City Council Deal Saves Mayor’s Controversial Zoning Plan: Here’s What You Need to Know

by Barbara Eldridge - March 16, 2016

Mayor de Blasio has won.

He and the City Council have hammered out a compromise on the mayor’s contentious affordable housing plan — the one some Brooklyn residents feared would wreck their neighborhoods with tall buildings and out-of-control rents. Now the City Council is expected to vote yes on it next week, according to the New York Times.

The compromises won by the City Council will make the affordable units more affordable, in addition to lowering the height cap of new buildings in some areas. These and other changes were enough to satisfy the City Council that the plan will be a boon for affordable housing in the city.

The mayor has agreed to alter his zoning proposals:

• New affordable housing units will be less expensive — the mayor agreed to lower income requirements at both the top and bottom of the required range, with future residents earning between 40 percent and 115 percent of area median income rather an 60 percent to 120 percent.
• The percentage of affordable units will be smaller. Developers would be required to set aside 20 to 30 percent of developments for affordable units on sites that take advantage of a rezoning — not 25 to 30 percent, as originally proposed.
• The city will study new ways to create affordable housing units with even lower income requirements, possibly creating new additional programs to work in conjunction with developers.
• Parking lots in transit-starved neighborhoods and near senior housing will not be made available to developers.
• New buildings constructed under the regulations will have a lower height cap in some areas.

• Last year, Brooklyn’s community boards mostly rejected the plans, as did the borough president and Brooklyn Borough Board — many citing issues of affordability and fears that implementing the plans would only speed up gentrification and displacement. The City Planning Commission then approved the proposals, but it’s the City Council’s ULURP vote that makes the official decision whether to implement them.

  Mandatory Inclusionary Housing would require developers to set aside a standard percent of developments for affordable units on sites that take advantage of a rezoning.

  Zoning for Quality and Affordability would alter the zoning code, changing the bulk of buildings by increasing height limitations and easing setback restrictions, among other amendments to the current code.

  Another part of the plan is a proposed rezoning of East New York. The local community boards and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams rejected it. As well, the local City Council members said they opposed it. The Times story about this week’s compromise did not specify if City Council intends to approve that too as part of the deal.

Full article in Brownstoner

Landlord Illegally Subdividing Units at Prospect Heights Building: Tenants

By Rachel Holliday Smith

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — The landlord of a 1920s-era Eastern Parkway building has been illegally subdividing a number of units, then turning around and listing them as rental properties, tenants say, prompting the city to slap the building with a series of stop work orders.

The Department of Buildings ordered construction to cease at 85 Eastern Parkway last month, after tenants — many of them rent-stabilized — complained that work had been underway for more than a year to split some of the building’s larger apartments into a pair of smaller units.

Full article, published in DNAinfo.com on December, 23 2015

Meet the cute therapy pups helping kids learn to read

By Mary Huhn January 9, 2015 | 6:54pm

Small and cozy, powerHouse on 8th in Park Slope is usually library-quiet as shoppers peruse the bookshelves. But on a recent Friday morning, 25 kindergarteners took over the store to read to their pals Barker, Willow, Karat, Rupee, Bica and Toffee.

The students from PS 107 are mingling with specially trained mutts from the Good Dog Foundation, a local organization that hosts reading programs throughout the tri-state region with help from their therapy pooches.

Katherine Eban, founder of the school’s Beast Relief committee, got the idea to bring dogs, kids and books together from a Cape Cod, Mass. library, which held similar events during her family’s summer vacations.

“My kids absolutely love it,” says Eban. “I was struck by how focused the kids seem to be on their ‘mission’ of reading well to the dogs.”

At Good Dog, volunteer handlers and their dogs must complete an 11-week training program to become certified.

“We work with students just beginning to read, students struggling to read and older students who are learning English as a second language,” says Alexandra Fine, a senior development and communications associate at Good Dog.

Reading to dogs can help boost kids’ confidence and get them excited about reading.

“Some children feel anxious about reading in front of other students. It can be daunting,” says Fine. “Dogs patiently listen as students practice their skills in a supportive environment with a non-judgmental, furry listener. [It] makes reading enjoyable and fun, instead of scary.”

Willow, a 4-year-old white standard poodle with orange-painted nails, is particularly popular. One girl hugs and kisses her, as the owner, Alison Kelley [Tenant at 85 Eastern Parkway], tells students that Willow has a skateboard. Across the room, Oscar looks up from “Harry the Dirty Dog” to ask Toffee, a 1 ½- year-old Yorkshire terrier, if he takes baths. His owner, Karen Osorio from Forest Hills, Queens, replies yes, and that he “wears a shower cap.”

