New York City is in a housing crisis, while more than a thousand lots are vacant

Thomson Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City owns more than 1,100 vacant lots and has failed to act quickly enough to develop affordable housing on those properties, the city's comptroller said on Thursday.

An audit from the office of Comptroller Scott Stringer found that 75 percent of the empty lots have remained unused for more than 30 years. The majority of the properties are located in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens.

Housing officials rejected the report, saying it was "false and misleading," and noted that only 670 of the 1,131 vacant lots were suitable for residential development.

The report comes amid concerns that the affordable housing stock has shrunk in an expensive city known for its lack of available land.

"If we want to give every New Yorker a fair and fighting chance to make it in the city, we need to use every tool in our toolbox to create and preserve truly affordable housing," Stringer said.

The audit faulted the city's Housing Preservation and Development department for failing to turn many lots over to developers and for missing its own timelines at lots with planned projects.

But the department emphasized that 400 lots were currently in the development pipeline, with another 270 to be added in the coming years as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's longterm affordable housing plan.

Many vacant lots also suffer from problems that make development harder, such as flooding or a lack of basic infrastructure like roads and sewer lines, which can add to delays, officials said.

"The assertion that HPD allows vacant city-owned properties to languish in the face of the affordable housing crisis is simply wrong," Vicki Been, the department's commissioner, said.

Stringer proposed establishing a "land bank" to own and manage the lots in order to accelerate development of what he estimated would be more than 57,000 new units of affordable housing.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Sandra Maler)