Union Teams with City to Build Affordable Housing

By CATCHCHA RICHARDS

Armed with a $1 billion strategy the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust on Thursday announced plans to build and preserve affordable housing projects in New York City, creating close to 14,000 union jobs.

Speaking to a small audience at the School of Visual Arts in the Gramercy Park area, and calling New York the “city that accomplishes great things” the labor union mutual fund CEO Stephen Coyle said they partnered with the New York City Housing Authority and financed the future construction of the 20,000 housing units so it can last.” He said “85 percent of the city’s working poor already live in affording housing, and plans to preserve these units so that when the projects float they don’t get kicked out.”

City Comptroller Scott Stringer said The New York City Employees Retirement Systems has invested two percent in the labor union’s mutual fund. He said 46,000 jobs had been created since partnering with them in 2002; he also said AFL-CIO came at time and invested in communities no one wanted to invest in, and “making smart investments is the way to fight back.”

Vinny Alvarez of the New York City Central Labor Council said the labor union mutual fund’s strategy contributes to “combating income inequality, by creating good jobs that lead to careers, and building a coalition to create and preserve affordable housing, all with union workers.”

The fund “will stand side by side with construction union workers,” said Public Advocate Letitia James, adding that the new projects “will help with the homelessness crisis in the city.”

The goal of 20,000 no debt rental units were scheduled to be completed within the next seven years.