Pilot Program Seeks to 'Share NYC'

New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development is announcing ShareNYC, a pilot program to bring more affordable co-living developments to the city.

Developers will be allowed to bid for public financing to bring more co-housing to the city. The program seeks proposals for "private development sites that favor mostly income-restricted units, including those for very low-income renters," The New York Times reports. The program will consider both conventional and market-rate units, which will likely be between 150 to 400 square feet per bedroom, with shared kitchen and living space, and shared or private bathrooms. The submission deadline is March 14, 2019.

Versions of this kind of housing have already sprung up around the city, but restrictions on the maximum number of unrelated roommates (up to three), and constraints on most ground-up construction in this category, sometimes called “single-room occupancy,” or S.R.O., have limited what developers can build. Some of these existing co-living arrangements may be less expensive to rent than larger, conventional units, but still veer toward luxury prices. With this pilot, city officials are hoping to create new models of shared housing that will bring down construction costs and incentivize the creation of more affordable units.

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