Thursday, January 2, 2014

Thanks, but no thanks


Suggestions for the new mayor on how to create "affordable housing" from New York Magazine:

Give Queens a skyline.
The lion’s share of affordable New York will be constructed outside Manhattan, because of simple math—there’s more buildable land, and it’s less expensive. Western Queens is the likeliest focus. (Brooklyn, too, but there’s more being built there already.) Vishaan Chakrabarti, the SHoP Architects partner and Columbia University urban-planning maven, puts it this way: “Queens Boulevard, Long Island City—there’s [property] ten, fifteen minutes from Manhattan by subway that still has one- and two-story buildings. Queens, clearly, to me is the future of New York in many ways. I wouldn’t limit it to Queens, though—there are areas in the Bronx that have good subway access, and then St. George on Staten Island.” And those 200,000 units De Blasio wants? “Almost a Co-op City per year. I’ve been on the battlefield—it’s not easy, and it’s a lot of progressive politics rubbing up against each other.” Racism, classism, NIMBYism, ageism, and every other ism will come into play. So will every tool the administration has at hand: tax incentives that tilt the economics toward building at the middle of the income range; subsidies for lower-end building; and rezoning even in the wake of Bloomberg's rezoning.

Quit making everyone build a garage.
Almost every new residential building, notes the urban-planning strategist Alexander Garvin, is forced by law to include parking. It’s a dated requirement from the early sixties, one that cannibalizes land and makes every building more expensive.

Tax the hell out of vacant lots.
In New York (as in most cities), land and buildings are taxed as one entity, meaning that developers can accumulate land for years, waiting for a booming market to put something up. “Split-rate taxation” taxes the land itself at a higher rate, encouraging developers to build something sooner rather than later.

Do more horse-trading.
Bloomberg’s 80/20 zoning—80 percent of units are market-rate, 20 percent for people of modest income—can be taken further. Chakrabarti and his colleagues are working on 50/30/20 buildings, where the 30 is middle-income. And De Blasio ally Bertha Lewis suggests we could flip the 80/20 ratio entirely.

Lower permit costs.
It costs twice as much to put up a building here as in Chicago. Some of that is the price of land, but a 2005 study by the economists Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko revealed the surprisingly large role played by permit costs. “I’d like to see just a quicker, easier permitting process,” says Glaeser.

Stop wholesale landmarking.
Individual landmarks should surely be preserved; ditto certain blocks or districts that are genuinely of historic value. But when historic districts are widely extended, they significantly reduce the buildable area of the city, argues Glaeser, meaning rents go up everywhere else.

Live at the Javits Center.
No, seriously, says Chakrabarti: “I would look at moving the Javits Center to Sunnyside Yards” and replacing it with apartment buildings as the No. 7 train extension arrives. “It’s a huge opportunity for a new neighborhood.”

Sell off Manhattan’s projects and build bigger, better housing in the boroughs.
It’d be close to politically impossible, but relocating 115,000 NYCHA residents to the outer-boroughs could generate enough money to build several times as many units of affordable and true project housing in less expensive parts of the city. Consider: The housing projects of the Lower East Side are bigger than Stuyvesant Town, which sold for $5.4 billion.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a better way....deport all the 1.5 million illegals living here, that would open up about 500000 living spaces. How about also stop selling to foreigners and foreign developers? How about stop the housing racism that goes on in the market? People only rent out to whoever they choose to, most of it comes down to race and religion. Asians only rent to Asians. Jewish people only rent to Jewish people. Also, how about coops allowing fha loans on properties and lowering the minimum down payment for coops? There are so many foreclosed coops on the market but a lot of people can't afford a 20percent down payment also you have to pay a flip tax. And if you can afford the coop, then the coop board discriminates against people due to their religion or race. They should be held accountable for their discrimination! The government knows this but refuses to do anything about it...because God for bid if we call the chinese racist or call the Jewish religion out on their discrimination! If we did that then they would alert the media saying that they are being unfairly targeted...heaven forbid!

Anonymous said...

No matter how you look at this it is meant to serve Manhattan. Nothing more than a load of shit to assist Manhattan residents.

Anonymous said...

No matter how you look at this it is meant to serve Manhattan. Nothing more than a load of shit to assist Manhattan residents.

The outer boroughs have a majority but our reps sell out to the developers and our neighbors are sheeple who let the pols off the hook - or worse - turn on those of us who try to change the equation.

Joe Moretti said...

The only item that made sense, is the higher taxing of vacant lots, which become eyesores in communities and garbage dumps.

