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August 28, 2006

Partnership Great News for Affordable Housing

house
Finally! A large provider of lower-income housing has teamed up with a high-end architect to create a batch of 117 townhouses along Jamaica Bay that will embrace design and bring a dose of urban planning reality to an end of the market that has suffered at the hands of cheap developers and small thinkers for too long. Alexander Gorlin, a SoHo architect responsible for both Daniel Libeskind’s TriBeCa apartment and the Congregation Orach Chaim synagogue on the UES, is planning a series of modular, colorful homes that will range in size from 1,600 square feet to 3,200 square feet and in price from $180,000 to $450,000.

In addition to dispensing with the inexpensive equals low-quality, the project challenges some of the traditional underpinnings of affordable home building in the City over the past couple of decades. Recognizing what a disaster it has been putting driveways in front of townhouses (as Nehemiah and countless mom-and-pop developers have done to the great detriment of the urban fabric), Gorlin is placing them in the rear. "It’s better to have the front door open directly to the street," he said. "The sidewalk, not the driveway, becomes a place to meet and talk." Even if the end product is not to everyone's taste (what design is?), the attitude alone is a huge step forward for Brooklyn--and the city as whole.
Affordable Houses Infused with Color [NY Times]




Posted by Brownstoner at 9:58 AM | Comments (17)
Categories: Development

Comments

They got 12,000 applications for these houses, and they had to whittle it down to 3,200 with a lottery. Goes to show the tremendous need for low and middle income housing in this city. I'm glad an architect and developer finally realized the need for decent, and dare I say, imaginative, design elements for this market. If you want people to be proud of where they live, design something to be proud of, plain and simple. The Nehemiah project has been one of the few organizations/developers to meet an urgent need, and has revitalized huge swaths of Brooklyn and the Bronx when no one would touch them.

Too bad all of this new housing is out in the butt end of nowhere, making a car almost a necessity, or requiring a long bus ride to the subway for an hour's ride, at least once on the train. As the city expands outwards to its limits, a good city planning bureau should be making plans to expand subway lines and add new bus routes, but I know that's too much to ask. These are the workers who are the life's blood of this city, they've been priced out into the boonies, the least the city could do is help them get to work without spending half their salaries on gas. If they had a plan today, it would take 15 years to implement, and no one's even thinking about it, so I won't hold out much hope of seeing new services for this area until I'm a senior citizen.

Posted by: Crown Heights Proud at August 28, 2006 11:31 AM

Try for once to be happy about something instead of highlighting the negative. Plenty of people live far from the "center" of things and manage just fine. No need for such doom and gloom.

Posted by: Anonymous at August 28, 2006 12:46 PM

I am happy they are being built. Nothing negaive about that. See my first paragraph.

That doesn't mean I have to think there isn't room for improvement, and I reserve the right to say so. We all pay plenty of taxes, so I don't thing that working class folks have to stand hat in hand, tugging at their forlocks, thanking the city for providing services, or do without because no one in power thought of it.

Of course not everyone can be in the center of things, but that doesn't mean that is the way it should be. We are fast becoming a city with its middle and lower middle classes being forced further and further out of the city. I don't happen to think that is healthy for our city, or fair to the inhabitants. If that makes me negative, so be it.

Posted by: Crown Heights Proud at August 28, 2006 1:16 PM

I didn't realize reality checks constitute doom and gloom. CHP is perfectly right in her assessment of the housing situation. I think her point was the Nehemiah is to be commended, and wish there were more developers like that. Why pick on her for that?

Posted by: Anonymous at August 28, 2006 2:59 PM

Interesting. We thought this topic would generate much more discussion. Goes to show you never can tell...

Posted by: brownstoner at August 28, 2006 3:21 PM

this is great news, i wish these guys had started further in and used up all the lots bought by the supercheap new construction houses. then at least we'd have better designed houses to look at, plus it would mix up the socioeconomic levels more. CHP is right, it's a great project, but it looks more and more like the richest folk have the easiest commute around here.

Posted by: Jimmy Legs at August 28, 2006 3:49 PM


Looks pretty cool for Unfair Housing.

I wish I won the housing lottery and you taxpayers subsidized a nice new 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom townhouse for me!

Public Housing is a complete and utter failure. If you can't afford NYC, move to Newark!

Posted by: Anonymous at August 28, 2006 5:45 PM

affordable housing developers are able to build where there is vacant land--which, today, usually means outer borough. a decade ago it might also have meant harlem, but not so much anymore.

also, this is not public housing. it is subsidized; there's a difference.

