Governor Andrew Cuomo, perpetual antagonist of Mayor Bill de Blasio and, by extension, the residents of New York City, is trying to undercut the mayor yet again, this time by taking a big chunk of the as much as $900 million a year the state usually gives the city in federal bonds for below-market-rate housing developments. The New York Times reports that, according to developers, bankers, and de Blasio administration officials who met with Cuomo aides, the state's vindictive, grandstanding leader plans to use the funds for his own $20-billion housing plan, which would jeopardize dozens of projects that are ready to go this year.

For some background, the current way federal housing bonds are allocated has been in place for decades, and according to the Times, has factored into nearly half of the 40,000 below-market apartments built or preserved in the last two years. Cuomo's office confirmed that it wants to horn in on the funding for its own use, but said the alarm is overblown and the plan, to be laid out in more detail in April, is not set.

"There is no state housing plan that has been discussed with either the Assembly or the Senate, so this is pure groundless speculation," Cuomo told the paper.

De Blasio's own housing plan [pdf] calls for building 80,000 below-market units in the next decade, and keeping another 120,000 from lapsing out of affordable programs. The plan has come under fire for setting aside apartments at income thresholds far above what the city's poorest people make—it calls for building just 6,400 apartments for households making less than $25,000 a year—as well as for failing to require contractors to pay prevailing wages. However, the bonds are often the basis for further city and federal financing on mixed-income projects, and Cuomo's diversion of them could jeopardize even that housing.

The ominous maneuvering comes after the January collapse of another feature de Blasio was counting on to help drive his neoliberal housing push, the 421-a tax incentive program, which expired after Cuomo demanded that the real estate industry agree to a union-level wage requirement and developers and unions couldn't reach a deal.

The latest dick move also follows a November down-low-too-slow scenario where the city made a routine request for $300 million in already-budgeted bond financing for the year's remaining below-market housing projects, only to be told there was just $90 million available. Subsequent data would show that the state ended the year with more unused borrowing authority than usual, indicating that the governor just didn't want to give over the money this time.

And in his latest budget, Cuomo proposes to micromanage the city's use of the bonds by requiring that his appointee at the Empire State Development Corporation sign off on bonds going to the city, and requiring that the Public Authorities Control Board, an opaque body controlled by Cuomo and the Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader, approve every affordable housing development proposed in the city using the bonds.

That proposal did not sit well with the governor's usually back-slappy cronies in real estate. Real Estate Board of New York president John Banks III said, "The proposed increased oversight could mean uncertainty for builders and lenders and thus negatively affect the creation of new affordable, below-market rental housing that New York City so desperately needs."

Indeed, the Times notes that a 160-unit development for seniors on Staten Island has already been delayed in part, and Crain's New York Business writes that the city had to put off the construction of 1,200 below-market apartments altogether because of last year's withheld bond allocation. Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen deals with housing at the city level and has clashed with the state repeatedly over the missing money.

"For us to be in a situation where there’s going to be uncertainty around what we can produce at a time when we’re at the biggest affordable housing crisis in the history of New York, to me there’s no way to square that," she told the Times.

For a refresher, here are some other things Cuomo has threatened lately: