From the Daily News:The housing authority is planning its very own Tale of Two Cities.
To raise much-needed cash, the agency plans to lease out land to private developers who will then build some 3 million square feet of luxury apartments smack in the middle of Manhattan housing projects.
Internal documents obtained by the Daily News show the planned 4,330 apartments in eight developments are all in hot real estate neighborhoods, including the upper East and West Sides, the lower East Side and lower Manhattan.
Developers will get a sweet deal: a 99-year lease with the lease payments to the authority frozen for the first 35 years.
And they’ll get a big break on property taxes because 20% of the units will be set aside as “affordable,” offered to families of four that make $50,000 or less.
But the vast majority of units — 80% — are “market rate,” and in the neighborhoods chosen by the New York City Housing Authority, that rate is astronomical.
At the Baruch Houses on the lower East Side, where NYCHA seeks 175,000 square feet of new housing, rent in a private building across the street is $3,100 for a one-bedroom apartment.
The high-end units will be built on top of parking lots, community centers, playgrounds and baseball fields within NYCHA developments, according to tenant leaders and elected officials who have been briefed on the plan.
14 comments:
Who the hell in their right mind would want to own a luxury apartment in the middle of the projects???
This is beyond nuts!!!
It's about time. Only NYC has maintained Poor Warehouses, while every other city in the nation demolished them decades ago, and did just fine without them.
Wow it has really come to this. NYCHA like the MTA should be put out with the trash.
Who the hell in their right mind would want to own a luxury apartment in the middle of the projects???
Speculative projects - immigrants, clueless hipster kids - they will fill them.
The problem is that this housing was built with open spaces to provide healthy living for the tenants.
Who needs playgrounds? community centers? open spaces?
The problem here, as is so much of these issues, caused by the abject failure of the preservation community to say anything.
There should be outrage - but instead we see places like Pratt et al being apologists for development, and the landmark districts increasingly isolated havens where the architects, developers, and financiers perpetuating NY's declining quality of life from overdevelopment live smugly isolated and protected by the very system that they deny us.
There are luxury rental buildings across the street from projects everywhere in Manhattan and are getting top dollar. If the city can crowd out the project building over time, they will demolish them or sell them - a good thing for tax coffers.
As much as I don't like to see the developer getting a sweetheart deal, I can't imagine it will do worse than the money black hole that is NYCHA. (Even their internal shady consulting deal with that Boston group found them profligate.)
A slow, imperfect, but definite step in a better direction. Public housing in NYC is an unjust fiscal and social nightmare.
Anonymous 6
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I almost fell off my seat when I read this article yesterday. Completely ridiculous. Why would anyone want to rent a luxury apartment adjacent to public housing when the crime rates around NYCHA projects are higher than the rest of the city? You could pay top dollar somewhere safer. Looks like another fiscal debacle.
Take a lesson from the classic psychology experiment:
What happens when there are too many rats crammed into a tight living space?
They become restless and aggressive.
Biting can occur.
It's another way of pushing out the "project people".
They tried a variant of this plot in Stuyvesant Town.
During the 1950s when projects were being dumped in the Bronx....the "white folk" fled these newly created ghettos for Long island and Westchester.
Maybe the hipsters will be dumb enough to do a reverse "White Flight" and embrace living in the middle of troublesome poor minorities.
BAH....WTF...what asshole thinks that "luxury housing" can exist for very long in the midst of low income crime ridden projects?
At least this will create an option for those who climb above NYCHA income guidelines, but can't afford Manhattan to stay around, and be a positive presence to those behind them. There is a cliff for those who are in NYCHA units that earn just below the income cutoff and may get a raise, and end up having to move out. It removes people from the projects who made it from young folks.
I wouldn't have done it this way, but its a star, and with enough pressure, it can be modified to create more moderate income units and space for schools/rec facilities.
This is a wonderful idea. Time to eliminate the stigma towards decent and hard working people residing in nycha. Due to some a set of individuals that insist on criminality. Elated
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