The city is looking to develop 16 vacant lots in East New York into townhouses with affordable housing, NY YIMBY reports. If construction plans are approved, the new buildings will be a part of the city's New Infill Home Ownership Opportunities Program (NIHOP), where developers are invited to build on the property in coordination with the city, but offer one-third of the developed units as affordable housing.
The planned townhouses would be between 2,800 square feet and 4,500 square feet in size and rise three to four stories high. Each of the townhouses will have three or four apartments as well. Jose Carballo is the architect for the project, and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is listed as the developer. The city attempted to develop these empty lots once before in 2009, with Dabar Development Partners was in talks to build 22 townhouses, but the plan fell through with the impact of the financial crisis.
Since this section of East New York is not part of Mayor de Blasio's grand plans for rezoning the neighborhood, HPD would not be subject to the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) police, which is currently under public review, and essentially asks that developers seeking zoning changes for construction also have to provide a quarter of their development as permanent affordable housing.
The city would sell or rent the units in each townhouse through a lottery system, with the affordable homes open to families of four earning 80 percent of the area median income, which is $69,050, but the NY YIMBY investigation reveals that even that amount will be unaffordable for working class families in East New York who earn about $37,000 for a family of four.
This type of housing had seen another avatar under the Bloomberg administration and was then called the New Foundations program. One of the buildings constructed through that program was Glenmore Gardens, where five homes sold for $329,000 each.
· City's Plan To Subsidize Townhomes In East New York Leaves Locals Out Of The Equation [NY YIMBY]
· East New York Archives [Curbed]
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