Doing a Number on Atlantic Yards
That’s news—assuming that “first-time homeowners” would be low- or middle-income families. In the agreement signed last May, Ratner and ACORN said only that they would “work on a program to develop affordable for-sale units, which are intended to be in the range of 600 to 1,000 units.”
Sounds like things are firming up. ACORN spokesman Jonathan Rosen told us today: “We feel good that we have locked in 50-50 affordable in rentals and that we are on track to do 600 to 1,000 affordable ownership units on or off site and more likely a combination of the two.”
Let’s say ACORN gets 600 affordable condos on the site itself, on top of the 2,250 affordable rental units that are clearly promised in the agreement. In the grand scheme of things, we don’t think that 2,850 affordable apartments have been built in one spot in this city since 1976. That was Starrett City—which is so far out it can hardly be considered New York.
Out of the 7,300 condos and rentals now anticipated for the site itself, that means almost 40 percent will be affordable, which is what Schaefer Landing is doing on the Williamsburg waterfront (40 percent low-income rentals, 60 percent luxury condos). Rosen for one said that the 7,300 number will likely fall during the state review process, while the affordable number will stay relatively level. Still, if this development works out to any wee bit less than 50 percent affordable, we will never hear the end of it, because proponents have often used that number to tout the project. Even as recently as last night, ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis told reporters, "If this project happens in whatever way the state and the city decide it’s going to happen, it’s 50-50 baby. That’s all we know. I don’t care what configuration it’s in. It’s 50-50. That’s the story."
Ratner is getting a lot of financial help on this one, but just today we ran a story about developers who get no or reduced taxes for building 100 percent luxury condos. (We always come around to talking about ourselves in the end.)
-Matthew Schuerman
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As the article linked below will tell you (it will appear in the November 2006, Stetson Law Review), housing now enjoys--not minimum scrutiny any longer--but rather, direct scrutiny. An involuntary deprivation must now articulately facilitate a frequent government purpose. That is a higher level than minimum scrutiny, under which an involuntary deprivation of housing need only bear a rational relationship to a legitimate government purpose.
The Ratner project is going forward only because eminent domain is exercised under minimum scrutiny. However, the project fails to meet the direct scrutiny standard.
If you have a lawyer who has the brains to challenge the eminent domain action on the basis that housing enjoys direct scrutiny, that will be the end of the threat.
Cordially yours,
John Ryskamp
Ryskamp, John Henry, "Housing in the New Constitution" (December 29, 2005). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=562521 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.562521
What's up with the slight against Starrett City? Whether it's in East New York, Wakefield, Tottenville, or Times Square, it's all NYC.
Would there be 600 affordable condos on the site itself, on top of the 2250 affordable rental units? If so, the only way to get 40% affordable onsite is for the total number of units to remain at 7300. That means that the number of previously-announced market-rate condos would have to decline from 2800 to 2200. If the 600 onsite affordable condos were added to the current total units of 7300, the affordability numbers onsite would be 2850 (2250 rentals + 600 condos) out of 7900 (7300+600), or 36%.
But it's more likely that the 600 to 1000 affordable condos would be built offsite at St. Mary's Hospital in Crown Heights, which could accommodate up to 800 units, as noted in the Daily News article linked from here.
I don't really understand the debate over how many of the units will be affordable, how many will be low-income, how many will be off-site, how many will be on-site. That is all on the margins. The city and Brooklyn in particular have a great need for affordable housing. If Ratner builds 1,500 or 5,000 units, it's still a big improvement or zero.
This is not a debate over affordable housing or eminent domain. This is about local residents not wanting a huge project built in their neighborhood. The number of people and marginal businesses to be displaced is small and inconsequential. The new sentimentality about the Underberg is comical. So are the sob stories about businessmen who survived some Communist regime only to be faced with eminent domain.
The ONLY legitimate argument about this project--and it is very legitimate--is its size. The rest of it is NIMBY disguised as high-minded politics.
The scale of the project and the amount of affordable housing are connected. Ratner added more market-rate units to make the project profitable enough to "afford" building the affordable housing. Typically, developers get a zoning bonus for building affordable housing. This project is outside of city zoning, but the state agency in charge likely sees the affordable housing as a reason to endorse the scale. This should've been argued out in public. And the amount of affordable housing is *not* a big improvement on zero if it could've been achieved in a better way. How much do you think fixing the traffic problem such an out-of-scale project will cost?