Upstate at Rockland County’s Hudson Valley Visiting Pets’ similar program, “Paws for Reading,” the sessions are limited to one kid and one “Pet Partner therapy team, “ consisting of a dog and the animal’s handler, says Risa Hoag, director of the Hudson Valley program.

Paws for Reading is an affiliate of the Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) program developed in Salt Lake City 15 years ago. Hoag, a licensed R.E.A.D. instructor, got involved a decade ago when she saw how her pet, Annie, now 11, gravitated to a relative with cancer. “She put her head in her lap and it felt like she understood her and wanted to make her better.”

More Than 600 Homes Added to Crown Heights Historic District

CROWN HEIGHTS — History buffs, rejoice!

More than 600 Crown Heights homes have joined the neighborhood’s historic district after the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a third landmark designation in the area on Tuesday.

The LPC unanimously approved the third phase of the Crown Heights North Historic District at a hearing Tuesday morning after a brief presentation about the architectural and historical significance of the area, located mostly between Brooklyn and Albany avenues to the west and east and Pacific Street and Lincoln Place to the north and south.

“I am very excited about this … all of us here [at LPC] are happy to bring it to fruition,” said LPC chair Meenakshi Srinivasan before the vote, adding that the district “has truly an amazing collection of buildings and styles that are very, very cohesive.”

Included in the 640 buildings in Crown Heights North Historic District III are three homes where Rep. Shirley Chisolm once lived, some of the borough’s first multi-family homes called “Kinko Houses” and a variety of 19th- and early 20th-century townhouses.

Full article by Rachel Holliday Smith | March 24, 2015 3:55pm | Updated on March 24, 2015 4:20pm

New, but Far From Perfect Construction Defects Follow a Brooklyn Building Boom

It took just three years for balconies to crack and concrete to flake from the facade of one Brooklyn condominium. Another building was prone to flooding, because the storm drainage system was never connected to the sewage system. With buildings rising at a pace not seen in years, some fear that shoddy construction could be making a comeback, too. 

As developers feverishly break ground on projects to cash in on soaring property values, lawyers, architects and engineers say they are fielding more calls from residents complaining of structural defects in newly built homes. There is growing concern that some developers are repeating the mistakes of the last housing boom and delivering substandard product. As more residents settle into new buildings, the trickle of calls could soon turn into a flood. 

“My phone is ringing already on projects that were just completed,” said Steven D. Sladkus, a Manhattan real estate lawyer who says his firm has dozens of active construction defect cases. “Uh-oh, here we go again.”

When the housing market collapsed in 2007 and coffers ran dry, many developers were left scrambling to complete projects. Some cut corners or abandoned developments, leaving others to finish the work. The result was a spate of poorly built developments followed by a rash of lawsuits from angry buyers. But the number of complaints dwindled when the recession took hold and new construction stalled, leaving only the most seasoned developers to continue to build. 

Now, in today’s increasingly heady housing market, untested developers are eager to get in the game, and some of those who built problematic buildings in the past are breaking ground again. “It’s like the developers did not learn their lessons,” said Adam Leitman Bailey, a Manhattan real estate lawyer who has noticed an uptick since the start of the year in complaints from residents of newly built buildings reporting problems with elevators, water infiltration and inadequate insulation.

Full article by Ronda Kaysen on March 6, 2015 in the New York Times

Does the New Crown Heights Starbucks Threaten Small Neighborhood Businesses?

By Irene Chidinma Nwoye Thu., Oct. 16 2014

The coffee tension brewing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, started after Starbucks opened a new location right beside a four-year-old coffee shop, the Pulp and the Bean. Owner Tony Fisher is not necessarily scared of the competition. But he believes Starbucks will usher in even more commercial chains, causing the rent prices in the already expensive neighborhood to continue to soar. While Fisher appears visibly unfazed by Starbucks' presence, the anti-big-business slogans occasionally scrawled on chalkboards in front of his stores betray his fears about working next door to a corporate Goliath.

On September 25, only about five days after its neighbor began operations at 341 Eastern Parkway, the Pulp and the Bean's chalkboard read, "Everytime coffee is not bought here, a baby crys [sic] somewhere in the world." On a different day, the board at Fisher's other store, Bob and Betty's (an organic-foods market on the other side of the Pulp and the Bean), read: "Support big families not big business. Buy local."

There is no shortage of Starbucks in New York City. Last year, there were 283 Starbucks in the city (up from 272 in 2012 and 245 in 2009), according to the Center for an Urban Future, a NYC-based think tank that traces economic growth in New York State for policymakers. New Yorkers have grown accustomed to seeing a Starbucks every quarter of a mile, and the coffee company has evolved into a socioeconomic symbol.

