Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Unfinished projects may become "affordable housing"

From City Hall:

Some see the failed projects as nothing more than monuments to a reckless development era. But others have seized them as an opportunity to try and reverse-engineer the city’s housing bubble by paring down the city’s condo glut and adding to its affordable stock.

Housing advocates and policymakers are piecing together plans to convert many of those luxury units into cheaper ones, either through subsidies, affordable housing programs or new tax incentives. Or perhaps even government intervention.

The plan is seen by advocates and even some developers as a creative if untested strategy for easing the city’s housing woes as credit tightens and prices plummet.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

There goes the neighborhood!

Anonymous said...

No this is not creative and untested. It is what has happened after every real estate bust.

If you read this blog regularly, you will have noticed that I have referenced the re-positioning of Harlem and Upper Manhattan from luxury estates to a ghetto for impoverished African Americans after the Panic of 1907.

The empty mansions were subdivided and turned into boarding houses just in time to accept people who had been driven out of the West 30s by encroaching commercial development. There is nothing new under the sun.

Anonymous said...

Good idea except I suggest Manhattan has the most units to be used as projects and homeless shelters that developers would be happy to have subsidy for buildings - units - that have gone unsold and cannot carry or wait to be sold.

The Queens units can become middle class subsidized housing and have same affect as above.

Anonymous said...

Four more years and God knows what Blumturd will do to us.

Be rest assured, whatever it is, it will not happen in his community.

(NOTE TO THOSE RIDING IN THE SUBWAY WITH HIM, ACT UP! ON HIS ABOLSHING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE. EVERYTIME HE SHOWS HIS FACE IN PUBLIC PEOPLE, ACT UP! SHOUTING TO HIS FACE)

A few events like that and he would end up hiding from the electorate.

Anonymous said...

But, they promised this would never happen, that these high rises would beautify and revitalize blighted neighborhoods, and bring jobs galore to Queens!
They said there would be some affordable housing, but they promised that we would all be happy living side by side, singing Kumbayah in perfect harmony, while our ever increasing property levels made us all filthy rich!

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's just that it become affordable housing since so many poor and working class people were driven out of their hovels so these monstrosities could be built.

I know that I am barely handling onto my stabilized unit as it is and am on every list for affordable housing I can be on.

Everyone can't be king. You need people to grill your food, answer your phones, collect your garbage, and they are not going to magically do the low-wage work and vanish at 6:00 pm.

Thurston Howell III said...

You need people to grill your food, answer your phones, collect your garbage, and they are not going to magically do the low-wage work and vanish at 6:00 pm.If only they'd invent a magic wand!

Anonymous said...

And when they do, I'll use it to make myself a large pile of money and I won't be available to do your typing.

Anonymous said...

I'd rather it be used for something instead of sitting there unfinished or empty. And more and more of the 'middle class' are going to need affordable housing anyway- luxury condos just aren't practical right now.

Anonymous said...

Picking up garbage is not a low wage job.My friend has worked his way up the ranks in the dept.of sanitation and after 27 years makes around 115k as an asst.supt.Maybe you can type his reports?

Anonymous said...

Really? So you think a starting sanitation man can afford a 400K condo? And by the way, your 115K friend can't afford one either.

Your friend is now management. An Assistant Superintendent supervises an operational unit. He is not emptying cans.

Also, in addition to the sanitation department, many other people empty garbage. They include the supers of buildings and employees of private carting companies. Ask what such people make.

My father was a doorman and a porter for 32B. Although the typical apartment in his building cost 6 million dollars in 1983 he did not make as much as $40,000 even though he was in a union job.

These kinds of myopic comments about your friend, Mr. Rara Avis, who makes 115K plus explains why the workers of this city are being reduced to penury.

Since one out of a thousand has the excellent abilities, skills and contacts to achieve esteemed status, therefore all can make 6-figure incomes and do.

Surely if you don't make huge money you are a failure and deserve to starve in the street. This argument ignores the reality that society is structured as a pyramid with the great mass below a fortunate few.

Anonymous said...

LMAO, hey long island city what we're you all saying in another blog, well open your eyes the ghetto is coming in...... they should of lowered the prices of the condos so it wouldn't be turned into housing projects. now what are all the fancy people down there going to do, they invested how much and it won't be worth the shit they put into it.lololol..... yeah i really enjoy my backyard.

Anonymous said...

I am a union member and I am working right across the street from this site in bklyn., and I can tell for a fact that the owners not only hired illeagal immergrints and unskilled workers but they also pay them below minimum wages. It is a shame that the whole area is like this. I am for construction being a construction worker but I personally don't agree with all the over delevopment gping on on Kent Ave. and the surrounding area. I can only imagine how over populated the area will become and how is it that they don't have schools, hospitals or enough of anything to help these people when all the jobs and apartments are completed. Hey maybe they can build more schools in maspeth to help them out? MAYOR BLOOMBERG YOU NEED TO GO. BYE BYE BLOOMBER!

Anonymous said...

The construction worker is dead on. I pass the pickets every day...meanwhile, back at the ranch, tons of union members who are legal, American citizens who have completed 5 year apprenticeships are on the bench.

Don't think there is no cost to cheap construction. Besides the unemployment insurance that New York State pays, there is also the dubious quality of this construction by untrained men.

I rail-on to the point of boring people stiff about my near brush with death when untrained workers collapsed my ceiling onto my living room floor, but that is because the problem is becoming endemic.

I live within sight of two other buildings whose construction either meant the complete "accidental" destruction of adjacent, occupied buildings or such severe damage that stop-work orders were issued after tenants were sent fleeing and permanent damage to their roofs or walls ensued.

None of these buildings were ever reported in the media, unlike the few real dramatic cases, so I can only guess how many are suffering in silence.

LINDA said...

WELL LET'S THANK OUR MAYOR FOR ALL THE UNSKILLED DAY LABORERS WHO AREN'T CORRECTLY SKILLED TO BUILD IN NYC.. IT SHOULD BE UNION ONLY AND IT HAS TO START WITH HIM ALSO. WHEN HE HIRES SOME CONTRACTOR ON HIS MANY SPECIAL INTEREST JOBS IT SHOULD BE ONLY UNION... THE CITY SHOULD ALSO DOING MORE TO SECURE THE SAFETY OF THE UNION WORKERS AND THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITY. SITE SAFETY MANAGERS SHOULD BE ON GREAT DEMAND TODAY, CONSIDERING 2007 THRU EARLY 2008 OVER 33 UNION WORKERS HAD DIED. PRO UNION ALL THE WAY, I DO THIS IN MEMORY OF MY HUSBAND.