It’s a familiar problem for many New York City apartment-hunters: The places they can actually afford are too small for their families, forcing them to hang partitions in living rooms, lay mattresses on floors, and cram into one-bedrooms and studios.
Now the city’s housing agency is reconfiguring one of its key programs for getting low-income seniors into affordable housing to develop more two-bedroom units, and potentially help address a deep shortage of apartments for low-income families.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development issued a new rule this month that requires developers to include two bedrooms in at least 20% of their new units to qualify for the Senior Affordable Rental Apartments, or SARA, program in certain neighborhoods…