Starbucks is often regarded as the last phase of gentrification in neighborhoods in the city. According to one Business Insider reporter, a new Starbucks suggests that a neighborhood is "up-and-coming," "a smart real estate bet." And the real estate part is one of the reasons Fisher is concerned. Rent prices in Crown Heights have risen in recent years.

"Two years ago [the rent was] $35 per square foot on Eastern Parkway," Fisher says. Now it's valued at $100 per square foot. "Starbucks will attract other corporate entities and rents in the neighborhood will go up," he adds.

Full article on The Village Voice Blogs

Behind Atlantic Yards Housing Deal, Some Big Shifts

By: Norman Oder

Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio took credit for dramatic news announced June 27 regarding the controversial Atlantic Yards project, which, despite the opening of the Barclays Center in 2012, had delivered none of the affordable housing that was a huge selling point when the project was unveiled in 2003, approved in 2006, and re-approved in 2009.

They announced a deal, responding in part to a threatened fair-housing lawsuit by community groups, that promised the 2,250 subsidized apartments (of 6,430 total) would arrive by 2025, ten years before the 2035 “outside date” agreed to in 2009. That’s still slower than the ten-year buildout long touted by developer Forest City Ratner.

"Today we are… expediting the construction of thousands of units of affordable housing in Brooklyn,” Cuomo said in a statement. “This agreement is a win for the state and most importantly for Brooklyn residents.”

“The agreement means two 100-percent affordable buildings will go in the ground starting next year,” said de Blasio, “with units serving a more diverse range of families.”

Those statements, bolstered by endorsements from community groups that pushed for a faster timetable and some local elected officials, obscured some key changes that bolster the developer and satisfy the city’s hunger to count affordable units, as well as one that addresses a flaw in the first tower being built on the site.

First key change: affordability

First, as emerged later that day, 390 of 600 units in the two all-affordable towers will go to households earning more than $100,000, a departure from the long-promised configuration that distributes the units more among low-, moderate-, and lower-middle-income households. Rents for two-bedroom subsidized units might approach $3,000.

The two towers will include 180 low-income units, serving families earning up to $51,540 (as of 2013) for a household of four. But that 30 percent share of total affordable units is less than the 40 percent share long promised in the Housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Forest City Ratner signed with ACORN in 2005 and incorporated into the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). The upper middle-income affordable “band” (serving a four-person household, earning up to $141,735) was supposed to represent 20 percent of affordable units, but in these towers will represent 50 percent. The moderate-income band, 20 percent in the MOU, would instead be 5 percent.

Read the full article in the Brooklyn Bureau on (July 3, 2014)

Brooklyn now the borough of kingly prices

BY DOYLE MURPHY

An $18 million triplex penthouse for sale in the Clock Tower Building in DUMBO is part of the increasingly expensive condo offerings in Brownstone Brooklyn and the trendy neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Move to Brooklyn — and bring your checkbook.

The average cost of condos in the borough’s most popular neighborhoods has topped $1 million for the first time, a new report shows.

Sales prices for the second quarter crested that watermark as the supply for townhouses runs low, forcing homebuyers to dig even deeper into their deep pockets for an alternative.

“I wish we all had crystal balls to see what happens next,” said Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties Group, the brokerage firm responsible for the analysis.

The report tracks sales over the past three months in Brownstone Brooklyn and the red-hot neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, increasingly home to the city’s tastemakers.

Buyers in the two trendy nabes were willing to pay, on average, more than $1,000 a square foot to live along the treelined streets or in repurposed warehouses. That’s a steal compared with the luxury listings popping up in the borough.

A stunning, six-bedroom penthouse at 360 Furman St. overlooking Brooklyn Bridge Park is being marketed by Sotheby’s for an asking price of

$32 million. The amenities include a movie theater, a wine cellar and a master bath the size of a studio apartment.

Too much? The second most expensive condo is a 7,000 square-foot triplex in DUMBO’s iconic Clock Tower Building listed at $18 million.

Traditionally, townhouses had been king in neighborhoods like Park Slope, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, but there just aren’t enough of them to keep up with demand, Scepanovic said.

The same is increasingly true of condos as some buyers switch gears. Open houses routinely draw 100 people or more, and overall prices jumped 27.5% during the past 12 months, according to the report.

“We’ve got condos that we’re selling for $300,000 and condos we’re selling for $10 million,” Scepanovic said.

“The question is, where is that middle ground?”

