From the Village Voice:
Dear big developers: Not every tax break is worth a bad headline. Extell Development Company is building a 274-unit luxury condo building in the Upper West Side, with plans to put in a separate door for people living in its planned below-market-rate units. The reason? It's a workaround enabled by the city's Inclusionary Housing law to help Extel collect on some major tax breaks and building allowances. Local residents are upset and have gotten their elected officials to jump into the ring.
Of the 274 units in the building, 55 will be below-market-rate housing, meaning only those earning less than 60 percent of the neighborhood's median income will be eligible for leases. That's about $51,000 for a family of four for the Upper West Side--about the same as the median income for the city as a whole.
The building's affordable units would occupy floors two through six, attached to the building but legally as a separate entity. That separate entity allows Extell to cash in millions in affordances for technically having an entire building devoted to affordable housing. To add insult to injury, zoning law requires that a separate building have a separate entrance.
Neighbors are crying wolf when it comes to Extell's blueprints, accusing the developer of demeaning potential tenants with the second entrance.
10 comments:
I really don't see the problem with this. people are getting apartments they otherwise could not afford. That was the deal.
Nowhere in the law does it say anything about access to facilities, or how those units are accessed (aside from it being a safe condition).
Separate but equal was declared unconstitutional some time ago.
So the rich don't want their elevators being pissed in and trashed? Who can blame them.
$51,000 for a family of four doesn't sound like the type that would piss in elevators. Sorry, but this is just wrong.
I don't understand this. Why go through the trouble of all this expensive construction just to save a little money? If people of lesser means are "undesirable," why chase the tax break?
Ever fly first class? You get treated better. Ever go VIP into a concert venue? You get treated better.
Pay premium for an apartment, you get treated better.
"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.... Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."
The media hook here: It's painfully obvious demonstration that we don't live in a classless society.
Where it gets weird is that this developer is trying to have his cake and eat it too - the exclusivity of offering living only with other wealthy people and sharing common areas only with them - and the tax break of adding some affordable units.
Separate but equal was declared unconstitutional some time ago.
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Except nobody is being forced to live in either building.
Anyone in the world can be in the 'high-end' lobby. They just have to pay for it.
Except nobody is being forced to live in either building
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No one was "forced" to use "colored" bathrooms either - they could have gone home, or in their own communities.
Even though the civil rights act does not speak to economic status, this probably runs afoul of a local law, and the gesture is downright disgusting.
I find it sad that there are readers out there that think Extell should be rewarded with tax breaks when they are indulging in this type of behavior.
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