Wednesday, January 9, 2019
New York, NY – Affordable housing and economic development projects receiving city subsidies would be required to pay workers a prevailing wage and provide training in the classroom and on the job through apprenticeship coupled with transparency, under legislation introduced by Council Member Ben Kallos.
Construction-related injuries and deaths continued to rise for the fifth straight year to 744 injuries and 16 deaths in fiscal year 2018, approximately triple the 212 injuries and 6 deaths in fiscal year 2014 according to the Mayor’s Management Report, as reported by City and State. Over the past fiscal year, when incidents further increased by 20%, Local Law 78 of 2017 authored by Council Member Ben Kallos was implemented forcing developers to report of construction-related injuries and fatalities with new minimum fines of $2,500 for failure to report. The Local Law 78 reports have been available on a monthly basis since June 2018 from the DOB.
In 2018, a construction worker earning the minimum wage of $11.10 an hour, working full time for 35 hours a week for 52 weeks, could only bring home $20,202 a year. This year’s increase to $15 an hour in New York City would increase this to $27,300 a year. Construction workers earning the minimum wage while building affordable housing would need access to units set at 30% of Area Median Income (AMI) deemed as extremely Low-Income, the lowest band possible. While construction workers on many affordable projects earn the minimum wage, many affordable housing projects do not even offer affordable housing at such extremely low-income, only making the crisis worse.