Saturday, April 19, 2008

Council aids rape of Harlem by developers

From OnNYTurf: "On April 15th, The New York City Council ratified the Rezoning of 125th st in Harlem. Council members boasted of the large amount of affordable housing this rezoning would create. Officials said that 1,785 of 3,858 of the apartments planned for Harlem would be "income-targeted". Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission stated that "The amount of affordable housing that is going to be provided by this rezoning is unprecedented,". So is it time to cheer the salvation of Harlem? A closer look at the number provides the truth. The area median income for Harlem is currently $23,429 Dollars. So you would assume that most of this affordable housing would be targeted at the income of the community. Remember City Planning and the City Council both have stated that the Affordable would be income targeted. So out of the 3,858 units in this plan guess how many are targeted to the income of Harlem residents. 200! Only 200 units are for incomes of $30,750 dollars or less.

Also the so called "affordable Housing" is based on voluntary programs; NONE of the units are mandated so it's questionable how many of these claimed affordable units would even be built. It's important to remind our elected that when they loosely use terms like "Income targeted housing" to give the illusion that they are protecting a community when in fact the rezoning does the exact opposite. In the end this rezoning has NOTHING to do with rational planning. It has nothing to do with community wishes, rational use of resources or reasonable debate. It is ALL about City Planning and the City Council making things easier for developers. And the victims will be many of the longtime residents of Harlem who true income levels were ignored."

The New 125th St Rezoning, How Affordable is that Affordable Housing?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crappy,

I disagree. Harlem is next to some of the most valuable real estate in the world (Upper East Side/Upper West Side). The only reaon that people making $20-30k a year are able to live there is because of the artificial creation of poor ghettos. This process was helped along by the government thru building up public housing projects all over the Northern part of Manhattan.

Parts of Northerm Manhattan are prime area to see an increase in the number of upper-middle class and upper class residents moving in. A lot of the poor people living in these areas are already in PJs or stabilized apartments, so not too much to get rid of them. The ones who don't have an apartment in a project or a stabilized place might have difficulty hanging onto their apartments.

Just remember, the more rich idiots who move to Northern Manhattan, the less of them there will be to move to Western Queens and mess things up.

Anonymous said...

commenter #1, we are talking about human beings.

I do think it is a problem that many will "have difficulty hanging onto their apartments" (homes).

If building affordable housing is an "artificial creation of poor ghettos" does that make Battery Park City an "artificial creation of an upper middle class ghetto"?

Anonymous said...

'Affordable housing' is a marketing gimmick to get everyone that does not consider themselves rich on the prodevelopment bandwagon, and like winning the lottery, a tiny trickle of winners in a big sea of suckers is just enough to keep everyone dreaming in the pool.

The point is that it is never really defined, and the advocates never, never, never, talk about keeping current housing (like threatened Mitchell-Lama) but building new units.

'Affordable housing' advocates are lying sneaky bastards. Remember that the next time you see one spouting off this BS.

Tell them to their face to stop lying and feeding you crap.

Anonymous said...

Most Affordable Housing groups are supported by the developers and poltiicians.

Hope Crappie will expose them for the fraud they are.

Anonymous said...

First "Negroes" got nothing
because they were slaves!

Then in the sixties & seventies "Blacks"got patronized
with offerings of
"social betterment programs"
like spare pocket change
from the "liberal" thinkers.

So by time we reached the eighties they were getting plenty
of ink on paper (news headlines)
but no real jobs.

Now it's push
the "African Americans"
out of their Harlem homes
'cause "Whitey" wants
to "develop" it!

Maybe we should set up
"reservations" for them to live on
run by the bureau of
"minority" (???) affairs !

The land has gotten too damn valuable for "colored people".