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Bidding to alleviate the city’s need for working-class housing, Resorts World Casino New York City and Cirrus Workforce Housing announced plans to build as many as 50,000 units of workforce housing in the coming years.
From 2014 to 2024, just 18 percent of housing investments in New York City were for moderate and middle-income households, according to a 2024 report from the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. That lack of middle-income housing will at least in part be addressed by Resorts World’s multi-million dollar agreement.
Proponents said that the move would help to slow the affordable housing crisis for middle-class workers, and would create jobs for union laborers. Resorts World leadership said the agreement represents the largest initiative for affordable housing since the Mitchell-Lama program began in 1955.
“For the last 30 years, and I’ve watched it and many of us in labor have watched it, the erosion of housing for the middle class,” Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, said at the May 15 announcement at the Hyatt Regency JFK Airport. “We have been pushed out of opportunity.”
Although sites for the developments have not yet been chosen, construction should start by the first quarter of next year, according to Cirrus officials. The plan is to build the units across all five boroughs using union labor for all construction.
“Our mission is to deliver high-quality, responsibly built housing that gives hard working New Yorkers the chance to live in the communities they support every day,” Joseph McDonnell, managing partner at Cirrus, the real estate management firm, said in a press release.
More than 150 union members, including from the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, as well as union leadership and city officials attended the announcement.
“We’re going to show this city and the state how you build workforce housing under a union POA for union workers,” LaBarbera said. “We are gonna show you can build housing with the quality, the skill, and the safety for union workers.”
The partnership is an outgrowth from a memorandum of understanding among Cirrus Workforce Housing, the Building and Construction Trades Council and the city announced in March.
That memorandum outlined a plan to raise upwards of $400 million for the construction of affordable housing in the city. An initial $100 million was fronted from 11 BCTC-affiliated unions’ pension funds. Cirrus Workforce Housing, part of real estate investment firm Cirrus Real Estate Partners, is expected to raise the $400 million total.
The housing would be available for families making 80 to 140 percent of the area median income. For a family of three, this amounts to between $116,640 and $204,120.
Between 2017 and 2022, almost 200,000 households making below $172,000 moved out of the city, in part due to the high cost of housing, according to a Fiscal Policy Institute report released in December.
Resorts World is the single largest employer of Hotel and Gaming Trades Council members in the state and is New York City’s only casino. Resorts World is currently one of several companies vying for one of up to three coveted casino licenses in the downstate area. The New York Gaming Facility Location Board is set to announce the recipients in December.
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citizenswain
"Workforce housing" will be like matchboxes. Sounds great in theory but they will skimp on all of the things that make something livable, like closets and cupboards. How do I know? I've unpacked many a millennial into the new apartment building are they are just that; closet-less matchboxes.
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