Budget Analysis

The financial analysis for the State of the City is based on data and budget documents from federal and city fiscal year and calendar year reporting from 2018 to 2024. Agencies have not reported on actual expenditures for all of these federally funded programs, so in those cases our numbers are based on the revenue and expenditures that the agencies project. For some programs, agencies have published actual expenditures in the past but have not yet done so for recent years due to reporting lags.

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s (HPD) Section 8 Program
Our budget information for HPD’s federal funding for Section 8 is from the New York City Open Data dataset, “Revenue Budget & Financial Plan”. We summed the totals from the “Family Self-Sufficiency Program,” “Lower Income Housing Assistance Program,” “Mainstream Vouchers,” “Section 8 Admin Fees – Moderate SRO,” and “Section 8 Admin Fees – Voucher” lines for each city fiscal year.¹

Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG), Housing Opportunities for People with Aids (HOPWA), the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), and HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME)
Budget figures are collected from the New York City Office of Management and Budget’s submission of an Annual Action Plan to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This document is publicly available for each fiscal year. Programs are all calculated according to the federal fiscal year. Under the “Anticipated Resources” table, each program’s annual numbers are collected from the “Annual Allocation” column.² The NYU Furman Center pulled down each program’s detailed tables and created a data set to analyze uses and amounts. For the CDBG map, the NYU Furman Center used the “Open Market Order (OMO) Charges” dataset from New York City Open Data.³

Continuum of Care (CoC)
The CoC totals are calculated according to the federal fiscal year and taken from annual Award Money Publications from HUD for fiscal years 2018-2023.⁴ The CoC totals in FY24 are from New York City’s Notice of Funding Opportunity awardees.⁵

Project Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) and Sections 811, 202, 236, etc.
Budgets for PBRA and Sections 811, 202, 236, etc. are taken from HUD’s Community Assessment Reporting Tool under their “Rental Assistance” section. These numbers are exclusively for the federal fiscal year 2023.⁶

New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Federal Funding
All NYCHA funding is reported in calendar year amounts. To determine budget amounts for public housing operating funds, we used NYCHA’s Four-Year Financial Plans for the Adopted Budgets from 2018 to 2024. The operating budget’s revenue breakdown includes a line for “Federal Subsidies,” from which we pulled the “Adopted Budget” amounts for the Focus Report’s financing table.⁷

To calculate NYCHA’s public housing capital funding, we used the 2023 and 2024 Capital Plans, drawing from the Current Modified Budget totals for CY 2019-2023 from the “Federal Obligation Deadlines” table.⁸ For CY 2024, we used NYCHA’s Four-Year Financial Plan for the 2025 Adopted Budget, pulling from the grant award amounts under their Capital Fund Program table.⁹

We collected annual unit counts from NYCHA’s Annual Plans and worked with NYCHA Finance on a per-unit cost for vouchers in the PACT program over a designated time period to calculate the PACT budget. We then subtracted this number from the Section 8 budget to align budget amounts across programs.

For NYCHA’s Section 8 funding, we used NYCHA’s Four-Year Financial Plans’ operating revenue table. We added together the lines for “Section 8 Subsidy,” “Section 8 Admin,” and “Section 8 Phased Conversion.”¹⁰

Estimating the Value of New York City’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)

For this report, we provide estimates of the value of New York City’s LIHTC, based on the following calculations:

4% Tax Credits
Approximately $800 million in tax-exempt bonds are issued annually by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) to support affordable housing development in New York City. Projects must meet the “50% test”—at least 50 percent of aggregate basis must be financed with bonds to qualify for 4 percent tax credits (“4% credits”). In practice, New York City projects are structured to finance 53 percent of total costs with bonds to meet the “50% test.” At that ratio, roughly $1.51 billion in total development costs is supported annually.

