Monday, November 18, 2013

Pol aides snag "affordable" apartment

From the NY Post:

An aide to Council Speaker Christine Quinn is living large after helping push through the development of a Hell’s Kitchen luxury building — then landing a coveted affordable apartment there.

Danielle DeCerbo, 33, moved into Gotham West with her wife and their two children after her application for a “middle-income” pad was approved this summer.

Described by colleagues as a tenacious negotiator for the city, DeCerbo scored one of 682 affordable apartments — out of nearly 30,000 applicants — in a housing lottery after working on the West 45th Street development as a staffer on the council’s land-use division.

“For her to benefit from any project she negotiated or worked on, it’s just unseemly,” a political insider told The Post.

Another person with knowledge of the project said DeCerbo was “very much in the driver’s seat” during the years of bargaining over the four-building Gotham West complex.

The $520 million, 1,238-unit complex near 11th Avenue is the result of the 2005 Hudson Yards rezoning, which promised neighbors low-income housing in exchange for office and residential towers on Manhattan’s West Side.

DeCerbo, who earned $85,913 in 2012, also helped secure new offices and housing south of Gotham West, after Mayor Bloomberg’s push to build a football stadium failed.

DeCerbo was selected in the lottery for 530 W. 45th St. with wife Erin Kaiser, 34, a former aide to Manhattan Assemblyman Dick Gottfried who made $34,806 last year.

The affordable building includes a fitness center, children’s playroom, laundry room and courtyard space.

HPD and City Council representatives say DeCerbo won her apartment fair and square.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

You left out this tidbit:
"The monthly rent would be $2,836 to $3,483, according to the application."

'Affordable'

Anonymous said...

How is that even considered "affordable"?

Queens Crapper said...

That IS affordable if you want to live in Manhattan.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't matter if the rent is $2.00, $2,000.00, or $20,000.00 - she should not be involved with someone or something that she negotiated with. This has "conflict of interest" written all over it.

Anonymous said...

Wtf...she should be excluded from living in any kind of "affordable housing" complexes... this is just as bad as the story I read about one of obamas relatives living in project housing! All members associated with any politician should be excluded from this type of housing (unless of course you are an intern or one of those people who go door to door promoting the politician)

Anonymous said...

High crimes and misdemeanors.
The term applies to all government officials.


"High" in the legal and common parlance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of "high crimes" signifies activity by or against those who have special duties acquired by taking an oath of office that are not shared with common persons.[1] A high crime is one that can only be done by someone in a unique position of authority, which is political in character, who does things to circumvent justice. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" when used together was a common phrase at the time the U.S. Constitution was written and did not mean any stringent or difficult criteria for determining guilt. It meant the opposite. The phrase was historically used to cover a very broad range of crimes.

Anonymous said...

How is that even considered "affordable"?
----------------------

Affordability is determined as a limit on income that is no more than X% of the average income of the area.


So if you live in an area where everyone is bringing in $250k a year, and you only make $100k, you are eligible.

Affordable does NOT mean that you have to work at McDonalds to live there.

Anonymous said...

Affordable is a bullshit term.

The only way we are getting affordable housing is to cut taxes - which increases money available for rent - or to stop immigration - which cuts on demand for units.

Anonymous said...

If the problem is that organically the rent in manhattan is too high so we create some political plums at a cost to us all to give out in the way of affordable apartments that are still expensive while we allow the real neighborhoods middle class folks can live in NYC and organically afford the rent to rot,that makes no economic sense. Provide good services to the "boroughs" so middle class folks will want to live there!

Anonymous said...

If I recall correctly, Ed Koch kept his rent-controlled apartment for quite a long while, even after he got elected mayor.

Anonymous said...

If I recall correctly, Ed Koch kept his rent-controlled apartment for quite a long while, even after he got elected mayor.

Till the day he died, I believe.

Unbelievable how this stuff isn't means-tested and ethics vetted.

Anonymous said...

Collusion...corruption...crap!
That's what politicians (and their aides) are made of.
They are living proof that you can, indeed, squeeze 10 lbs of shit into a 5 lb bag.

Anonymous said...

Does it make sense to anyone that how much you pay in rent depends on how you are related by blood, marriage, partnership, etc. to someone living in an apartment in Manhattan on March 1, 1943 - 70 years ago when "temporary" rent controls were deemed necessary?