Homeowners resist Hochul's YIMBY decree

Queens Chronicle

Lawmakers, Eastern Queens civic leaders and homeowners were in Laurelton last week to rally against Gov. Hochul’s proposal to upzone and legalize accessory dwelling units to create more affordable housing in residential neighborhoods.

Many people were concerned about the character of their communities, which consist mostly of one- to -two family homes, changing to become a higher-density area like Long Island City.

The rally was held March 17 in front of the home of Bess de Betham of the Federated Blocks of Laurelton.

“Nearly 52 years ago I moved from Far Rockaway because I liked this neighborhood,” de Betham said at the event. “Why did I move to this neighborhood? Because it had one -and- two family homes and front and backyards. It has treelined streets and spaces between homes on each block. I have not felt crowded or overwhelmed by others living on that block.”

De Betham said that she is not against more affordable housing throughout the city and state, but her family has worked hard and she must protect the biggest investment of her life and of her neighbors’.

“We are here today to let the governor and our state elected officials know that we are not accepting the imposition of mandates of top-down change to the quality of life that we have worked so hard to preserve,” de Betham added. “I hope our elected officials are listening. The people are paying atteniton to not only how you feel on this Housing Compact, but how you will vote on this Housing Compact ... Welcome to my home.”

Hochul’s Housing Compact proposal for the fiscal year 2024 budget is to create 800,000 new homes over the next decade whether it is through new housing production or legalizing accessory dwellings like basement apartments, according to governor.ny.gov. If passed, her proposal would expedite rezonings and give developers tax breaks to make at least 100,000 of the homes affordable.

Hochul said in a statement that the New York dream should be attainable for all who call the state their home and that the objective of the Housing Compact “is for families to stay in New York.”

Bill Perkins of the Rosedale Civic Association said that when homeowners learned about Hochul’s measure had to do their own research to fully understand the extent of the changes she was proposing.

“Many of our communities were downzoned,” Perkins said. “We saw what happened when density wasn’t controlled. It was unbridled and we weren’t prepared for it.”

Perkins said that if Hochul’s proposal were to go through that it would eliminate home rule, with communities being mandated to follow Albany’s growth targets.

“Whenever you have mandates that you are penalized by, that is not the right way to grow our communities,” the Rosedale civic member said. “We grow organically. We think about our growth. We are strategic about it.”

Along with the growth mandates, Perkins does not support amnesty for ADUs.

“About a year ago, nine people died in illegal basements because they could not get out of the basements,” he said, referring to the death toll in Queens from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida. “You should feel it’s an indictment on you if you are a one- or two-family homeowner because that means it’s taking away ... the ability to be in the community you want to be in.”

Perkins said that Hochul’s bill is doing the opposite of keeping New Yorkers within the state because people like him and de Betham would be less likely to stay.

“We have to be together on this,” he added. “The vote on this is on April 1.”

NYC Housing Department opens up lottery for luxury public housing condos

NY YIMBY

The affordable housing lottery has launched for The Jackson, a five-story mixed-use building at 35-64 85th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens. Designed by Angelo Ng + Anthony Ng Architects Studio and developed by Kelly’s Properties, the structure yields 40 residences. Available on NYC Housing Connect are 12 units for residents at 130 percent of the area median income (AMI), ranging in eligible income from $74,435 to $187,330.

 At 130 percent of the AMI, there are two studios with a monthly rent of $2,171 for incomes ranging from $74,435 to $138,840; five one-bedrooms with a monthly rent of $2,327 for incomes ranging from $79,783 to $156,130; and five two-bedrooms with a monthly rent of $2,791 for incomes ranging from $95,692 to $187,330.

Usually it's proper journalistic procedure to show the header photo from the source article but the photo here I feel sums this up better. Because this aesthetically looks like a basement apartment.

The NYC Luxury Public Housing Connection

 

Impunity City 

 With a month to go until the eviction moratorium expires on January 15th (Martin Luther King’s birthday, SMDFH), hundreds of thousands of city residents will either repay their debts to their landlords or probably get evicted from their apartment aka homes. As this crisis gets closer with each passing second and as the weather gets colder, the other and brighter side of life in New York Fucking City should not got unacknowledged…

Good news every tenant in New York City, THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH AGAIN!. Truly a monumental event and a sign that the recovery for all of us that Mayor de Blasio has been repetitively been talking about is about to come to fruition, at least for those that count. Meaning those that are able to count what little savings they have. Because if the rents are going up again, surely this trend will trickle down to the perpetually housing insecure via the city’s Housing New York program to build and preserve affordable housing for the city’s desperate and downtrodden who pay 1/3 of their check in rent right?

Of course not. As I pointed out last year of an apartment building in west Soho (which is called Hudson Square now to make it even nichier), The Blaz’s affordable housing program is a fucking ruse and a hoax. And now after 8 years of “affordable housing”development usually sprouting in establish gentrification colonizer Brooklyn nabes like Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint and even in Queens enclaves like Astoria, Rockaway, Long Island City and quasi/pseudo-Brooklyn nabe Ridgewood, this inequitable farce and impossible to win lottery city program has sprouted in the most unlikeliest of towns in Southside Queens, Ozone Park.

When the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the debut and opened the lottery for this building this year in March, it was quite a surprised to see it still looked like this three months later.

 

 

Now why would the owners and management of this “affordable housing” building advertise it with an private agency contact when it’s on the city government’s Housing Connect website? And what’s more outlandishly egregious is why it’s being advertised as “Luxury” which is not only misleading but wholly antithetical to de Blasio’s and his housing and preservation department lackeys intent to bring housing equity to the long suffering housing insecure, homeless, rent burdened citizens and gentrification refugees of New York City?

But since this is so eye catching, lets take a look at what kind of luxury the developers are peddling here with this.

Nothing defines luxury than a balcony, even if there is barely room for two people to stand on.

 Now I’m not an architect, but placing these HVAC’s on the pavement really looks like a massive shit idea and makes me wonder what the developers were thinking when they gave this the o.k. or even if they were in the board room when this was designed. I also wonder if the LLC even visited this site or even this state or country as this was being built.