The Habitat For Humanity Horror Has A Habitat

 

 Impunity City

It's a miracle on 126th St.  Looks like Santa Claus came to Queens early and visited The Habitat For Humanity Horror affordable housing grave and dropped a house on this corner after over a year and a half of utter negligence and indifference by the Mayors Office and district elected officials who appeared here celebrating themselves when this "Your Home NYC" program and Mayor Adams "Get Stuff Done" sloganeering campaign started.

Or maybe it was from my intrepid reporting that compelled the Mayors Office and it's (Luxury Public) Housing, Preservation and (Over)Development Department into quickly expediting the development of this new house on this lot that was negligibly forgotten and abandoned by the city and let it turn into a ungodly apocalyptic dump on a residential street corner. To signify what a disgraceful embarrassment this is, this housing went up a month after I posted this on here and "X" and it came at the beginning of Mayor Adams machete austerity budget cuts in every municipality (except DOT but that's another fucked up story).

It also got built right when Rosalyn Carter died, who co-founded Habitat for Humanity with her husband former President Jimmy Carter, so maybe they got a couple of phone calls to get this stuff done to paraphrase New York City's troubled current mayor. Here's the sign where the Habitat for Humanity logo once was, the brand got peeled off after being hung up for hundreds of days in the elements.

Lets look at the layout and "bones" of this affordable home.

 

 

 

The Habitat For Humanity Horror

Impunity City 

 

Yesterday afternoon, Mayor Eric Adams enthusiastically announced plans for the city to build 100,000 affordable apartments in the next 5 years in his “City Of Yes” program. The City Of Yes program/doctrine will make it easier for the NYC housing and building departments to expedite building permits faster with little regulation and even community input under the rubric for the need to stem the housing affordability and homeless crises in the five boroughs. While noble and necessary, it still needs to be ratified into law by City Council.

But it was only a year and a half ago when Mayor Adams and his “team” went to Southeast Queens to announce an affordable housing program initiative for to give the opportunity for lower income earning residents to own their own houses. Partnering with Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity, the city’s Housing and Preservation Department took over 16 houses that were neglected and then abandoned by the notorious NYCHA  and had them demolished so they can build new environmentally sound “green” houses in their place. During the presentation which also announced new infrastructure to mitigate constant flash flooding from extreme storms, early SE Queens native Mayor Eric Adams promised that these homes will revive the neighborhoods that were neglected by past administrations.

One of those homes is this corner on 126th and 116th avenue.

  

Promises made, promises slept.

 

Adams initiates more affordable "green" housing developments for Southeast Queens

 

QNS

The mayor and New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams — both of whom grew up in the area — celebrated the completion of a $50 million project delivering more than six miles of new sewers and water mains to alleviate flooding of homes and streets in Rochdale under budget. They also kicked off the construction of “Habitat Net Zero,” a project that will turn 13 dilapidated homes previously owned by the NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) into 16 green homes for affordable homeownership. 

“This community represented the promise of a better life for my family, and I am going to keep that promise for generations of New Yorkers,” Adams said during a press conference outside of a dilapidated house at 126-01 116th Ave. in south Jamaica that will be transformed by Habitat for Humanity. “The government has ignored this community for too long, denying them their fair share of investments and services — that ends in my administration. These projects will make life better for the residents of southeast Queens today and those who will be able to move here in the future, and I’m proud to say that this is just the beginning.”

For far too long, southeast Queens has endured systemic disinvestment and neglect, resulting in widening disparities that persist today, Council Speaker Adams said. 

“With the completion of the $49.3 million water infrastructure project in Rochdale and the start of construction for Habitat Net Zero — a project to deliver new affordable homeownership opportunities — our communities are seeing the investments and improvements that we have always deserved,” the speaker said.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), and New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) completed the $49.3 million project under budget, bringing more than six miles of new sewers and water mains to Rochdale — improving street conditions, alleviating flooding, and upgrading infrastructure, while staying $5.7 million under budget. Work began in March 2018 and took place on 78 individual blocks.

 “Ever since the residential development of southeast Queens more than 50 years ago, neighbors have worried about any threat of rain in the forecast, because there were no catch basins or sewers built to drain the roadways, resulting in chronic flooding and property damage,” said Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations. “With a commitment of $2.5 billion for a comprehensive drainage system, we are now correcting that past failure block by block.” 

Affordable huh? We shall see...

Habitat for Humanity fixing up zombie homes

From Brick Underground:

Affordable housing options of all kinds are notoriously hard to come by in New York City, but with most affordable developments currently geared toward renters, for a buyer in hopes of finding a deal, the options are particularly sparse.

Habitat for Humanity NYC is aiming to chip away at the disparity, and just last week announced two projects that, all told, will bring 48 new units of affordable homes up for ownership onto the market in Brooklyn and Queens. The properties will be split up between two different projects; Queens Phase Two, a collection of 20 single-family homes in Queens, as well as three in East Flatbush; and SEED, a three-building, 25-unit new development in Brownsville, which is slated to be the second-largest multi-family development that Habitat NYC has ever put together.

