Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander says if elected mayor he would search to make use of the municipal authorities’s pension funds to assist metropolis employees turn out to be owners — a proposal geared toward dampening a number of the results of the town’s deepening housing disaster.
The pension funds, which management almost $280 billion in public cash, would solely supply the homebuyer help to employees who’ve served within the municipal authorities for a minimum of 5 years, in accordance with Lander’s proposal. There are roughly 200,000 municipal workers in that class for the time being, together with all the pieces from cops and sanitation employees to lecturers and EMTs.
As comptroller, Lander helps oversee the town’s pension system, and he mentioned his workforce has calculated an preliminary funding of about $400 million — 0.1% of the entire amount of cash on the pension funds’ disposal — would assist purchase some 1,000 properties for metropolis employees. His plan doesn’t specify how a lot pension fund money he wish to see poured into the proposed home-owner funding in whole.
Lander, who’s amongst a sprawling subject of candidates operating in opposition to Mayor Adams in June’s Democratic mayoral major, wouldn’t have the ability to pull off such a pension funding transfer on his personal.
Fairly, he would, if elected mayor, should persuade a majority of trustees on whichever pension fund he needs to make the funding to assist the transfer. Lander’s workforce mentioned he would in the end prefer to see all the metropolis’s 5 pension funds put money into properties for employees.
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The trustees of the most important municipal pension fund, the New York Metropolis Staff’ Retirement System, embody all the metropolis’s 5 borough presidents, the comptroller, the general public advocate, the mayor and a few high municipal union leaders, like the pinnacle of DC 37.
Lander recommended it wouldn’t be onerous to get trustees on board, arguing the advantages of his proposal could be twofold.
For starters, the pension funds would personal half of all of the properties they assist purchase, which means they’d additionally get 50% of any improve in worth generated as soon as employees promote their properties, amounting to a return on funding, Lander mentioned.
Moreover, Lander reasoned the five-year employment requirement for eligibility is an incentive for metropolis employees to remain in public service, a boon at a time that vacancies within the municipal ranks stay excessive as in contrast with prepandemic ranges.
“Our government employees keep New York City running — they teach our kids, clean our streets, and keep our neighborhoods safe. They deserve to know that New York City has their back, and New Yorkers deserve to see the high-quality services we all rely on,” Lander mentioned.
Town pension funds are supposed to speculate cash so it grows over time and covers the month-to-month pension funds almost all metropolis authorities workers are entitled to upon retirement.
However John Murphy, a longtime public pension plan marketing consultant who served as the chief director of the New York Metropolis Staff’ Retirement System for 15 years, mentioned Lander’s proposal might show administratively difficult.
For the pension funds to co-own 1000’s of particular person residences would require a “very slick management operation,” given all of the issues that individuals already face in buying a house, Murphy famous.
Nonetheless, Murphy referred to as it an “incredibly interesting” concept that’s possible to supply a dependable fee of return, on condition that actual property within the metropolis is taken into account a secure funding that just about all the time grows in worth. He additionally famous the town’s pension funds already maintain main investments in actual property, together with mortgage-based bonds.
A spokesman for Adams’ reelection marketing campaign didn’t return a request for touch upon Lander’s proposal.
The proposal comes as housing affordability and availability stays a extreme drawback in New York.
In response to public information, the median value to purchase a house within the metropolis is $785,000, a 15% bounce from prepandemic ranges.
Meantime, rents are at an all-time whereas the variety of accessible residences within the metropolis are at almost all-time lows, a mix that has additionally resulted within the metropolis’s homeless shelter inhabitants being on the highest degree in historical past.
Housing is amongst a handful of points anticipated to be entrance and middle on this 12 months’s mayoral race. The Democratic mayoral major is ready for June 24.
Initially Revealed: January 30, 2025 at 4:01 PM EST
