for building new residential properties. In the 1980s, the city began requiring certain buildings in certain areas to create affordable housing in order to qualify for the program.
The tax break can last anywhere from 10 to 25 years.
The program expired in January of this year when Gov. Andrew Cuomo demanded the city's powerful real estate lobby, the Real Estate Board of New York, reach an agreement with the city's construction unions as a condition of renewing it.
Applications for new building permits surged as the program near expiration, and plummeted after it expired.
The two parties announced that they reached a deal in November, but waffled just days later.
► READ MORE: 421-a Deal Reached, Putting Rental Construction Back on Track, Experts Say
Housing advocates say that the latest iteration of the program would double the amount of revenue the city loses from the tax break.
► READ MORE: New 421-a Tax Break for Developers Could Cost City Billions: Study
It's unclear when or if Albany lawmakers will vote on it, and they are holding $2 billion in funding for affordable housing hostage in the meantime.
► READ MORE: 17 Predictions for NYC's Residential Real Estate in 2017
