Chronic HPD Staff Shortage Could Hamstring Mamdani's Housing Goals

Over the past two years, New York City has introduced more programs to boost affordable housing production. All the while, it has employed just two lawyers who must sign off on a host of plans at critical junctures before they can move forward.

The two-person team in the Department of Housing Preservation and Development's legal office, which must approve all preconstruction plans and temporary certificates of occupancy for housing projects using two key affordability programs, is just one part of a staffing bottleneck that’s delaying housing production, attorneys and developers told Bisnow. 

The staffing shortage at HPD creates delays that cost developers millions of dollars, according to a November report from advocacy group New York Housing Conference.

Nearly 14% of HPD roles were vacant as of May, three times the citywide rate. Meanwhile, the city has more than 47,000 housing units in its predevelopment pipeline, a more than 50% increase from two years ago, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.

“Housing is not getting built, not because developers are not building. It's because they cannot build due to the backlog at HPD,” said YuhTyng Patka, a partner at Adler Stachenfeld. “It’s the fault of HPD’s extremely limited resources that are already stretched extremely thin.”

One of Gov. Zohran Mamdani’s most ambitious goals, proposed on the campaign trail, is the creation of 200,000 new affordable housing units. His administration is currently in budget negotiations with Albany, hoping to fill a $12B budget shortfall.

While Mamdani has also pledged to identify and cut bureaucratic hurdles that slow down housing creation, developers — 62% of whom believe that HPD’s staffing issue is the main reason for project delays — are hoping the budget includes cash to increase HPD’s headcount.

“Time kills,” RAL Cos. Chairman and CEO Spencer Levine said. “Time is the greatest killer of deals.”

The New York City Council has pressed for more funding for new personnel to streamline applications for the 467-m office-to-residential tax abatement, the 485-x mixed-income housing development incentive and property renovation tax abatement J-51. Funding was also set aside to beef up staffing at HPD, the Department of City Planning and the Department of Buildings as part of City of Yes.  

But HPD employees’ volume of work is increasing because of those programs and two others that are often combined with 467-m and 485-x: Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Universal Affordability Preference. And while optional for 467-m and 485-x projects, developers converting offices to housing via the Midtown South rezoning are required to use MIH.

Each program allows developers to increase residential project sizes in different ways. But because both MIH and UAP use HPD funding, they both require sign-off from the two-attorney team before they start construction and for a temporary certificate of occupancy once projects are complete.

A spokesperson for HPD denied that the agency’s headcount has impacted its ability to approve projects using MIH and UAP. 

"We are not experiencing staffing-related delays on this initiative,” an HPD spokesperson told Bisnow in an email, adding that the agency has received 250 project applications that use MIH and UAP. “We are also working to expand the team further and increase efficiency. Our focus remains on keeping affordable housing developments on track."

The department didn't answer questions about its staffing plan or current vacancy level.

Patka said her developer clients have faced delays while waiting for an HPD attorney to be assigned to their case and again waiting for those attorneys to check boxes on the deal so it can move forward. That wait time creates additional pressure from lenders, she said.

“This bottleneck in inclusionary alone is creating delays in projects,” Patka said. “HPD is wonderful to work with … They will do their best to accommodate requests, but there's just too many of the same request coming in.”

The city needs to produce around 52,500 units every year to hit a goal of 500,000 new units by 2034. But it’s falling behind: A total of 66,162 units were delivered in 2024 and 2025 combined.

At the same time, rents in the city have soared. Median rents in Manhattan hit $4,695 in February, up almost 8% from a year prior, according to a Douglas Elliman report. Less than 2% of the city's apartments are vacant.

And amid that dire need for housing, HPD’s dozens of offices, which handle everything from code enforcement and building inspections to housing development, neighborhood planning, taxation and more, have spent years grappling with personnel shortages.

Former Mayor Eric Adams froze hiring across city agencies immediately after the pandemic and cut HPD’s budget in two consecutive years, according to the New York Housing Conference. Even after the hiring freeze was lifted, the city was still operating under a two-out, one-in hiring policy as recently as September, City & State reported.

HPD’s Office of Legal Affairs put out a call to hire a third attorney for its Contracts and Real Estate Division in December.

Daniel Bernstein, an attorney who leads Rosenberg & Estis’ tax incentives and affordable housing department, said he shared the job posting within the industry in the hopes that HPD can hire someone quickly because of the volume of development applications.

“HPD is probably dealing with more applications than usual,” Bernstein said. “They need someone yesterday who can hit the ground running.”

Developers are aware of how detrimental delays can be to projects using UAP or MIH. Marty Burger, whose office-to-residential conversion at 29 W. 35th St. was the first approved under the Midtown South rezoning, is using a 467-m abatement at the project.

The deadline to get the exemptions granted under the most generous version of 467-m is June 30. Burger said the project’s investors signed up for a 35-year tax abatement on the project — not the 30-year period provided if the project misses that window.

“We did everything we should have done well in advance, six, seven months in advance, in order to make sure this happens,” Burger said. “So if it doesn’t happen, it would be really pretty poor.”