After excluding ineligible costs (e.g., land, commercial space), approximately 85 percent of total development costs—around $1.28 billion—qualifies as eligible basis. Most New York City projects receive a 30 percent basis boost for being located in federally-designated Difficult Development Areas (DDAs) or Qualified Census Tracts (QCTs), increasing qualified basis to $1.67 billion. At the current statutory 4 percent credit rate, this qualified basis generates $667 million in tax credits over 10 years (4% x $1.67 billion x 10 years). In New York City, credits are typically syndicated at or near par ($1.00), raising up to $667 million in tax credit equity each year.

9% Tax Credits
New York City receives a limited annual allocation of competitive 9 percent credits (“9% credits”) through New York State, administered by HPD. Between 2021 and 2024, HPD awarded an average of $16.6 million in annual credit authority. These credits are claimed over a 10-year period, resulting in $166 million in total tax credits awarded annually across all projects ($16.6 million × 10 years).

Because 9% credits are applied to a project’s qualified basis, we estimate the amount of development supported by first calculating that basis. Assuming all units are income-restricted (i.e., 100 percent applicable fraction), the $16.6 million in annual credit authority implies $184.4 million in qualified basis ($16.6 million ÷ 0.09). Not all development costs are eligible for the credit—land and commercial space are excluded—so we assume that 85 percent of total development costs qualify as eligible basis. At that ratio, the $184.4 million in qualified basis supports roughly $217 million in total development costs ($184.4 million ÷ 0.85).

Many 9% projects also qualify for a 30 percent basis boost by being located in federally designated DDAs or QCTs; in this estimate, we assume that the basis boost is already reflected in the awarded credit amounts. Finally, because credits are typically syndicated at or near par in New York City, the $166 million in total tax credits yields approximately $166 million in investment into affordable housing projects each year.

New Multifamily Development and Income-Restricted Units

To estimate new multifamily development between 2010 and 2024, we use data from the Department of Buildings (DOB) to identify properties with 4 or more units that received their first Certificate of Occupancy (COO) during that period, and we use the COO date to identify the year of completion. To identify property characteristics including property size and location, we match those properties to data from the New York City Department of Finance (DOF), HPD, and the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP). When unit counts are inconsistent or missing across data sources, we first use unit counts from DOF, and then backfill from HPD’s affordable housing production data, followed by DOB.

We use DOF tax exemption data to identify 421-a, 420-c, and Article 11 exemptions, and use data from the New York State Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) and HUD as well as HPD’s Local Law 44 data to identify properties with LIHTC contracts.

To estimate the number of income-restricted units targeted to households earning less than or equal to 80 percent of the area median income and households earring between 81 percent and 165 percent of AMI we use data from HPD’s Housing Connect platform and affordable housing production data, as well as exemption information from DOF, and LIHTC information from HUD and HPD. For more information about our estimation of income-restricted units, see the technical appendix from our paper, The Geography of New Housing Development from the 2021 State of the City report.

Zoning Analysis

To identify upzonings between 2004 and 2021, we take the adopted map amendments effective during that time period and identify rezonings that add an aggregate increase in Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of the lots in the rezoned area of a least 20 percent between the year prior to and after the rezoning or two years prior to and after the rezoning. Our analysis period begins in 2004–the first year with detailed data on FARs. To identify city- and private-initiated upzonings, we use applicant data from the New York City Planning Zoning Application Portal. Applications with a city agency as an applicant are coded as city-initiated and the remaining applications are defined as private-initiated.

2010-2020 Census Geographies

As Opportunity Zones were selected using the 2010 Census Tracts, we collected current census data at smaller geographies that do not cross census tract lines and then aggregated these data into the 2010 Census Tracts. For data that was only available at the tract level, we crosswalked the data using a weighting method developed by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.¹¹

This paper was produced in partnership with HUD via cooperative agreements RP-21-NY004 and H-21742CA.

Read the rest of the report:

I. Executive Summary

II. Federal Programs

III. Opportunity Zones

IV. Policy Implications