New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and the trustees of four of the city's public pension funds announced Thursday a historic 300 million dollar investment with the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, marking the fund's largest-ever allocation and a major escalation of the city's use of pension capital to attack its housing shortage. The commitment is the latest step in the Comptroller's pledge to invest 4 billion dollars over the next four years in housing construction and preservation across New York City, and it makes the four public pension funds collectively the largest investor in the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, deepening a partnership that has now spanned 25 years. "Programs like the HIT have a proven record of generating strong returns, jobs, and homes all at once," Levine said. "This investment is a major step toward expanding our City's crucial housing stock and tackling the rising cost of living." "At a time when many New Yorkers are struggling just to keep a roof over their heads, our strategic partnership with the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust allows our pension funds to make a sound investment while delivering desperately needed housing and good union jobs," the Comptroller said. ## A 25-Year Track Record Behind the Money The four funds participating are the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York, the New York City Employees' Retirement System, the New York City Police Pension Fund and the New York City Fire Pension Fund — boards that include Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pension investment advisor Ahmer Qadeer, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore and union leaders from DC 37, the UFT, the Teamsters and the police and fire unions. Since 2002, New York City's public pension funds have together invested 583 million dollars of capital with the HIT, with one-, three- and five-year returns all keeping pace with or outperforming their benchmarks, according to the Comptroller's office. New Yorkers have additionally benefited as the HIT has created or preserved more than 40,000 housing units across the city. The fund invests in the construction and preservation of homes with a particular focus on workforce and affordable units, all built with 100 percent union construction. ## 10,000 Units in the Pipeline "This additional investment will help the HIT finance more housing projects in New York City, demonstrating that competitive returns can be achieved while improving communities," said Chang Suh, CEO and chief investment officer of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. "This is common sense investing that has worked for decades for the HIT." Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a NYCERS trustee, framed the commitment in scale terms. "New York City's housing crisis demands investments that match the scale and urgency of the problem, and this historic 300 million dollar commitment to the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust does exactly that," he said. "By helping create or preserve approximately 10,000 homes over the next five years, this partnership will strengthen our housing supply while supporting the union workers who build and maintain our city," Hoylman-Sigal said. "I'm grateful to Comptroller Mark Levine and AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust CEO Chang Suh for bringing together labor, housing and responsible investment to deliver the homes New Yorkers desperately need." The program's current project pipeline across the five boroughs is expected to create or preserve approximately 10,000 units in the coming years, with a combined total development cost of 4.1 billion dollars. Several of those projects are expected to get under way later this year. ## A Three-Pronged Housing Strategy The commitment sits inside the Comptroller's broader Housing Investment Initiative, which responsibly invests pension capital to generate strong, risk-adjusted returns while addressing the affordability crisis through three channels: financing the creation of new mixed-income and affordable housing; preserving existing affordable housing before it is lost; and supporting office-to-residential conversions that can add homes at scale. For pension trustees, the structure offers a test of whether mission-driven allocations can hold up against pure market alternatives — a question the 25-year record of benchmark-matching returns is designed to answer. For the city's housing market, where the shortage has pushed rents to generational highs, the 300 million dollars functions as leverage capital inside a 4.1 billion dollar development pipeline that now carries the AFL-CIO HIT's union-construction standard. The first projects financed under the enlarged allocation are expected to break ground later this year, giving the city's largest pension funds a direct, measurable stake in how many of those 10,000 homes actually get built. The announcement also signals continuity across city administrations: the HIT partnership predates the current Comptroller by two decades, but its enlargement under Levine — and its backing by trustees appointed by Mayor Mamdani alongside officials who served under prior administrations — frames pension-driven housing finance as durable policy rather than a one-term experiment. Labor leaders on the boards, from District Council 37's Henry Garrido to the Uniformed Fire Officers Association's representatives, voted alongside the city officials, giving the commitment a constituency on both sides of the ledger: the beneficiaries drawing pensions and the union members drawing wages from the homes it finances.