WSJ: Mayor's Housing Plan Threatens Park Slope But Won't Help East New York
Mayor de Blasio’s housing plan won’t bring affordable units to low-income areas but it will destroy the character of the most expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn, said housing experts — including real estate execs — in a Wall Street Journal article yesterday. Here are the deets: *In low-income areas such as East New York, no one…
Mayor de Blasio’s housing plan won’t bring affordable units to low-income areas but it will destroy the character of the most expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn, said housing experts — including real estate execs — in a Wall Street Journal article yesterday. Here are the deets:
*In low-income areas such as East New York, no one is building market-rate housing now and no one will build market-rate housing in the future, even if the mayor succeeds with his plan to upzone the area to allow bigger and taller buildings, because the math just doesn’t pencil out.
*Meanwhile, the mayor’s plan would work beautifully in higher-income areas such as Park Slope and Williamsburg — except that Bloomberg-mandated “contextual zoning” height caps make it impossible.
Mayor de Blasio is pushing to wipe out those hard-won height caps with a “text amendment” to the building zoning code (as we mentioned in yesterday’s article about the zoning controversy in Prospect Lefferts Gardens). If he succeeds, new buildings and additions 15 to 30 percent higher than what is allowed now will quickly sprout throughout Brooklyn’s most expensive and tony areas and beyond, from Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bed Stuy, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens — anywhere land is expensive and prices and rents support luxury development. Only the landmarked areas will be safe. (Above, a row of worthy but unprotected houses on Decatur Street in Bed Stuy, part of the proposed Stuyvesant East Historic District.)
Will wealthy neighborhoods be able to fight the plan? “In neighborhoods that can sustain higher rents, neighborhoods that are often wealthier neighborhoods…have a lot of political capital,” said the executive director of the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development.
That may be, but time is running out. This massive change was buried in a complicated document about the Mayor’s housing plan that few community boards or housing groups seem to have noticed until this week. Now they have just two weeks to comment.
Anyway you slice it, developers will need subsidies to build in low-income areas, said the story. Here’s the math:
For developers to make money after construction costs on a high-rise building that is entirely market rate with no tax abatement, tenants would need to pay about $3,600 a month for a one-bedroom, according to the Furman Center. In East Harlem the median asking rent for apartments in new buildings is $2,295 a month, according to StreetEasy, a real-estate data company. “If you’re in Union Square you can build anything you want because the rents pay for it,” said David Kramer, a principal at Hudson Companies, which develops affordable and market-rate housing. “Then you go out to Astoria and you can’t be too fancy. Then you go to East New York and there’s no new construction of market-rate housing at all.”
What can be done?
Some Pick at Math in Housing Strategy [WSJ]
Update: The City has always planned to jump start the building of new housing in East New York and other low-income areas with subsidies, which is why HPD’s capital budget was doubled, a spokesman for the mayor told us. Also, the process of public review for major changes to the zoning code is similar, although not identical, to the land-use review process. Right now we are in the “scoping period.”
City Planning kicked off the public review for scoping with the release of the Draft Scope of Work for the Environmental Impact Statement in February. Public comment was taken at the City Planning public hearing yesterday, and will be accepted in writing through April 6. As soon as City Planning prepares a draft environmental impact statement and completes its application, the official public review period will begin. It is expected to last approximately seven months.
Why is anyone surprised? DeBalsio sold out Carroll Gardens when he was councilman. He has always been in the back pocket of developers. Ever ask why he is so interested in banning the CP horses? Because he’s an animal lover? Ummm, maybe because the stables sit on prime real estate? I hope the overwhelming majority (if not all) of Park Slope and brownstone Brooklyn who voted for this sell out is happy with the results. Folks, we have two more years…he’s only just begun.
is there a way to actually read the entire wsj article thru a link without having a subscription? forgive me in advance for my ignorance…
Cate, can you direct us to the proper place to learn more and get involved in fighting this if possible? Just left Manhattan, where I grew up, for Park Slope, because I don’t recognize my old neighborhood (or neighbors) anymore, and would hate to lose my beautiful new nabe just as inevitably.
tyvm!
It’s also important to build near transit because this proposal also includes eliminating/significantly reducing the requirements to provide off street parking. It isn’t just about height.
It would be refreshing and a real revelation if new buildings such as the one mentioned in this feature are built in accordance with good quality standards. For a real middle class. I mean, so many of the luxury new condos turn out to be scams, embroiled in litigation while covered in scaffolding for repairs at 3 years of age just because they were poorly built, that to call them luxury is ironic.
Besides transportation there are other issues such as safety, amenities, quality of schools, etc. The point being, how do those neighborhoods compare to others that are not terribly far from them in terms of affordability?
That isn’t true. They’re increasing the height limits for buildings with inclusionary housing or affordable housing for seniors, generally by 20 or 30%. For all other buildings it would only be 5 or 10 feet. So if you were building or adding to a townhouse in an R6B district, the height limit would be 55 feet instead of 50 feet. If you were doing affordable housing, you could go to 65 feet.
OK, but they aren’t proposing changing the FAR, are they? only the building height? So instead of 4000 sq ft at 4 stories it would be 4000 sq ft at 5 stories. Perhaps to a developer this means 5 800 sq ft condos instead of 4 1000 sq ft condos, and they squeeze some extra dollars out of that, although the price per sq ft isn’t changing.
Again, this doesn’t seem apocalyptic to me.