First Yards Tower To Be Half-Affordable
Amid all the photo ops at yesterday’s groundbreaking ceremony for Atlantic Yards, there was one big piece of news (well, two if you count Governor Paterson’s disclosure that he grew up on Grand Avenue between Gates and Greene!): Mayor Bloomberg announced that he’d gotten Forest City Ratner to commit to making 50% of the units…
Amid all the photo ops at yesterday’s groundbreaking ceremony for Atlantic Yards, there was one big piece of news (well, two if you count Governor Paterson’s disclosure that he grew up on Grand Avenue between Gates and Greene!): Mayor Bloomberg announced that he’d gotten Forest City Ratner to commit to making 50% of the units in the first residential tower—which currently is slated to get underway in the first half of next year—on the site affordable. As the Brooklyn Paper reported earlier this week, Ratner’s also been toying with hiring David Childs in an effort to beef up on name brand architects after tossing Frank Gehry overboard.
Affordable Housing Deal at Atlantic Yards [Crain’s]
After Years of Controversy, Ceremonial Shovels Come Out [NY Times]
Protests at Groundbreaking for B’klyn Arena [NY Post]
Photo from nycmayorsoffice
$130K is still wayyyyy above the norm for those who truly need affordable housing, fsrg. I don’t care how many kids you have. Most of my neighbors in a two income home are pulling in maybe $80K at most. These are people without college degrees, with lower level grunt jobs, perhaps with some job training, like basic computer skills. These are the people who are making too much for housing programs for the poor, but not enough for market rate. These are the people who thought this project was going to have a LOT of apartments for them, especially when they saw the shiny brochures sent around a few years ago.
Grand Army – if it is “rigged” then it is rigged for all 421a affordable housing units since the AMI they are using at AY is THE EXACT SAME ONE they use in all the outer boroughs.
FSRQ, So “the definition of affordable is pretty well laid out” is it? Then may I remind you that FCR’s use of Area Median Income is a perfect example of how they have rigged this from the get-go. FCR is using the NYC area AMI of $70,000 rather than the Brooklyn AMI of $35,000. The rents that would result would in some cases be higher than market rate!
“The Pratt Area Community Council has sponsored several affordable housing projects in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill area over the past several years, East New York, as has the NYC HDC”
Agreed. Otherwise, the housing in the area is market-rate, i.e., not “affordable.” Programs like those sponsored by PACC are quite worthy, but by definition are limited in number and availability. Meanwhile, the majority of people living in the area (as I did for several years) pay market rate.
How do you people live with your own hypocrisy?????
first you say – Ratner will renege on building any affordable units; then you if he builds them, he’ll wait till the end -15yrs from now;
and now that he announces that 1/2 of the 1st building will be affordable – you miserable frownstoners say – well there not affordable anyway.
Is it any wonder that developers and government officials try to avoid any public input? – practically the only input you get is “no no no and give me more”
as for the definition of affordable it is pretty well laid out – I believe that AY will follow the guidelines under 421a which is based on Area median incomes for renters and/or buyers (I think the formula is something like the cost of 30% of take home at 70% of area media incomes) – the long and short of it is it is the same as it ever was – and MM either wants to be misleading when she throws around 130K or is ignorant of the fact that if that is what the cut off ends up being it would only apply to a family with like 3 kids or more and even then that is the uppermost limit.
Yeah like everyone else said – even w/ subsidies up the wazoo, Ratner and the investors aren’t spending years of their lives and a billion dollars building brand new projects to surround their beloved arena. “Affordable” means $250K for a studio instead of $500K.
There is not going to be hundreds or thousands of poor Brown families w/ 3-5 kids earning $30K a year moving into these buildings. No way. The only new jobs made available will be some retail work and concession stand workers at the arena – and I don’t think that’s 40hrs a wk year round work.
So all these community groups who think AY is some heaven-sent gift to the poor and working class are just opening the floodgates to thousands of brand new neighbors, all of whom make a shitload more money than you. So, well done.
The Pratt Area Community Council has sponsored several affordable housing projects in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill area over the past several years, East New York, as has the NYC HDC, including the Atlantic Terrace Apartments on Atlantic Ave between South Oxford and South Portland Avenues, directly across from the railyards. All have received ample coverage on this site.
Look, none of us knows what “affordable” means right now and we won’t know until FCR makes their pricing structure and income guidelines public. Meanwhile, they get to enjoy the PR impact of announcing affordable housing.
What we do know from details of the original AY plan isn’t encouraging. Call it the tarnished side of the spin machine. Back in 2006, FCR held a public forum on the subject of affordable housing at AY. About 2,000 people showed up according to the NYT. No less than Bertha Lewis of Acorn was there to extoll the plan but even she admitted this was affordable housing for the middle-class: 20% of the total # of units, for example, would’ve been reserved for those earning $63-100k pa. Indeed a family of 4 earning below $21,000 pa would not be eligible at all since the plan established minimum income levels, as well as maximum levels. This revelation immediately excluded many in the audience. People were furious and lots of them walked out. But FCR learned an important lesson and never attempted that level of transparency again!
From this blog’s coverage of that affordable project in East New York, I have learned that “affordable” 2-bedrooms go for $350K (in East NY), and that you can tell they’re affordable because the appliances are not stainless.