Hotel Handout, Few Affordable Phase 1 Units at AY
Sarah Ryley over at the Brooklyn Eagle’s been digging through the recently-released Atlantic Yards documents and finding some interesting things. In an article online yesterday, she wrote that the Forest City Ratner would be selling the rights to build a hotel within Miss Brooklyn for $28.8 million. “Basically, it’s eminent domain being used to give…
Sarah Ryley over at the Brooklyn Eagle‘s been digging through the recently-released Atlantic Yards documents and finding some interesting things. In an article online yesterday, she wrote that the Forest City Ratner would be selling the rights to build a hotel within Miss Brooklyn for $28.8 million. “Basically, it’s eminent domain being used to give the land to Ratner for free,” commented Dan Goldstein. “Then he gets to sell it, which again is pure profit to him as opposed to the state and the city. In a separate article, Ryley also notes that less than 10 percent of the first-phase apartments—143 out of 1,580—will be low-income units. Another 216 apartments will be for middle-income earners. “The so-called moderate-income properties are way beyond the incomes of the vast majority of residents in my district, so to call those units affordable is laughable,” said City Council Member Letitia James.
Ratner May Net $30 Million On Sale of Arena Hotel [Brooklyn Eagle]
Few Affordable Apartments for First AY Tower [Brooklyn Eagle]
Sterling Silver, you also wrote:
“So now you are also saying that Black middle class and above families don’t value education, either.
Why do you capitalize “Black”?
That aside, the black middle class is small, but growing. Wealthy blacks in NY City are a very small number. Out of 2 million blacks in this city, few qualify as middle-class or above. I wish this were not true.
Meanwhile, the results of the school system speak for themselves. You can pretend the faults lie everywhere but on the black culture that rejects the white middle-class sensibility about education.
You spewed:
“Forget Hispanics and every other group, as well, and the black poor? Nope. What sensibilities would those be?”
Bottom line. Blacks and hispanics do poorly in school. The problems are not with the schools. However, the schools have been stripped of all powers to address the problem of “minority” underachievement.
Of course, in this city, asians are the true minority. But asians, as a group, are the best students in the city these days. Why is that? We should all practice their methods.
You blabbered:
“Hmmmmm, what have white folks/kids done in our educational system that black kids have never done? Oh yeah – Columbine, and every other case of white disaffected teen school shootings.”
I see. You had to look back 8 years and extend your search to Colorado to find TWO crazed white kids who committed murder. And on that basis you find equivalence between white and black academic achievement. I see you are a true student of logic.
You grasped:
“Looks like some of those white middle class values haven’t quite taken hold, have they?”
Aha. In other words, because whites have not achieved perfection, mentioning the social pathologies of the black community is not permitted.
Why don’t you put aside your outrage for a moment and tell me why there is many times more violence in black and hispanic communities compared with white and asian communities. And tell me why black and hispanic academic achivement is so dismal.
Annonymous 7:16 – maybe you dont know what you are talking about – the carve out is to keep 421-a ‘as is’ only for AY- whether you agree with that or not, it doesn’t eliminate ALL property taxes – it simply allows AY to get the current 421-a 25yr tax breaks for the 20% affordable housing related to the whole development, instead of requiring it building by building and also keeps the income levels ‘as is’ instead of lowering the income requirements as the new reform bill requires.
Please learn before you type obnoxious retorts
let’s leave out all the KKK and goose-stepping references; it trivializes those times/events. i hope that none of you seriously thinks this discussion is even remotely like those times/events. you should be grateful you can even have such a discussion.
Sterling Silver, you wrote:
“Do you have solutions, or are you just going to continue to bitch? Or is your preferred solution a little more final?”
Solutions? Sure.
Here’s some news for you. The student population at Stuyvesant is 50% Asian, 45% white, and 5% everybody else.
Students are admitted based on ONE competitive exam. Why the huge racial imbalance? The NY City public school system is 75% black & hispanic, 15% white, 10% asian and a few others. Yet blacks and hispanics don’t pass the test.
Somebody must be doing something wrong at home. It’s not the asians, who often don’t speak English when they get here. It’s not the whites.
Problem. How do you improve the school system?
Answer: Get better students.
How do you do that?
Make the city more attractive to people who TRULY value education. If attitudes and practices toward education were similar across racial lines, Stuyvesant’s student body would include at least a large minority of black and hispanic students. It doesn’t. If you can’t learn something from that, well…
By the way, would you like to place a bet on the race of the shooters who nailed the two cops yesterday?