Crown Heights Tenants Plan March on Landlords in Bid to Prevent Rent Hikes

By Rachel Holliday Smith on June 5, 2014 5:03pm @rachelholliday

CROWN HEIGHTS — Residents are planning a march this weekend to demand a halt to soaring rent hikes — and put their landlords on notice that they expect better treatment.

Members of the Crown Heights Tenants Union will march this Saturday through the neighborhood “to show how Crown Heights is becoming unaffordable,” starting at Washington Avenue and Eastern Parkway at noon and ending at Brower Park, according to the group’s website.

The Crown Heights Tenants Union formed last fall to organize as many renters in the area as possible, said Cea Weaver, 24, a Crown Heights resident and organizer with CHTU. She said the group now has roughly 30 tenant associations on board with the union’s list of demands, which they will deliver to their landlords during the march.

Among the demands include urging landlords to be more responsive to tenants' requests for repairs. They also want landlords to automatically renew leases unless otherwise notified by tenants, as well as the right for tenants to obtain a rent history to inspect whether the rent amounts have been improperly increased at any time in the past, according to the document.

But the larger goal of the rally, Weaver said, is to make their demands heard beyond Crown Heights in the runup to June 23, the date set for the Rent Guidelines Board to vote on rent increases for rent-regulated apartments for the next five years.

“We are really hoping to building momentum for that citywide issue, [while] at the same time, letting the landlord know we’re here, we want to work with you, these are the things we want you to do to work with us,” Weaver said.

Members of the 85 Eastern Parkway Tenants Association in Prospect Heights will lend their support at the march to say “enough is enough,” said Isabelle Broyer, 47, a worker at the United Nations and a member of the association. After her landlord submitted plans to double the size of her apartment building without alerting tenants, she attended one of CHTU’s monthly membership meetings.

“They really have an agenda,” she said. “It’s not just for complaining about the situation. They’re really trying to do something about it.”

Full articles here (Dnainfo, June 5, 2014)

Neighbors Win Fight to Have a Towering Eyesore Demolished

The owner of a house in Homecrest, Brooklyn, requested permission from the city to make “a horizontal and vertical enlargement to an existing two-story, one-family residence.”

More than eight years later, what began as a humble brick bungalow, perching modestly between its low-slung brick and wood neighbors, has swollen into a five-story skeletal tower that looms over the street and smothers the collapsed bungalow below. It is half-finished, with a rib cage of metal beams exposed beneath temporary white cladding and gaping windows punched out in front, but it looks instead as though it had been half-demolished by an errant torpedo.

In the words of one neighbor: “It’s the ugliest thing I ever saw. Who in the world builds a house like that?”

The city said this week that a lawyer for the owner, Joseph Durzieh, had, at long last, agreed to accept the Buildings Department’s demands that the structure be demolished. But neighbors remain skeptical that the scourge of their quiet block will finally meet the wrecking ball.

Over the past decade, those neighbors have endured the mice that scurried into their kitchens. The raccoons rummaging through the garbage. The stray cats colonizing the front yard-turned-junkyard. The flies.

But most maddening of all, the neighbors said, was the seeming inability of any authority — despite years of complaints, departmental audits and a stop-work order — to rid them of the eyesore that is 1882 East 12th Street.

Full article in the New York Times (1 May 2014)

Up in Years and All but Priced Out of New York

Nubia Chavez and Manuel Acuña have been bouncing from rental to rental around New York City like millennials. They recently decamped to a $700-a-month room in a Queens apartment, with a shared bathroom and no access to the kitchen except to make coffee.

But Ms. Chavez, a housekeeper, and Mr. Acuña, a retired building porter, are not in their 20s. They are 65 and 72, and they say they are tired — of the moving, of the lack of permanency and of a lifestyle not suited to their age.

“I want to live in my own place,” Ms. Chavez said. “No more rooms.”

Jennifer Stock, 33, has been looking for a place for her ailing 89-year-old father after his assisted living residence in Park Slope, Brooklyn, announced it would shut down by this summer.

And in Astoria, Queens, Norma and Rodolfo de la Rosa recently put their names on a waiting list for an affordable residence for older adults because, they say, their Social Security checks cannot keep up with rent increases. The list has nearly 4,000 names.

Finding adequate housing has become an all-consuming preoccupation for many older New Yorkers, a group whose explosive growth and changing housing needs pose new challenges for the city. As serious as New York’s affordable housing shortage has become, the squeeze has been perhaps harshest on older adults. At a certain age, substandard living conditions become less tolerable, walk-ups are no longer viable, even stabilized rents become too high, and the need for housing with special services grows.

Full article in New York Times (29 April 2014)

Brooklyn landlords illegally harassed, targeted rent-stabilized tenants: suit

A group of Brooklyn tenants have filed a federal lawsuit against two landlords, accusing the defendants of illegally trying to force them out of their rent-stabilized apartments to make room for new renters who pay market rates.