Posted by: Anonymous at August 28, 2006 5:57 PM

Anon 5:45 at no time in the article or anywhere else did anyone say that people had won a lottery and got free housing, nor did it say it was public housing, ie the projects. Subsidized housing, as 5:57 points out, is a different animal. Sometimes hard working people need a helping hand to get a start, not your fist pounding them further into the ground. Why do people who believe as you do always automatically believe someone is getting something for nothing, or that if they can't make it, screw 'em, "move to Newark"? I hope you are never

Posted by: Crown Heights Proud at August 28, 2006 6:44 PM

Sorry! Computer had a regurgitation problem. Didn't even get to finish my thought, which is probably just as well.

My apologies.

Posted by: Crown Heights Proud at August 28, 2006 11:55 PM

Actually I think she has hiccups :-)

But doesn't this prove that you can do affordable housing that is interesting and upscale looking? Of course, first you have to care, and many developers don't.

As fa as moving to Newark, why would we want to send so much of our tax base to New Jersey? In case some of you don't get it, there are hundreds of working class people who can't afford to find decent housing no matter how hard they work, or how many jobs. They pay taxes and are an enormous part of the economic engine that runs NY. And works in NY. And eats, and spends its money in NY.

Like it or not, long time residents are invested in this city, and it is their home. They have every right to be able to live here- it shouldn't be a matter of how much you can pay. If you object to the way poor people live, maybe you should try improving the condition under which they are forced to live. The failure of subsidized housing is not the tenant, its the failure of the Dept. of Housing to make sure they get what they pay for.

Posted by: Anonymous at August 29, 2006 12:37 AM

sorry- the above post is mine. for some reason it didn't register my name. Weird.

Posted by: jennyanne at August 29, 2006 12:39 AM

The lack of housing for families making a decent income, who may not be rich or have assets from the pre-real estate boom and dot.com era, is a serious problem.

I am all for free-market and capitalism, but its gotten to the point where prices in even far-flung or less desirable nabes don't make economic sense. All that’s left is expensive housing hastily made of plywood and brick siding for families who make a decent income, but not low enough to be considered poor or high enough to pay for housing north of a million dollars.

IMHO, the lack of options for the middle-class is going to the biggest driving factor of the impending real estate downturn.

Posted by: QKorBK at August 29, 2006 7:55 AM


QkorBK,

That's not true. There are many places in the country like Atlanta, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, the list goes on and on, where housing is still cheap.

Why you lucky LOTTERY winners get tax payer subsidized housing? It's not fair unless it's available to EVERYONE, which simply is not possible.

CAPITALISM is the only fair solution. Move somewhere else, if you can't afford NYC. If you can't afford to move, you sure as hell can't afford a TAX PAYER subsidized $400,000 house!

Posted by: Anonymous at August 29, 2006 3:17 PM

I'M ALL FOR THE AFFORDABLE HOUSES BUT; IT'S NOT AFFORDABLE IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO APPLY. I HAVE YET TO SEE ANY INFORMATION FOR AN APPLICATION. I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW TO APPLY.

Posted by: TTA at August 29, 2006 6:13 PM

TTA, the HPD site has info for getting in touch with Nehemiah, as well as some other housing groups:

http://home2.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/buyers/nehemiah.shtml

unfortunately, there's not much cooking on the site now but you may be able to get an application in for the new homes now.

++++

it seems like a lot of people think it's actually possible to have a functioning city with only wealthy people in it. this doesn't work.

Posted by: Jimmy Legs at August 30, 2006 8:58 AM

$180,000 to $450,000 is now affordable?
It must be the new black . God,how I wish Brooklyn had never been "discovered". Here's hoping all the newcomers, 1965 to present, most of whom had no idea Brooklyn even existed before they left Appalachia and such, discover someplace new and leave the natives in peace. 1965 because it was the first year after the opening of the Verrazano Bridge and the beginning of a devastating exodus from the beloved borough by those who should have stayed. I lived on First Place in the then newly named Carroll Gardens, it was just a part of Red Hook before 1962, and the huge moving vans were everywhere, day after day and week after week for a couple of years. The only beneficiaries were the real estate brokers and the old landlords all of whom would have sold their souls and their own mothers for few bucks. Their successors are no better. Yes.I am bitter and angry but why should the gentry care ? They've got the money and the real estate and have even driven the rents out of reach. Maybe God forgive them but I never will.And I'm not alone in that.


Posted by: patrick demaio at August 31, 2006 3:44 PM

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