1. How about as the one person stated, the issue with illegal people.

2. How about holding landlords responsible for the upkeep of their properties.

3. How about limits on what can be built on land that was designed for 1-2 family homes in the boroughs.

4. How about overhauling agencies that no longer work, such as DOB, DOT, DOS.

5. How about strict enforcement of quality of life issues.

But as long as this city keeps over inflating the price of land, then this problem will continue and the boroughs will suffer.

Anonymous said...

Keep the playgrounds for the uber-wealthy; ghetto-ize everyone else? Could it be DeB suffers the same disconnect his predecessor suffered?

Anonymous said...

Ideas like the ones mentioned in that article really make me wish Queens could secede from the rest of the city.

Don't people who live and pay taxes in this borough get any say? It really doesn't feel like it. Yet, we have a larger population than Manhattan.

What the hell would Queens get out of this anyway?

More garages for city vehicles?
More public housing that Manhattanites don't want within smelling distance?
More trains moving garbage through more neighborhoods?
More traffic from increased housing density? (if you want fewer cars on the road and higher density, you've got to have more mass transit FIRST)
Even LESS historic preservation? (there's next to none in Queens already when compared to Manhattan or Brooklyn)
EVEN MORE lax enforcement of building codes? EVEN LESS adequate sanitation?

The people who think that ideas like those mentioned in that article are just dandy ought to live here for a while. C'mon, we know they don't. If they did, they'd know that right now Queens is lacking in so many basic city services that adding even more people without dramatic increases in funding for those services would only make things far far worse. If that happens it will only drive away the rest of the tax-paying middle class in this borough. Then we really WILL have two New Yorks - one superrich island and four huge slums.

I am so tired of people who have little to no first-hand knowledge of what it's like to live here telling us what our neighborhoods are slated to become.

Once again, "you people" don't live here.

Anonymous said...

Let's see...raise taxes on one and two family homes n the outer boroughs, move the underclasses to the outer boroughs, take away our garages and large backyards, give us more crummy mass transit that shuts down at night, more luxury housing in Manhattan, schools with worse teachers, Manhattan becomes mostly white and this is what the limousine liberals want. A white island that dictates to the rest of the city and charges us more to access the place. I'm sure the NY Times editorial board will love it.

Anonymous said...

No one has ever truly addressed the problem of inadequate infrastructure to accomodate the over-development that has already occurred in Queens. The sewer system is antiquated and can't accomodate the over-construction that has taken place and the lack of drainage since developers have paved over most of the green space. The DOB is lacking enforcement of any of it's laws and community boards that vote against a proposed project get cast aside and the pols managed to squeak project through regardless of whether the community wants it or not. Have I left anything out? This list can go on and on but in summation, this borough can't handle the additional land-grab tactics that the city is pushing to benefit only those who have the means to afford to live in it.

Anonymous said...

The reason that Queens gets dumped on is that it has no voice.

Folks it all starts with forcing your local electeds to do something besides pointless (for you) self-serving (for them) legislation and photo-ops.

It then goes to writing to your local weeklies to get real and start to write about stuff that the communities want.

We could also talk about some real civics that take the initiative on community issues instead of passive little creatures that go through the motions merely give old ladies an evening out.

Deke DaSilva said...

Sell off Manhattan’s projects and build bigger, better housing in the boroughs.

For crying out loud, we have enough "vibrancy" in Queens already, we DO NOT need any more!

How about a better idea: Keep the public housing projects in Manhattan, and build even MORE projects in areas with large numbers of super-liberal white Democrats such as the upper west side, and Chappaqua, New York where Bubba and Hillary live.

White liberals LOVE to preach to the "outer borough rubes" about the importance of diversity and vibrancy, so why don't they get a taste of their own medicine?

ron s said...

There's far too much insanity and crap in that brief article to even comprehend, but just for one small point;
Instead of selling off the projects in Manhattan to build new ones in Queens and convert the Manhattan properties into luxury real estate, how about this as a plan?
1) Fix up the rat infested unheated unmaintained scummy buildings that they became because of criminal negligence by NYCHA?
2) Let the same people continue to live there. No rich people wanted that land initially. It was OK for poor people in the
40's or 50's but must be cleared of poor people now so scummy realtors can make profits.
3) Criminally prosecute the douchebags and vermin that ran (run) NYCHA. Is there any group lower and baser than NYCHA "management"?

Anonymous said...

lol.. and you crappers thought getting rid of bloomberg would stop the development of the outer boroughs..

Queens Crapper said...

Actually, no one thought that. Real estate has always run this city. Under Bloomberg, it was on steroids.