Co-Op City, Bronx. Image Credit: NYC HPD
The City has now produced more than 164,000 units or more than 50 percent of the Mayor’s Housing plan to create 300,000 affordable homes by 2026. On April 3, 2020, Housing Preservation and Development announced the preservation of 16,083 affordable homes for New Yorkers. (more…)
Comptroller Stringer announces plan to address City’s growing affordable housing crisis. Image Credit: Susan Watts/Office of New York City Comptroller
Universal Affordable Housing would require 25 percent permanently low-income affordable housing in all new development with ten or more units. On January 29, 2020, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer announced a citywide housing strategy to fundamentally realign the City’s approach to the housing crisis. The strategy, coined Housing We Need, will include a universal requirement for 25 percent permanently low-income affordable housing in all as-of-right developments with at least ten units. (more…)
90 Sands Street Building/Image Credit: Breaking Ground/CPC
The conversion of the former Watchtower hotel will bring 508 residential units to DUMBO, Brooklyn. On February 19, 2020, the City Planning Commission approved an application to rezone a block in DUMBO, Brooklyn from a light manufacturing district to a mixed-use residential and commercial district. The block is bounded by High Street to the north, Sands Street to the south, Jay Street to the east, and Pearl Street to the west. The rezoning would facilitate the conversion of a 29-story former hotel building at 90 Sands Street to a mixed-use residential, commercial, and community facility building. The applicant does not have plans to demolish the existing building or make changes to the building’s height or bulk. The applicant only plans to convert the existing hotel rooms into apartment units. After conversion, the building will have a total of 415 studios and 93 one-bedroom units.
Mayor Bill de Blasio. Image credit: CityLand
The conversion is another step in the City’s plan to address the homelessness crisis. On November 19, 2019, the Mayor’s Office announced its transition into the second phase of a plan to convert temporary homeless shelters into permanently affordable housing units. According to the Mayor’s Office, this plan will help not-for-profit housing developers acquire and rehabilitate an additional 14 residential “cluster site” buildings, currently being used to house homeless families, and convert them into over 200 permanent affordable housing units for the homeless. (more…)
Rendering of the 776-780 Myrtle Avenue development as presented throughout the ULURP process; however, there may be minor aesthetic changes made. / Image Credit: Urban Architectural Initiatives
The new nine-story building would bring approximately 36 housing units for the formerly homeless. On October 17, 2019, the City Council voted to approve a land use application to facilitate the construction of a new nine-story mixed-use residential and commercial building on three vacant City-owned lots at 776-780 Myrtle Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. To facilitate the project, the application asks for two land use actions. First, the three City-owned vacant lots will be transferred to IMPACCT Brooklyn to develop the building. Second, the development will take advantage of the Urban Development Action Area Program property tax exemption for new development on formerly City-owned land. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development, IMPACCT Brooklyn, and Urban Architectural Initiatives are the applicants.
On August 28, 2019, the City Planning Commission voted to approve the application. For CityLand’s prior coverage on this decision, click here.
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