Tenants Worried about Plans to Build Near City Projects
via NYT! When Hassan Adam was growing up in public housing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, his playground was a nearby recreational yard in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, where residents have long played basketball and neighbors hold an annual “family day.” Mr. Adam still lives in the project, and he taught his daughter to ride a bike in the play area.
Local residents voiced their concerns at a meeting in February discussing the N.Y.C.H.A.'s plans for private development inside public housing projects.
But soon, that patch of asphalt at the Alfred E. Smith Houses could be replaced by market-rate apartment buildings. And tenants like Mr. Adam, 37, said they feared what could come next.
“They’ll make our buildings condos,” he said. “They’re trying to move us.”
The New York City Housing Authority, facing one of the most serious financial shortfalls in its history, is for the first time making a major push to lease open land on the grounds of its housing projects to developers to generate revenue.
The authority wants to raise more than $50 million a year on long-term leases for parks, courtyards, parking lots, playgrounds and other property, seeking to address a $6 billion backlog of repairs.
But the plan has stirred deep concern, if not paranoia, among tenants who have been warily eying gentrification in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. The proposal is initially directed at eight housing projects in Manhattan near the waterfront and other prime areas where real estate values have jumped.
The authority has repeatedly told tenants that it has no plans to sell buildings themselves, and that no public housing tenant will be displaced by the new policy.
Still, in a city that teems with real estate anxieties, the tenants harbor their own.
“There’s always an ongoing rumor that Trump is going to buy the buildings,” said Damaris Reyes, 41, a community organizer on the Lower East Side who lives in the Baruch Houses. “If a white man in a suit that no one has seen before walks through the development, the next thing we hear is, ‘They’re looking at the buildings to buy them.’ ”
Tenants also said they were alarmed about the potential loss of open space, especially for children and the elderly.
The plan has not yet been formally adopted by the authority’s board, and approval by the federal government is also required. Furthermore, it is not clear whether developers will flock to lease land for market-rate buildings so close to public housing.
Authority officials have held meetings in recent weeks with tenants and members of the City Council to try to calm them about the plan’s impact.
In his State of the City address last month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the alternative would be to allow public housing buildings “to crumble” or to “knock them down.”
The plan is part of a broader effort to close the authority’s budget gaps that includes raising rents for some tenants and leasing retail space on the ground floor of some buildings.
The authority, landlord to more than 400,000 residents, has a backlog of about 350,000 repair orders. It also has a waiting list of 160,000 families. The authority’s chairman, John B. Rhea, whom Mr. Bloomberg appointed, said his agency needed to pursue innovative strategies to address both an operating deficit of $60 million in its current budget and $6 billion in capital needs.
“This is the single largest opportunity to preserve public housing units and our buildings,” Mr. Rhea said, referring to the proposal to lease the land.
Asked about the fears of tenants, he emphasized that “the plan is not a plan to privatize public housing.”
The authority is proposing 4,000 to 5,000 private apartments on 13 parcels of land at eight projects — about three million square feet in all. Of those apartments, 20 percent or up to 1,000, would be designated as affordable. The eight projects, with a combined population of more than 25,000 people, are Alfred E. Smith, Baruch, Campos Plaza, Fiorello LaGuardia and Meltzer in Lower Manhattan; Carver and Washington on the Upper East Side; and Douglass on the Upper West Side.
Fred Harris, the housing authority’s executive vice president for real estate and development, said officials were looking at projects in other boroughs for similar development sites.
Some public housing advocates acknowledged that the city had few options as it confronts a sharp drop in federal aid — a total of more than $1.5 billion since 2001.
“It’s a tough choice because the money would support the rest of the system,” said Edward Josephson, director of litigation with Legal Services NYC. “If you keep the parking lot and the rest of the project falls into pieces, that’s worse.”
New York has done more than most localities to preserve its public housing. In other cities, high-rise buildings, let alone parking lots, have been sold off or demolished.
Still, the prospect of high-income neighbors at their doorsteps has moved some tenant associations in New York City to hire lawyers and appeal to elected officials to intercede.
A group headed by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of Manhattan and Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of Brooklyn, both Democrats, asked the Bloomberg administration to postpone a request for proposals from developers scheduled to go out by April to allow for more consultation with tenants.
At a raucous tenants’ meeting last month attended by more than 300 people, tenant leaders said they were worried about higher retail prices as stores cater to high-earning newcomers. They said their communities could lose city services for the poor and political clout as ZIP codes become more affluent.
“We’re going to be foreigners in our own homes,” said Aixa O. Torres, the tenants’ president at the Alfred E. Smith Houses, with 12 buildings and nearly 2,000 apartments.
Despite the authority’s assurances, some tenants said they were convinced that the plan was the first step in a process that would lead to their eviction.
“You’re not going to have people who are paying market rent to want to live in the same place as low-income people,” said Thelma R. Yearwood, the residents’ president at Meltzer Tower, a building for elderly people on the Lower East Side that is to lose its only park under the plan. “They’ll find a way to transfer people out of here.”
Dereese Huff, president of the tenant association at Campos Plaza 1, said she favored the plan “if it’s going to help me get windows in my development.”
Jessica Thomas, tenant association president at Fiorello LaGuardia Houses on the Lower East Side near Chinatown, said that her project needed new entrance doors, but that she would oppose the trade-off.
Ms. Thomas, 62, said she had opposed installing racks at LaGuardia for the city’s bike-sharing program because they would be “just a toe in the door” for wealthier newcomers drawn by the growing list of attractions along the nearby East River.
“There’s South Street Seaport,” she said. “They’re building on the waterfront on the F.D.R. Drive. Gorgeous. Now we have Basketball City across the street. They’re connecting to Pier 42. Who wouldn’t want to live here?”
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