Perhaps you should examine the crime statistics for the city. Roughly 90% of violent crime is committed by blacks and hispanics. But they account for about 50% of the population. Somebody is working overtime in that department.
Additionally, the population of NY City is heading for 9 million by 2020, but possibly sooner. I hope we get there. And I hope the new residents are people buying the new condos that are under construction or soon to be under construction all over the city.
I’d like to see an increasing base of tax-PAYERS over tax-RECEIVERS.
If you search the public housing projects, you will find few white residents. People often need a little help. But you need enough people with enough income to help those in need.
That means attracting more people who are able to help. That means more tax-PAYERS.
One big contributor to problems is Rent Stabilization. It chokes redevelopment of property for generations.
Safeguarding rents may be fair for the person who signs a rent-stablized lease. But I know people who are over 50 who were assigned the leases of their parents’ apartments on Manhattan properties. This has got to stop. I really don’t have any sympathy for someone who must give up a $400-a-month Upper East Side rent-stablized unit they received from their parents to move to Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx for a new place.
The existence of tenement buildings in some of Manhattan’s best neighborhoods deprives the city of better use of the real estate. Rent-stablized leases give occupants all the benefits of ownership but none of the responsibilities. That’s a bad deal from every angle.
Regarding rent stabilization, it is best to end lease transfers. If a person’s name is not on the lease at the time of the original signing, then it should never appear on the lease.
The city should move as quickly as possible to wind down the rent stablization program. It is, unfortunately, an expensive giveaway to whites to keep them in the city.
The fact that there are some black homeowners who have prospered is good news. But the fact remains that goofballs like Charles Barron aren’t really interested in encouraging blacks to prosper in the same manner as non-blacks when it’s so much easier to simply peddle some anti-white racist sentiment to explain the differentials.
Long story short — build as much housing as possible for tax-PAYERS. That’s the smartest solution.
BOMBSHELL!
I’M BLACK!!!
Now lets start with the Uncle Tom attacks!
I’m just sick and tired of the black underclass making life for law abiding, decent and hardworking black people so horrible!!! In fact, they make life horrible for everyone in this country! How is this racist? I’m black and I lay witness to the self-destruction and self-annihilation of the black community from within each and every day! It’s non stop!
I know of black folks who have been killed by other black folks on my very own block (even innocent bystanders) but there are never any arrests or prosecution. Why? Because the savage and disgusting black underclass have reshaped the boundaries of decency to the point that black people will not talk to law enforcement, i.e., “stop snitching campaign”!!! The black community that produced James Baldwin, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Barack Obama, Stan O’Neal, Ken Chanault, Richard Parson, Anne Fudge, WEB Dubois, and Booker T. Washington has allowed itself to be hijacked by the “keep it real, thug 4 life, nigga puhleeaze” underclass!! How the fuck did we let this happen?!?!
Look no further than what occurred in Crown Heights last night. Three guys in a BMW packing a 45 auto, 9 millimeter and a Tech 9!! And guess what? That’s par for the course. Every teenager on my block packs a gun. A brand new 380 auto or 40 cal. auto cost no more than $300!! Everyone has one and everyone has the attitude that I’m not dying in this shit hole without a fight. So 75% of the good guys are packing because they know the 25 % of the population are bad dudes and that these knickaz don’t give a fuck about anything! As a result, everyone is on edge! Even the good folks who happen to carry steel! Why not talk about this freely?
People always wonder why so many middle class black people in FG, CH, PH, BS, CHN and PLG support AY. You want to know why? Well because, and I’m ashamed to admit this, we want and need white people to move in to protect us and inoculate us from the scourge of the black underclass – our very own people!! Whites bring more police enforcement, better schools and better maintenance of the community!
There you have it! There you have it. Middle class black have no intention of turning our backs on superb nabes like FG, CH, BS, PH, CHN and PLG. We love our communities! We’ve been here forever through the good time and the bad times! With that being said, we are not stupid. We know that our neighborhoods will never reach the next level without gentrification and white people. I live in Fort Greene and I will never sell, especially now since whites have made my neighborhood so hip, so hot and SO SAFE!
If this hurts you, then wake the fuck up and change things for the better in the black community. Stop the bullshit! Everyone, black and white, thinks this but we’re too PC to come out and say it!
Thank God for Blogs!!!!!!
