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

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)

Defining ‘affordability’ upward

By Ryan Hutchins

It was late April and Helen Rosenthal—Upper West Side progressive, City Council freshman—was not pleased with what she was hearing.

TF Cornerstone had brought plans for its latest Manhattan megaproject, with more than 1,000 units in Hell’s Kitchen, to the City Council’s Land Use Committee for approval. Planning officials clearly hadn’t wrung enough value out of the developer, Rosenthal believed, and decided more could be done.

And so it was. The Council generally defers to the local members on such matters, so Rosenthal was able to cut a deal with TF Cornerstone. It meant more “affordable” housing, to the tune of 10,000 square feet, and a guarantee that a preschool would be built on the site, which is now expected to cover some 900,000 square feet.

But Rosenthal looked at the neighborhood surrounding the West 57th Street development and thought it wasn’t enough. She felt there was a need for moderate-income housing that could go to people who live in the community now. Extell Development’s massive Riverside Center South project on the Hudson River, between West 59th and 72nd streets, is already slated to include hundreds of units for lower-income families.

So, in an unusual move, Rosenthal told TF Cornerstone that the threshold to qualify for the least-expensive units—the ones that would be set-aside for some of the poorest New Yorkers—should be raised.

She increased the eligibility cut-off from 40 percent of area median income, or A.M.I., to 60 percent. That means a family of four making about $33,500 per year would have met the threshold under the original plan, but that same family would need to make at least $50,300 to qualify under Rosenthal’s revisions.

“I said to the developer, ‘we’re done with the [40] percent lower income,’” Rosenthal recalled recently as we lunched at a Lenny’s near City Hall. “‘We’re giving you a break, because we’re going to make it at 60 percent A.M.I., not [40] percent. So you’re going to get a little more rent from these people.’”

That allowed her to negotiate more “affordable” units for much-higher-income families. Rosenthal told the developer to dedicate 10,000 square feet, or about 20 more units, for moderate-income households. She said all those apartments had to be big enough for families. “I don’t want any single-bedroom ones,” she said. Those new units will be dedicated to households making between 175 percent and 230 percent of the A.M.I.

Those numbers are so high they’re off the chart in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing plan, quite literally. The plan defines “middle income” up to 165 percent. What does that actually mean? The range encompasses families of four earning between $147,000 and $193,000 per year.

Full article on Capital (30 June 2014)

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)

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)

Adding new floors atop old buildings (New York Times) - October 1999

And as certain areas of the city have been rezoned from commercial to residential use, Mr. Visconti said, developers find it feasible -- particularly in lower Manhattan where many older buildings retain unused development rights -- ''to buy buildings and add two, three or whatever the lot will yield in the way of additional floor area.''

The phenomenon has generated considerable controversy, particularly from neighbors of buildings experiencing unanticipated growth spurts and, in some cases, people already living in the buildings.

There are immediate concerns, like the din of construction, fear of falling debris and fire safety; and longer-term issues, like access to light and air, the structural integrity of the old building, the historic character of the community and, in grittier districts, the frustration that ''there goes the neighborhood'' (upscale).

Not to mention sudden loss of that precious commodity: view.

Full article