ACORN Protesters Storm The Beacon Tower
The anti-gentrification movement stepped it up a notch yesterday with ACORN protesters storming the open house at the Beacon Tower, Shaya Boymelgreen’s 23-story condo development at 85 Adams in Dumbo. What a shame! What a pity! We can’t live in New York City, the 50-odd protesters chanted while blanketing the sales office with flyers that…
The anti-gentrification movement stepped it up a notch yesterday with ACORN protesters storming the open house at the Beacon Tower, Shaya Boymelgreen’s 23-story condo development at 85 Adams in Dumbo. What a shame! What a pity! We can’t live in New York City, the 50-odd protesters chanted while blanketing the sales office with flyers that read, Beacon Tower developers get rich off the backs of working families.” The protesters main gripe? That luxury projects like the Beacon still receive tax breaks in a holdover from a program started in the 1970s to stimulated development. The ambushed Corcoran agents manning the open house called in the cops who removed the protesters. Prospective buyers didn’t appear to be too sympathetic to the cause. “Tell them to get jobs and go live in the projects,” said Jenny Malone, who was there checking out apartments. “People just want something for nothing.”
Activists Protest Dumbo Condos [Metro]
More coverage in the print edition.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING ME NECKTIE!
Subsidized housing in high rent neighborhoods is totally unfair to those folks who aren’t lucky enough to win a subsidized housing lottery.
LET THE FREE MARKET RULE.
If you can’t afford Manhattan, move to Queens. Why should tax money be wasted so lottery winners can live cheaply in Chelsea?
hey, anon 9:58 guy, i’m not at all defending anyone here. although i do think a large number of people (whether or not a majority i can’t say) truly need the low rent they are paying, i generally believe that rent control/stabilization skews the market, makes free-loaders of a lot of people, and jacks up the rent for everyone else (and i live in a rent-stabilized apartment, albeit one that is only a couple of hundred below market value). it’s a reality of the city, deal with it. and for the record, i’m middle class professional earning about 75K a year, so i’m not asking anyone to cry for me. what i was pointing out is that people like you are always saying “worship rich people! they DESERVE everything their little hearts desire!” NO, they DON’T. if they have the means to be able to buy it, then fine, but that’s not that same as deserving it. people deserve basic human rights, dignity, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and a decent place to live. those are things that make for a GOOD society, and are things that we should all be striving to achieve. no one deserves a 3 bedroom condo on the 27th floor with a fulltime doorman and a view of manhattan. but if you can buy it, then fine; it’s yours.
by the way, i would bet that MOST of the benefactors in this city that give money to our fine institutions are doing so for the betterment of arts, culture, and society in general. i would highly doubt they are doing it to be worshipped by the masses. that would just be gauche.
Don’t worry about it, Tyron- there’s enough retardation to go around. Look at the way people went after CrownHeightsProud, who always posts well-thought out, fairminded responses. It’s amazing how bent out of shape people get when you present them with a good argument. Or when you go against their preconceived notions of what they deserve in life (why waste good chocolate on Jenny, by the way? Stick her in cod liver oil).
CHP and newyorker really have the right of it. Look at history- you ignore the lower and middle economic at your peril. Revolutions (including ours) are started by those who are ignored and abused. Want a strong country and ecomomy- accept the fact that we are all in this together, and we all need one another. Lovers of capitalism aside, there is something called the “greater good” that makes it livable.
CHP – as someone else said, I’m not sure why I should supply direct cause and effect when you offer little to back up your opinions. But seeing as you asked nicely here is the best I could do:
1. xfr tax (so not including mortgage recording tax) increase:
FYE July 2005 RE xfr tax revs=$2.2Billion
FYE July 2000 RE xfr taxrevs=$875Million
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E7DA1F3FF937A3575BC0A9639C8B63&sec=&pagewanted=1
2. $2Billion planned for building housing for low- and moderate-income families.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/nyregion/01fiscal.html?ei=5090&en=50da8b1c5ab9d4fb&ex=1296450000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
3. Other ways of using increased tax revenue to build low-income housing:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E1DA1E38F931A15750C0A9649C8B63
Of course rich people contribute to society – who said they didn’t? And of course there are plenty of other workers, in every possible description and income level, that I didn’t list. Come on, that isn’t the point of this discussion, unless your only defense is nit picking.
The point of the protest, and this discussion, is that a developer used a tax abatement program designed to promote development of affordable housing, on a luxury building project in a area of Bklyn that needs no abatement, and is not in the least bit geared for affordable housing. Period.
No one, including ACORN, expects anyone to give them anything as a handout, including an apartment in DUMBO, and if any of the protesters actually expected that, they did themselves a disservice to the cause. To focus on whether someone in that group wanted an apartment in DUMBO when they can’t afford it is to purposefully lose track of the point here. The point here is that Boymelgreen used a loophole in a program designed for one group of New Yorkers, and essentially gave himself a huge tax break at the expense of that group. The renters/owners of his building benefit in that they got another luxury building in a hot, primo neighborhood. Win-win for the better off, nothing for the rest.
To say that this helps the masses because the rich are moving on up and leaving housing for the rest of us is absolutely absurd. Is there some new law that says that when a wealthy person leaves their old luxury digs, lets say on the UES, for hip and happening DUMBO, the old apartment goes to a factory worker? Housing is not passed down the social strata like old clothes.
One may not like the loud bunch at ACORN, they may not look like your type of folks, and I admit, I think their leadership has sold them down the river, and the organization has a large cedibility problem. But the fact remains that they are absolutely in the right to protest the fact that their needs are not being addressed, and that affordable housing in this city is at best an afterthought, not a priority.
Not racist my ass. This whole thread is an exercise in racism–though I acknowledge that poor whites are also being targeted. The posters are first and foremost classists who want to denigrate and exploit working people for their own benefit. Racism is for them simply a guilty pleasure that they sneak in along the way.
1:32pm,
These white boys aren’t racist.
I don’t like em either, but you sound like the biggest retard on the blog.
VDH you are correct re: the transfer taxes , but they only offset the tax break a bit.
I happen to believe that given the pices that new construction is selling for in many areas of Brooklyn the 421a tax exemption is no longer necessary and should be adjusted for wide areas of the boro, just as it was in Manhattan; in he end it will resut in lower sale prices (since the carry charges will be higher) and the margins for developers will be lower. Will also result in higher income taxes for many buyers since AMT will result in difficulty in writing off re taxes.
let them eat sushi says: “As for the wicked Ms. Malone, I can see her now being dragged along the cobblestone street, kicking and screaming, as the angry crowd dips her headfirst into a scalding hot cauldron of Jacques Toures chocolate (with 71% cocoa content). Yummmmmmmmmy”
LOL, that comment made my day!