As for the single-family houses, they're so-called "zombie" homes (in other words, abandoned or foreclosed properties), which NYCHA acquired and sold to Habitat for $1 apiece in order to renovate them and turn them into livable housing options for NYC families. "This particular set of homes is a rarity, in that we’re working with NYCHA to transition them off of their rent rolls [and into affordable property]," Habitat CEO Karen Haycox tells us.

The SEED project was financed through programs in Mayor Bill de Blasio's Housing New York plan, and will be Enterprise Green Communities and EPA ENERGY STAR certified, in part to keep utilities manageable for homeowners in the long run. Habitat NYC has also partnered with programs like SONYMA (a state-run program offering low down payments) to allow purchasers to buy with as little as two percent down payment (as opposed to the standard 10 or 20 percent).

Though the timeline for when the homes will be finished is still TBD—as is the pricing on the houses and apartments—Haycox tells us that applications should likely open in fall 2017 and run through winter 2018, and that prices will be roughly in the $250,000 to $300,000 range, though may skew higher or lower.

Habitat for humanity rehabbing Queens houses for MLK day

From CBS News:

Habitat for Humanity volunteers are working through the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend rehabbing a home in Laurelton, Queens.

Volunteer Craig Bannister told The Associated Press it’s a meaningful way to remember King.

“Volunteering is a way that brings people from different backgrounds — ethnically, racially, economically — together to work to a common goal,” he said. “So I think it’s important to really do that to remind us that we’re all really the same.”

Habitat for Humanity purchased more than a dozen homes in New York City that had been empty for more than a decade.

Foreclosure fixed up

From the Times Ledger:

Dozens of Habitat for Humanity and Delta Airlines volunteers, a few carrying small luggage, gathered Wednesday on a rainy day to start work on restoring an abandoned home in Cambria Heights.

The derelict house, infested with termites, fell victim to foreclosure and then became a zombie home until a fire destroyed most of the property. The property was then handled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before being acquired by the New York City Housing Authority to become affordable housing.

Future homeowners are required to volunteer in the restoring of their homes. At the Cambria Heights house at 219th St, 53-year old carpenter Richard Thompson was ready to work on his future home.

“I found out about the program when I was looking for a home, but I did not have enough money for a down payment,” said Thompson, who currently lives in Brooklyn.

The program through Habitat for Humanity offers a 30-year fixed mortgage at a 2.0 percent rate with only a 1 percent down payment for a restored home.

It's time to clean up the blight

From AM-NY:

Dozens of city-owned homes intended for low-income New Yorkers have sat vacant for years, sometimes for at least a decade, with some attracting squatters while others become a blight in their neighborhoods.

But after years of neglect and failed strategies to deal with the properties, including stalled plans to sell them off, the New York City Housing Authority says it has a new approach to rehabilitate the 63 single-family homes by partnering with two groups -- Habitat for Humanity New York City and Restored Homes -- that have proven track records in fixing up houses.

First-time homeowners would then get an opportunity to move in.

"The whole point is to stabilize communities," said Nicole Ferreira, senior director of real estate development at NYCHA. "We don't want the vacant homes hanging out there."

But she agreed the homes have been neglected for far too long. "There has been a stall over the last 10 years," she said.

The houses, located in Queens and Brooklyn, were foreclosed properties acquired by NYCHA from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 through 1982. They are the last remaining properties from a portfolio of 730 that were largely sold off and repurposed for low-income families. Yet these lingering homes have gone years without occupants and their condition shows it.

"The age and condition of the houses has deteriorated over time, rendering the houses unsuitable for continued operation as well as creating a negative influence on their neighborhoods," the NYCHA board stated in a resolution in July 2014.

Habitat for Humanity and Restored Homes are expected to be charged $1 for each property, with the understanding that they would find financing and lead the rehabilitation of each. Habitat for Humanity said it received 13 NYCHA homes in 2012, and that five have been renovated and are ready for families to move in; eight are under construction.

Some policymakers said finding a solution for these homes helps combat the affordable housing crisis, even if there are a relatively small group.

Eyesores getting a makeover

From the Daily News:

About three dozen vacant and blighted properties in southeast Queens will soon be part of a neighborhood makeover.

Habitat for Humanity New York City plans to gut and rehab 38 of the city’s empty eyesores with the help of local volunteers — and sell them to low-income families who will help rebuild them.

Thirty-four of the properties are in southeast Queens — an area still struggling to recover from the recent foreclosure crisis.

“This is a hand up, not a hand out,” said the group’s CEO Neil Hetherington. “[The families] have gone from a situation of despair to one of hope.”

Thirteen homeowners are expected to be in their new residences — some of which have been vacant for more than a decade — by the end of the year. The rest of the houses are slated to be finished by late next year.