Strange bedfellows: Behind that Atlantic Yards alliance of Bertha Lewis (then of NY ACORN) and Mayor Mike Bloomberg

OK, then explain this (not-Photoshopped) 2005 pic of NYCC predecessor ACORN's Executive Director Bertha Lewis and Mike. (Atlantic Yards made strange bedfellows.) https://t.co/vzJcFelTMI pic.twitter.com/PNgexXBsAG

— Eric McClure (@EricMcClureBK) February 17, 2020

Explanation: Bertha is no longer on the payroll and she is pissed.

— Aaron Naparstek (@Naparstek) February 17, 2020

Yes, Atlantic Yards made strange bedfellows. But it was a little more complicated than a payroll issue.

During a time when the Bloomberg administration was unwilling to require affordable housing as part of rezonings (see: Downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, Park Slope's Fourth Avenue) that delivered enormous benefit to landowners, Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN, and a founder of the Working Families Party, made a strategic alliance with Forest City Ratner.

The developer was willing to promise--if not truly commit to--a significant amount of affordable housing, in exchange for an enormous increase in building square footage--essentially a private rezoning. So support from ACORN and other "community" allies helped Ratner gain New York State's override of zoning, as well as other public benefits, including direct subsidies, tax breaks, and the use (and threat) of eminent domain.

Signing the MOU

Forest City and ACORN formalized the 50/50 housing deal--50% affordable, 50% market, for 4500 rental units--on May 19, 2005, signing a Memorandum of Understanding at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 18 months before the project was officially approved. (See document at bottom.)

Developer Bruce Ratner estimated arena and apartment construction would begin September 2006, with the first tower finished in 2008. He then blithely claimed, "it will take probably another five or six years to complete all the housing” or, until 2014. That would have been faster even than the ten-year timetable professed when the project was announced in December 2003.

Half the apartments would be studios and one-bedroom units, proclaimed a buoyant Lewis, the rest two- and three-bedrooms, while typically "you don't even have 20 percent that are three bedrooms." (Actually, the ratio would apply to square footage, not unit count, which meant fewer large apartments.) "We believe we can keep black and brown working folks right here in Downtown Brooklyn," Lewis said.

"I'm getting ready to pay my debt, and here it is!" she declared, turning to Bloomberg. A Brooklyn Paper photo by Tom Callan, as shown in the tweet, captured the (black, radical) activist, wearing a blue tunic, her hair in tight braids, bussing the reluctant (white, businessman) mayor on the lips, their mouths firmly closed, her large right hand palming Bloomberg's face.

She also kissed developer Bruce Ratner, albeit without that guiding hand.

"Atlantic Yards Project Reaches First Base," quipped the real estate website Curbed. (Fun fact: Joey Arak, who wrote the post, would by 2015 do public relations work for the first Pacific Park condo. Curbed, acquired by the media company Vox in 2013, would dial back such snark.)

To left-wing political analyst Doug Ireland, "ACORN's Judas Kiss" would boost the mayor’s re-election bid. Indeed, Lewis's Working Families Party (WFP) would avoid the Democratic primary; after Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer won the nomination, the party endorsed him but denied him a coveted ballot line.

The WFP, similarly strategic in a Yonkers state Senate district just above the Bronx, had endorsed incumbent Republican State Sen. Nick Spano, "an opportunist hack" (to Ireland) "over a very progressive grassroots black woman." Spano prevailed narrowly. (That black legislator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, would later get elected, with the WFP neutral, and become Senate Majority Leader.)

About the housing promise

The new housing pledge wasn't unique—the city's existing 50/30/20 program had financed 700 units—noted Alyssa Katz in the urban affairs magazine City Limits. But ACORN aimed "to devote most of the middle-income units to households earning significantly less" than the maximum allowed.

Well, maybe. If Forest City "gave ACORN pretty much everything it asked for," as then-Observer reporter Matthew Schuerman suggested, the developer regained it in the fine print. (Schuerman was otherwise quite astute on Atlantic Yards.)

News reports highlighted the first of the MOU's three scenarios, which assigned 900 apartments to the poor, 450 each in two moderate-income categories (with a four-person household earning nearly $63,000), and 450 in one middle-income category. In other words, the scenario that helped those who most needed housing.

The low-income range was 30 to 50 percent of Area Median Income, or AMI, while in the first scenario moderate-income units would be in two "bands," 60 to 80 percent of AMI and 80 to 100 percent of AMI, with middle-income units at 100 to 140 percent of AMI. In the third scenario, the single moderate-income category was 60 to 100 percent of AMI, while the middle-income "bands" would be 100 to 140 percent and then 140 to 160 percent of AMI. (At that point, 100 percent of AMI, for a four-person household was $62,800. In 2019, it was $106,700! )

The fine print, however, allowed 450 of those moderate-income units to shift upward in rent, enabling 900 middle-income units. A two-bedroom could, as of that year, cost $2,355 a month, which, however below market-rate, was kryptonite to many ACORN members. (As of 2019, a two-bedroom at 165 percent of AMI could rent for $3,904.)

