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This bill is currently introduced in the New York State Senate as S5674 establishes the New York Social Housing Authority which can sell bonds and accumulate capital for acquiring and operating public housing.
It is notable that that the Faircloth Amendment adopted by the Unites State Congress in 1998, in recognition of the poor track record of publicly owned rental housing, banned the expansion of Housing Authorities created under Housing & Urban Development regulations. The Social Housing Act attempts to circumvent this prohibition but it won’t however, immunize the proposed State Housing Authority from the ills that have made public housing in the United States a disaster.
In particular, building owners should be concerned particularly about Section 9, which sets forth the right of this Authority to a right-of-first-refusal for any distressed property anywhere in the state on any building containing 3 or more units which is in mortgage foreclosure or in rem tax seizure proceedings.
The terms of this right-of-first-refusal are onerous, and grant the Authority extended timeframes in which to act and which further terms make these offers-you-cant-refuse.
Upon acquisition the apartments become rent controlled or governed by leases on the same terms as rent controlled apartments, limiting rent to 25% of an occupants’ gross income, which rent cannot be raised more than 2% in the one or two year lease durations.
Given the overwhelming disastrous track record of publicly operated housing, I don’t know who would aspire to live in public housing.