We sat down with Rona Reodica, Assistant Commissioner for the Division of Building and Land Development Services (BLDS) to discuss the revised Design Guidelines for the City’s affordable housing recently released by her team.
Tell me about the work your team does
My amazing team, Building and Land Development Services, known as BLDS, is the largest division within the Office of Development and includes 130 staff who provide architectural, engineering, environmental, cost valuation, and construction support services for HPD-assisted new construction and preservation projects. We’re involved in the project during its entire lifecycle, from pre-development and closing all the way through post-construction.
How do the Design Guidelines fit into that?
Every new construction project, including senior and supportive housing, that receives HPD subsidy, is subject to the Design Guidelines, which sets standards for designing quality, healthy, sustainable, and equitable affordable housing. Our New Construction Design Review team in BLDS uses the criteria outlined in the design guidelines as the basis for our design reviews.
The design guidelines have existed for over 20 years and have gone through various iterations. Last year, we were scheduled to launch the updated version in June, but then the pandemic hit. The silver lining is we had the opportunity to integrate additional design requirements and recommendations that address the equity issues that were exacerbated during the pandemic.
What are the big changes, and how did your team settle on them?
First, we consolidated the Design Guidelines to include new construction, senior housing, and supportive housing to simplify the process for developers. At the same time, we extracted the accessibility sketches to build out an entirely new document, the “HPD Accessibility Guide,” which provides even more guidance on balancing the multiple layers of accessibility regulations, a topic that is also at the forefront of the industry.
We also updated the “Sustainability and Energy Efficiency” section to align with the latest legislation and requirements around energy efficiency. And most significantly, we added a new section on “Equitable and Healthy Buildings” to address the equity issues around health, connectivity, and opportunity that have been brought to light through the pandemic.
Our partners in the affordable housing industry, New York State Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH), Supportive Housing Network of New York (SHNNY), and Citizens Housing Planning Council (CHPC), were critical to making these changes. They know the ins and outs of how to build affordable housing and the challenges that come with that, so their boots-on-the-ground insight was really beneficial to our process. As an agency tasked with crafting good policy, we are far better and more impactful when we engage the community and industry on what we need to do to move in the right direction.
What are you most excited about?
Definitely the broadband piece. According to the Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, 29% of NYC households— and nearly half of those living in poverty—do not have a broadband subscription at home, an access issue preventing many low-income New Yorkers from utilizing online learning, teleworking, and accessing telehealth, and emergency services.
We’re fighting the digital divide by working to incorporate broadband access and service into our affordable housing projects. There’s still a learning curve, but coming out of this pandemic, everybody knows this needs to get done.
Many of the New Yorkers we serve have limited access to opportunity. It is our responsibility as public servants to bridge those gaps wherever we can, and one way to do this is by making sure that we’re doing whatever we can to provide opportunity and address their needs by creating equitable affordable housing.
How does our work relate to what’s going on in the industry at large?
I think the priorities right now are dealing with issues raised by the pandemic. When it comes to health and equity, we must understand that health and housing are interconnected and address the equity issue in future projects. Sustainability is the other big component. In response to climate change and rising sea levels, we’re thinking about how we can build more sustainably to address those issues and reduce the carbon footprint. All of these concerns have to be addressed in a good design.
There are rising challenges and increasing layers of requirements that we have to meet, but I do think, that crisis and constraints breeds creativity and innovation. As the agency tasked with creating and preserving affordable housing, HPD will continue to be forward-thinking and creative to save costs and stretch our resources farther, but in our service to New Yorkers, we will never compromise quality.
