The HPD Housing Connect Lottery for Cadman Towers HDFC closed on Monday, September 22, 2025.
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About
Cadman Towers is an HDFC co-op providing middle-income New Yorkers and their families with quality, affordable homeownership in one of New York City’s most desirable neighborhoods.
Part of the Mitchell-Lama program since 1973, Cadman Towers successfully transitioned to an HDFC co-op in 2024 to maintain its mission to provide quality, affordable housing for decades to come.
Affordability
The Cadman Towers HDFC plan is the first of its kind: a regulated HDFC co-op structured to ensure long-term affordability and sustainability for middle-income New Yorkers.
Sustainability
In aging affordable housing, sustainability means more than energy efficiency — it means having the financial tools to maintain the property and protect residents’ quality of life. The Mitchell-Lama program, established in 1955, does not include a mechanism for funding large-scale repair projects, such as replacements for aging boilers, windows, roofs, and cracked sidewalks. Buildings of all kinds age in dog years; the older they become, the more rapidly they decline. As responsible co-ops try to keep up with expensive repairs, they are forced to stack loans on top of loans, threatening long-term affordability and pushing their debt-to-income ratios beyond what even the City will finance. Back-to-back, double-digit increases are now a regular occurrence at Mitchell-Lama properties throughout the City as the burden of mounting debt is passed on to residents. This cycle not only strains household budgets but also leads to a decline in the standard of living.
At Cadman Towers, we worked closely with our supervisory agency, HPD, to break this pattern—combining the strongest aspects of the Mitchell-Lama and HDFC programs into a first-of-its-kind conversion, known as Article 2 to Article 11. The Cadman Towers HDFC plan includes a mechanism for funding expensive repairs without impacting existing residents, many of whom are retired city workers on fixed budgets. The result is a sustainable model that preserves affordability, protects our physical infrastructure, and ensures a safe, dignified quality of life for all residents. This pioneering approach has been recognized by housing advocates and City officials as a possible blueprint for other Mitchell-Lama co-ops seeking long-term stability.