Outrage Mounting over Ratner's 421-a Carve-Out
In the days since the State announced its version of a bill to expand the areas in which developers would have to include affordordable housing to qualify for the 421-a tax breaks, public outrage over a sweetheart deal for Forest City Ratner has been rising. A recent NY Observer article explained the hand-out: The 22-acre…
In the days since the State announced its version of a bill to expand the areas in which developers would have to include affordordable housing to qualify for the 421-a tax breaks, public outrage over a sweetheart deal for Forest City Ratner has been rising. A recent NY Observer article explained the hand-out:
In such multi-phase projects, according to the state bill, the whole development can qualify for the tax abatement so long as one-fifth of the apartments in the entire complex are affordable to people who make 80 percent of the area median income. (The AMI is roughly $70,000 for a family of four.) Under the City Council version, only those buildings that had affordable units in them would qualify, while developer Forest City Ratner would have had to pay full taxes on their condominium towers. Therefore, Forest City may be able to qualify some of its market-rate buildings for the tax break and save itself millions of dollars.
The provision of the bill (which was approved yesterday) is so shocking that both Bertha Lewis of ACORN, which is contractually obligated to say nice things about the project, called it “bad public policy” and The Daily News, whose usual coverage of the project is limited to the shilling of Errol Lewis, ran an editorial this morning calling it “sick.” The person to thank for the Ratner provision is Vito Lopez, who is the top dog on the State Assembly’s Housing Committee. He slipped the wording in over the weekend, according to The Daily News. Hakeem Jeffries, who voted for the bill anyway, says he found out about the Ratner provision only the night before the vote. The Daily News editorial cites one estimate of the hand-out being worth as much as $270 million.
421a Bill Gives Special Treatment to Atlantic Yards [NY Observer]
FCR Won’t Comment, ACORN Calls it “Bad Public Policy” [AY Report]
Atlantic Yards Gets a Deal so Sweet it’s Sick [NY Daily News]
State Raises Affordable Housing Bar for 421-a Bill [Brownstoner]
Rendering from a photo by Flatbush Gardener
I love this. When a columnist takes a viewpoint that is different from that of the web master, it’s shilling. And Norman Oder is an objective “journalist” who maintains neutrality at all times.
Gotcha.
Eryximachus: You know who is gonna get some new housing out of this for sure? One Vito Lopes. I’m not saying he’s definitely gonna get the Penthouse at Ratnerville, but whatever grease his palm got will certainly make a nice downpayment on a lovely new home.
Ah I see the “legendary” Eryximachus has already contributed another exemplary post full of intelligent insights and helpful solutions. Excuse me for a moment- I have to stop laughing. Kid- go home. Come play among the grown ups when you get a brain. As for “useless City workers” like the 23 year old firefighter who died on the job yesterday? That useless city worker?
go home, drink warm milk, watch cartoons- whatever children of your level of maturity do and in 10 or 15 years time maybe you’ll be ready to take your lamented place in society. You know, when you learn to use a brain cell- if ever.
How does one “compete” when the game is rigged by the government in favor of Forest City. This is a classic example of “rent seeking” with eminent domain seizures thrown in. Political corruption plain and simple.
There is a line of developers that would take this site without the handouts from Albany, thus no need for the subsidies.
Just take Bertha Lewis’ word for it, from Gonzalez’s column:
Bertha Lewis, the head of NY ACORN, says the same thing. ACORN has been a huge backer and partner of Ratner because of his promise to build 2,200 affordable units out of the proposed total of 6,400. But yesterday even Lewis branded this “special carve-out” for Atlantic Yards “bad public policy.”
From a policy perspective, the point is that this deal isn’t even an incentive. FCR wants to do AY with or without this latest little bonus. So even if you support AY as is without modification, there is no justification to line Ratner’s pockets further. The sad part is that no one asked FCR to do anything in exchange for the amendment, like scale back a bit or do any one of a number of things of equivalent value to what FCR is getting.
Seriously, how long would the city function if the majority of the population really sat around doing nothing?
Willfull ignorance is a great thing I guess…
If Hakeem found out the night before the vote, what’s his excuse for continuing to support the bill the next day?
Did the dog eat his conscience?
This is small change compared to the huge amount of money the city takes out of my paycheck to pay for hordes of useless city workers and the voter buying scam known as welfare.
A minority of New Yorkers already support the majority who live on the public dime and vote for the scumbags in office. How is this any different? At least we get some new housing out of it.