The Flatbush Development Corporation and the Flatbush Tenants Coalition, along with 11 named tenants, filed the housing discrimination case Monday in Brooklyn federal court.

They’re seeking unspecified damages, according to the suit.

Most of the plaintiffs — who live in three buildings on Hawthorne Ave. and Brooklyn Ave. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens — have resided in the complex for decades, according to court documents.

The suit alleges that landlords Yeahaya “Shay” Wasserman and Yitzchock Rambod, Homewood Gardens Estates LLC and Eastern Hawthorne Realty 651 LLC have violated the Fair Housing Act as well as city and state human rights laws.

The landlords targeted longstanding black tenants who lived in rent-stabilized apartments, the suit contends.

The plaintiffs pay anywhere from $600 to $1,400 a month for 52 three-bedroom units in the three buildings, according to the lawsuit.

Calls to the offices of Wasserman and Rambod were not returned Tuesday. Their office at Eastern Hawthorne Realty was closed for Passover, a sign said.

The tenants, represented by lawyers from Legal Services NYC, say they were the victims of a systematic pattern of harassment, neglect and frivolous housing lawsuits designed to force them out to make room for new tenants paying double the rent.

The group claims the landlords, who bought the buildings in 2009, have neglected to do repairs in black-occupied units.

The defendants have also taken tenants to housing court with falsified claims and left rent checks uncashed in an attempt to evict rent-stabilized residents, the lawsuit asserts.

Black tenants were also forced to get rid of pets and washing machines, the suit says.

Full article in The Daily News, Brooklyn Section (15 April 2014)

Huge Addition to Prospect Heights Building Worries Tenants

Residents of the six-story building at 85 Eastern Parkway were shocked when they learned that their landlord wanted to construct an addition atop the building that would double the size of the structure. The plans were first filed in January and called for a seven-story addition that would up the number of units from 42 to 88. DNAinfo reports that the Department of Buildings has since rejected that application, but the project is by no means dead. In March, the building owner, Mordechai Nagel, sent a letter to tenants regarding the addition, noting that plans are still "at an early feasibility and planning stage," but they should "expect a degree of inconvenience as there always is during construction activity."

The apartments are currently a mix of market-rate and rent-stabilized-units, and many tenants have lived in the building for decades. Tenants are, obviously, very worried about the project, and they've started tracking the development on a tenants association website. Chief among the tenants' concerns are the credentials of the hired architect, Sandor Weiss. In 2002, Weiss was fined $5,000 for not properly reviewing plans before signing off, and DOB records show that he has been disciplined twice for improperly wielding his self-certification powers, which he had to surrender in the past.

The plan for the addition still hasn't been approved by the Department of Buildings, but an alteration permit for the "removal of interior partition and plumbing fixtures" was approved in March. Additionally, permits were approved for the renovation of a first floor apartment in January, but the project was hit with a Stop Work Order in March. Shortly after that, the DOB issued another violation after finding workers doing plumbing in violation of the original SWO. The SWO still stands.

The building sits between Washington and Underhill Avenues across the parkway from the Brooklyn Museum. It was constructed in 1922, but it's not located in a historic district. All of the buildings on the block have a similar aesthetic and the immediate neighbors are roughly the same height as no. 85. But the block (which is oddly long due to the street grid in this area) is bookended by 15-story and 12-story buildings, so a 13-story building wouldn't be too out of place—unless, of course, the addition is some garish glass monstrosity.

Article by Jessica Dailey on Curbed.com (New York) on 10 April 2014

Eastern Parkway Residents Fear 7-Story Apartment Building Addition

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — Plans for a six-story building near Grand Army Plaza to more than double in height have residents worried their home will be disrupted by years of construction.

The owner of 85 Eastern Parkway, a 42-unit complex near Underhill Avenue, has filed an application to build a seven-story addition on top of the building, records show. Tenants of the building called The Martha Washington said they fear being bombarded by noise and dust, and even being moved out of their apartments.

“The whole block is in an uproar,” said 23-year resident Alison Kelley, who walks with a service dog and worries about elevator access to her fourth-floor apartment during construction.

Residents of the mixed market-rate and rent-stabilized building near the Brooklyn Museum first heard about the planned 30,000-square-foot addition when a real estate website wrote about an application building owner Mordechai Nagel and architect Sandor Weiss filed with the Department of Buildings on Jan. 10.

The DOB rejected the application, saying drawings provided were incomplete, DOB records show.

Full article by Rachel Holliday Smith on DNAinfo.com, 10 April 2014