New York City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán on Tuesday announced her support for a proposed rezoning that will allow a three-tower, 1300-unit housing development in Astoria known as Halletts North, in a shift from how other progressive lawmakers have approached recent land use decisions.
Cabán’s support for Halletts North likely ensures the full City Council’s approval of the project, since the council traditionally follows the lead of the local councilmember in deciding whether to give the go-ahead.
One in four units in the development will be earmarked for affordable housing. Cabán and local community organizations negotiated with the developer to increase the number of two- and three-bedroom apartments in order to accommodate local families, she said.
The most deeply affordable units will be the 10 percent reserved for tenants making 30 percent or less of the New York City area median income, or $35,790 for a family of four. Overall, the development will nearly double the number of local units available to renters making less than 50 percent of the area median income, Cabán noted.
The developers have also invested $16 million in cleaning up the site from toxins left by its former industrial use, and agreed to contribute $1 million to the neighboring public housing development, build a community space that local nonprofits will be able to use rent-free, and incorporate a public waterfront green space into the development, Cabán said.
Cabán framed her choice to support Halletts North as “harm reduction.”
“The best we can hope for without rezoning this lot is a last mile [trucking] facility where some massive corporation like Amazon would pay our neighbors garbage wages for backbreaking work,” Cabán said. “A no vote today would be a vote for that.”
In recent years, New York has built less housing per capita than almost any other large city in the country. Cabán’s support for the project comes as various factions of New York’s left attempt to work out their approach to housing supply, and decide how to respond to developers seeking city approval to build largely market-rate housing on privately-owned land.
“There’s currently no consensus on what a progressive land use approach should be,” said Samuel Stein, housing policy analyst at the anti-poverty nonprofit Community Service Society. “Because there’s a debate or diversity of approaches, that leaves individual council members with a bit of latitude in terms of defining their own position.”
Cabán’s decision to support the Halletts North rezoning sparked significant and heated debate among members of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), said DSA member and housing organizer Andrew Hiller. The Queens DSA housing working group tweeted that the decision “is an insult” to nearby public housing residents who likely won’t be able to afford the new units. Cabán is a DSA member and received the group’s coveted endorsement during her 2021 run for city council.
By supporting the Hallets North development, Cabán is taking a different approach from other progressive members of the City Council who in recent months have blocked, opposed, or threatened to block major developments in their districts.
20 comments:
Build baby build!
Ironic how 80:20 was a Giuliani Pataki innovation to deal with the tax defaulted in rem parking lots of Chelsea. They let developers build luxury on those abandoned lots so long as 20% were low income. Never mind the poor folk even had a different entrance.
Let's pretend it's not a horribly toxic brownfields -
Will these buildings have a "Poor door" for the 1/4 of the residents qualified for B.S. affordable housing?
Will the buildings have on site parking?
Will the developers pay for upgrading the infrastructure i.e sewers, transit etc?
Will the developers contribute to Tiffany's campaign? (I think we all know the answer to that one!)
The Sheeple need a place to live.
Can you imagine this asshole was a hair's breadth away from becoming District Attorney?
Tiff and the Commies will send the poor Sheeple who can't afford to live in NYC Upstate to an already depressed economy.
Joe and Kammy's fault.
Her Water bottle in the pic looks like it's being kept clean you think ?
What’s the backstory on this?
Asking for a friend...
But, but, how could this be?
TA commie you need to talk to her - is called affordable housing, not luxury housing.
Sheeple time for some anti DemoRat monopoly movements now.
Can't blame Trump for this...
"Can you imagine this asshole was a hair's breadth away from becoming District Attorney?"
Yep/ On Soros money. Anyway, they got Alvin the chipmunk in. Also on Soros money.
"Never mind the poor folk even had a different entrance."
Never mind the commies had vaccinated un-vaccinated discrimination at jobs, stores, restaurants, businesses.
Don't mind that. Just keep chirping away.
Another socialist goes the way of greedy capitalism. Thank you Supreme Court for legalizing corruption.
@“” What’s the backstory on this?
Asking for a friend..”
You have no friends. Live out the rest of your life in your Florida trailer park.
This gives gravy train a whole new meaning.
The democratic radicles do not want the middle class to move here - remember what they did to Amazon in LIC - they threw them out in favor of extending the Queensbridge Houses. Ask Mystery Mike about his role. The only thing important is that every new community will be an automatic Democratic Stronghold.
There are absolutely no services there - and it's a brownfield. No one with common sense will move here. It will become a banlieue. Get familiar with that word:
"France has all kinds of suburbs, but the word for them, banlieues, has become pejorative, meaning slums dominated by immigrants. Inside the banlieues are the cités: colossal concrete housing projects built during the postwar decades, in the Brutalist style of Le Corbusier."
Water bottles are notoriously infested, just like the 1960s hippie sandals.
But heck, they keep taking zithromax for their perversions, it works on other infections, too.
Will they have to pay for congestion pricing ?
Post a Comment