HPD-funded affordable housing projects approved without opposition. On November 30, 2010, the City Council approved separate proposals by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to allow private developers to build two permanently affordable supportive housing projects on city-owned properties in the East Village.

HPD selected the Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association (LESPMHA) to develop a 46-unit eight-story building on a vacant site at 535 East 11th Street, and the Phipps Houses Group to build a 45-unit five-story building on a site occupied by a vacant four-story building at 706 East 9th Street. Both projects will provide housing for formerly homeless individuals with psychiatric disabilities.

LESPMHA’s project includes 27 studio apartments for formerly homeless individuals who will pay 30 percent of their income as rent, eighteen studio apartments for single adults earning 60 percent or less of the area median income, and a two-bedroom apartment for a superintendent. LESPMHA will also provide a public passageway along the lot’s eastern edge to Joseph C. Sauer Park, bordering the project to the north along East 12th Street.

Phipps plans to rehabilitate the existing four-story structure on East 9th Street before building a one-story rooftop addition. The project will provide 28 studio apartments for homeless young adults diagnosed with a mental illness, twelve one-bedroom apartments for young single adults with children, and four studio apartments for young adults without a diagnosis.  The building’s superintendent will occupy a two-bedroom apartment.  All the units, with the exception of the superintendent’s, would be permanently affordable for households earning 60 percent or less of the area median income. The project also will have ground floor community facility space and 2,338 sq.ft. of accessible open space.

The proposals were met with no opposition during their public review. The City Planning Commission unanimously approved the projects, and the Council’s Planning, Dispositions & Concessions Subcommittee followed suit. The full Council approved the projects with only recently sworn-in Council Member Ruben Wills abstaining.

ULURP Process:

Lead Agency: HPD, Neg. Decs.
Comm Bd.: MN 3, App’d, 37-0-0 & 38-0-0
Boro. Pres.: App’d
CPC: App’d, 13-0-0
Council: App’d, 46-0-1

Council: 535 East 11th St. (C 100452 HAM – UDAAP); 706 East 9th St. (C 100453 HAM – UDAAP) (Nov. 30, 2010) (Architects: Edelman Sultan Knox Wood; SLCE Architects).