Should City Subsidize Housing for Middle Class?
With this year’s crop of Democratic mayoral candidates pledging to increase subsidies for middle class housing, The New York Observer took a closer look at the phenomenon. It may come as a surprise to those under, say, 35, but subsidized housing for the middle class in New York is not a new development: It may be…
With this year’s crop of Democratic mayoral candidates pledging to increase subsidies for middle class housing, The New York Observer took a closer look at the phenomenon. It may come as a surprise to those under, say, 35, but subsidized housing for the middle class in New York is not a new development:
It may be hard to see it now, but public and subsidized housing in New York was, in its early heyday, a middle-class effort aimed at shoring up declining neighborhoods. Programs like Mitchell-Lama that subsidized new construction through low-cost mortgages to developers were meant to prevent people who could afford the suburbs from fleeing the city. Rising housing costs weren’t the problem—they were the goal.
The article mentions one such development in Brooklyn, the Acacia in Bed Stuy. The building, on the corner of Fulton and Albany, which started renting last year, offered “affordable” units for a range of incomes, starting at $377 for a one-bedroom. The market-rate one-bedrooms started at $1,887 a month. Under Bloomberg, only 11,877 subsidized housing units out of a total of 147,890 created are defined as “middle income,” the story said. Yet the income levels allowed for subsidized housing are creeping ever upward, with little official public discussion. Take, for example, 389 Kent Avenue on the waterfront in Williamsburg, where a one-person household can earn up to $101,675 a year. Perhaps, in the context of Williamsburg’s ever increasing housing prices, this qualifies as needy? Critics of Atlantic Yards, including Council Member Tish James, have pointed out that the units may prove unaffordable to low-income New Yorkers as rising incomes in the area skew the prices and qualifications upward. For our part, we’ve always been puzzled by how rates of “affordable” housing seem so close to market rates. What the article doesn’t explore: Is middle class subsidized housing a giveaway to developers, who stand to make more in rents and sales? What do you think: Should the City subsidize housing for the middle class in Brooklyn? And what counts as middle class in this borough?
Market-Rate Rentals Coming for Bed Stuy’s Acacia [Brownstoner]
Somehow my comment disappeared, but I found out that a battle I cited is still going on.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2009/10/09/southbridge_towers_owners_face_gamechanging_decision.php
Subsidized housing beneficiaries existing the program and cashing in.
The city could never produce enough subsidized housing to meet the need, even at a severe cost to other services. And it no longer has the vacant land and buildings that allowed the massive 1980s housing program.
So building subsidized middle class housing means handing out special privileges. Who gets them? In the past, many units have gone to the politically connected, and I don’t trust the city’s political class to allocate the benefits fairly.
By the way, there have been amusing stories of subsidied middle class co-ops going market rate so the owners could cash in.
There are always a few elderly true believers who talking about passing on the benefits they themselves have received. They are always outvoted.
http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/an_affordable_housing_tale.html
I used to rent apartments in a New Hop II program building – the city put in money to rehab the building (a former furniture warehouse) and the owners had to stabilize the units in return. There were income restrictions (as well as no roommates), but the program allowed for incomes as high as $185,000 though – what was the point?
The very eagerness of developers to use the 421a program indicates the city is losing money and didn’t negotiate the strongest deal possible; they should institute a luxury tax used to develop affordable housing rather than subsidizing the creation of ‘affordable’ units that aren’t actually affordable.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!
how does someone so clueless get to write about this ish?
It won’t happen, but it’s still the right thing.
I just find it funny that folks can call RS/RC a handout, while the mortgage interest deductions provides a similar handout (to the rich of course). If you want to end all handouts, as some suggest here, end them all as it relates to housing.
Most likely they are trying to maximize vacancies so they can sell at the highest price to a developer who will invest a ton of $$$ into renovating the apartments (and jacking up the rent, possibly de-regulating them). If your owner is house-rich and cash poor that’s the best way to get the max return on your investment (it’s also illegal, and known as ‘warehousing’).
But yet it remained. There are lots of handouts in this city across all income brackets. I find it hypocritical when people complain about those that help the poor/middle class disproportinately.