Posted on July 28, 2015 by Joe Anuta in Crain's Crain's, By Joe Anuta Not even halfway through his first term, New York’s populist mayor is surprising his many skeptics by making headway on his top—and likely toughest—policy goal. Having pledged to build or preserve affordable housing on the unprecedented scale and pace of 200,000 units over 10 years, Bill de Blasio strode to the podium at a Bronx housing project July 13 to announce he’d made a good start. He trumpeted a near-record total of 20,325 affordable units either built or preserved in the fiscal year that had ended two weeks earlier. Even better, that tally included 8,500 new apartments, the highest annual number since records started being kept nearly 40 years ago.