David wrote:
“Again a 421-a tax exemption does not mean that future AY condo owners would pay $0 property taxes – it means that they pay the same property taxes as the current owners now pay – so in effect the city doesn’t lose a single property-tax dollar – and in the case of AY the exemption lasts 20 years and then is fazed out over the next 5 yrs. ”
Maybe you hadn’t noticed the 421-a reform bill with the special carve out for Atlantic Yards which allows condo owners to pay no taxes, yes no taxes, in buildings that are all market rate. If the bill passes Good Gov Spitzer’s desk with that clause in it, these will be lost tax revenues. But that’s only according to HPD and EDC, but what do they know.
Anonymous 6:08, you wrote:
“This is exactly the reason why I don’t have my employer withhold city taxes from my paycheck. I’ll be subtracting a certain amount so as not to be contributing a dime to this bunch of bullshit.”
The NY City income tax is earmarked for public school funding. Thus, based on your refusal to pay your NY City Income Taxes you are stating that you refuse to support the public school system.
Okay. But how does that help you settle your score with Pataki and Bloomberg?
What’s bizarre is your next statement:
“Marty Markowitz, George Pataki, Michael Bloomberg and every other one of the corrupt, paid-off politicians that made this nonsense possible should be dragged out into the street and shot…”
In case you are new in town, you should know that Marty Markowitz has all the power of an Eskimo in this city.
He has no law-making powers. I don’t think he can even change the name of a street. However, he is a ubiquitous presence wherever people congregate, especially if a gathering includes food.
He’s a nice guy and loves Brooklyn, and his job is really P.R. chief for the borough.
Meanwhile, you might want to update your political files. Pataki is no longer governor. Elliot Spitzer was elected to replace him last year. Perhaps you missed that.
Lastly, Bloomberg has done more to stimulate real estate development in this city than any mayor I can think of.
If you want to live in a static never-changing paradise, try Cuba. Nothing has changed there since about 1960. Though even Cuba’s statis will lift soon — when Castro croaks.
Since some of us are being very high minded in our musings and good practictioners of social eugenics here, let me ask City Boy, Reality Bites and other anonymous cronies a question: since you have identified the social and economic problems of this city/country as being all the fault of the poor, specifically the black underclass, what’s next? Do you have solutions, or are you just going to continue to bitch? Or is your preferred solution a little more final?
I am so sick of you simple minded idiots spewing your ill thought out nonsense on this blog. If you had one iota of knowledge about American and world history, or one scintilla of information that actually meant something, instead of crap like “if the entire city were populated mostly by middle class families who embraced WHITE and Asian middle class sensibilities…..” WTF??????
So now you are also saying that Black middle class and above families don’t value education, either. Forget Hispanics and every other group, as well, and the black poor? Nope. What sensibilities would those be? Hmmmmm, what have white folks/kids done in our educational system that black kids have never done? Oh yeah – Columbine, and every other case of white disaffected teen school shootings. Looks like some of those white middle class values haven’t quite taken hold, have they?
Oh, that’s not fair, you whine, that doesn’t count! That’s not typical of US! Well, neither are your so called factual run downs of the failings of the black underclass, as well as the workings of our school systems. Yeah, we got some problems, no denying it. But you have just as many, little ones, they only manifest themselves in different ways.
The fact that you feel you can tell the “truth” here, only highlights how very far you have to go. This country sinks or swims because ALL of the people, even the ones you don’t like, have a place in it. That’s what is in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Have we become Nazi Germany, where one group is singled out as the cause of the country’s problems? If we have, then we deserve what will surely come down on us. I like to think we are better than that, and that most of us are better than you.
As expressed by the many voices raised in horror and protest to your postings, the majority of the readership here don’t agree with you, and you social Neanderthals will soon have to shuffle off into the sunset where you belong. Be sure to put a little goose step in there as you go. Bye.
Yesterday Sper writes:
“After months and months of reading this blog and hearing all the rants about PLG and Bed Stuy and Crown Heights and not really chiming in because heck, maybe someday I would buy there, I realized the other day that I probably won’t. I was at a friend’s apt. on Bergen St. in Prospect Heights. Two cops came up to us to ask about a somewhat brutal mugging that took place right outside her apt. the night before. They mentioned two other crimes that had happened on that street in the same week. Right then I realized that I will never be a pioneer and I may be renting forever because I can’t live in fear like that. Today two cops were shot in Crown Heights. I know it could happen anywhere, but mostly it doesn’t. Park Slope is expensive, homogenous, and really annoying. But generally speaking, I can walk my kids home from the subway without looking over my shoulder. I don’t even care if we have to trip over a stroller to get there.”
Today, he’s upset that someone is keeping it real with respect to urban crime violence. What gives?
Sper, you’re full of shit!