Twelve-story facility will house 263 former homeless and provide on-site supportive services. On June 29, 2006, HPD and Common Ground, a not-for-profit that provides housing services for the homeless, obtained City Council approval for a 12-story housing facility to be located on East Houston at Pitt Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The site contains the Milliken Clubhouse building, a former Boys’ Club of New York location, which has sat vacant since 2003.

Common Ground currently operates four housing facilities for the formerly homeless in Manhattan and has a fifth facility under construction in downtown Brooklyn. Its Times Square Hotel facility at West 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue houses 652 people and is the largest homeless housing facility in the country. All its facilities provide onsite social services, job training, and medical facilities, and target persons considered by Common Ground to be most at risk for homelessness, like children leaving foster care and substance abusers.

At the East Houston site, Common Ground proposed to demolish the Milliken Clubhouse and construct a 99,158-square-foot project for 263 persons, requiring a special permit to exceed the permitted floor area by 46,526 sq.ft. The 12- story facility will have 45 suites for formerly homeless youth and former foster care children on the second and third floors, and 207 individual rooms for adults with AIDS, mental illness and substance abuse problems on the fourth through twelfth stories. It will also house onsite job training, educational programs and physical and mental health medical facilities. (more…)

HPD obtains approval for four-story housing project with 19 studio apartments. On August 17, 2005, the City Council approved HPD’s application for the construction of a four-story, low-income housing project for the mentally ill on four vacant lots in East New York, Brooklyn. The 7,600-square-foot site, comprised of four lots at 433 – 441 DeWitt Avenue at Malta Street, is located on a residential block, containing other HPD projects, privately- owned residences and a few vacant City-owned lots. The proposal, a 13,440-square-foot building with 19 studio apartments, was approved in 2004 by the Planning Commission, but HPD withdrew the application prior to the City Council’s vote. HPD re-applied for development approval in 2005.

PSCH Inc., a not-for-profit corporation that provides health care, rehabilitative services, job training and housing to persons with developmental and psychiatric disabilities, will manage the project. The project will provide transitional housing to mentally-ill patients who have shown the ability to live within the community yet are in need of supportive services to complete the transition. Patients will stay within the facility for 18 to 24 months and PSCH will provide educational, vocational and medical services on site. (more…)

90 Sands Street Building/Image Credit: Breaking Ground/CPC

The building conversion will bring 508 supportive and affordable residential units to DUMBO. On March 13, 2020, the City Council Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises approved an application to facilitate the conversion of a 29-story former hotel building at 90 Sands Street. The building would be converted into a mixed-use residential use and community facility building with a future possibility for commercial use. To facilitate the conversion, the applicant, Breaking Ground, is proposing to rezone Brooklyn Block 87, which comprises of 90 Sands Street and 175 Pearl Street, from a manufacturing zoning district to a special mixed-use district that allows residential use and to designate the block as a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing area. Brooklyn Block 87 is bounded by High Street to the north, Sands Street to the south, Jay Street to the east, and Pearl Street to the west. For CityLand’s prior coverage on the application, click here.

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Council Member Inez Barron/Image Credit: John McCarten

The development will bring 503 permanent housing units, both affordable and supportive, to East New York. On December 10, 2019, the City Council approved a land use application for the development of four mixed-use buildings to replace a three-story homeless shelter at 515 Blake Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn. The buildings will be a combination of residential use, commercial use, and community facilities. The land use application, submitted by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, includes a rezoning to a residential district that allows taller and wider buildings to support the project’s size, a transfer of formerly City-owned land to HELP-USA, the project’s developer, a modification of bulk regulations, and a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing designation. The Council modified the project from providing temporary and permanent housing to providing only permanent housing.

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Borinquen Court’s Main Entrance. Image credit: West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, Inc.

West Side Federation will build new units adjacent to an existing, low-income residential building and add additional community and commercial space.  On August 13, 2015, the City Council approved West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure application to build a development around the pre-existing Borinquen Court building, which is a low-income residential building geared towards senior citizens and physically-disabled individuals.  The development would be located in Council District 8—represented by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito—on property bounded by Third Avenue, Alexander Avenue, 138th Street, and 139th Street in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.  The additions would yield a three-winged structure with Borinquen Court at the center, a 122-unit building attached to its west end, and a 56-unit building attached to its east end.

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