The MOU contained an escape hatch that would demolish the "50% affordable" notion: "If the projected number of residential units should increase for any reason the Developer determines to be economically necessary, both the Developer and ACORN will work towards developing a program that follows the same guidelines."

The document also proposed, vaguely, that Forest City and ACORN would work to develop 600 to 1000 “affordable for-sale units,” albeit to those better-off than ACORN's constituency. (Those have not arrived, and there's no announced plan to deliver them.)

Still, the Times conclusorily reported that the pact "serves to marginalize… remaining political opponents, residents of the area who say they will be displaced." Such rhetoric confirmed policy analyst Julia Vitullo-Martin's take: "Affordable housing is the Trojan Horse these days on big bad projects that shouldn't get done."

The pragmatic take

As long as the MOU was followed, ACORN had to "take reasonable steps to publicly support the Project." It also promised ACORN institutional prominence. Though Lewis had cited more than 1,000 "low-income New Yorkers" living in homes ACORN owned or managed, these 2,250 apartments signaled a major step.

So, in a City Limits op-ed 7/31/06, Lewis stressed pragmatism; the complicated project and site made affordable housing "extraordinarily expensive," requiring density, direct subsidies, and cross-subsidies from market-rate units.

Opponents might "point to its flaws," Lewis wrote, but "in an era of increasing housing segregation, Atlantic Yards will be one of the only neighborhoods in Brooklyn where families of all backgrounds will be able to really live and grow together.” "Half of all affordable rental units," Lewis wrote inaccurately, "will be two- and three-bedroom units."

Getting it built

The first tower (B2, 461 Dean), to be built via untested modular construction, was not only delayed, it didn’t meet Forest City’s 2005 promise of 50 percent (in floor area) for family-sized affordable units.

After I reported that, among the 175 income-restricted units, there’d be just 20 two-bedrooms, and no three-bedrooms, Council Member Letitia James pressed the developer . "If I'm wrong," Forest City’s Jane Marshall replied, in her strategically ditsy style, "it's just because I'm not specifically, in detail, knowledgeable about it.”

Less than two months later, in March 2012, she announced there’d be 35 affordable two-bedroom units—an improvement, but still far from the pledge.

That complicated history later emerged via my Freedom of Information Law request. In January 2012, NYC Housing Development Corporation executive Joan Tally sent a frosty letter to the ESDC's Hankin, saying the Forest City planned fewer family-sized units than previously proposed.

To compromise, Tally wrote, the city sought at least 20 percent, "which the Developer has thus far rejected." Tally asked Forest City to swap 15 one-bedroom affordable units for two-bedrooms, aimed at middle-income households, earning either 120 percent or 150 percent of AMI. Forest City agreed, but only if all 15 apartments skewed to the higher-income cohort, thus saving half of a $2 million "funding gap." The new units would rent for $3,012.

Lewis still on board

In the midst of this, Lewis stayed positive. “You will see the first building go into the ground this year," Lewis told City Limits 2/15/12. "If I didn’t believe [in this project] and to put faith with works, then what’s the point? No, I’m a true believer, so that’s why I’ve got to dig in every month.”

Six months later, at a public hearing for $92 million in tax-exempt bonds, Lewis, typically combative, blamed opponents for "a seven-year delay," during which AMI rose, and accused public agencies of reneging on promises.

Her ally Ismene Speliotis, formerly ACORN's housing head, but then (and now) leading the Mutual Housing Association of New York (MHANY), wearily called for more affordability and larger apartments, helping build "a more diverse, and more well-rounded community.”

Five months later, a groundbreaking ceremony drew a crowd (including Bloomberg) to a tent off Dean Street, with a chassis--no finished apartment section—on view. "This is a promise made and a promise kept, the beginning of the most progressive affordable housing program in our city's and country's history," claimed Lewis, skating over B2's actual affordability and its delays.

The next tower

After more housing delays and the pending transfer of a majority of the project to Greenland USA, a new plan emerged, under Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo: two "100% affordable" buildings, albeit skewed to middle-income households, far from that MOU that Lewis had negotiated.

As the groundbreaking for 535 Carlton loomed, the developers launched PacificParkBrooklyn.com, dubbed "Brooklyn's newest neighborhood.” It promised an "impeccable variety of rental apartments affordable to low, moderate and middle-income New Yorkers." The event was held inside a tent, with ersatz street signs for "535 Carlton" and "Pacific Park." A crossover menu featured dim sum and "Brooklyn brunch," including Doughnut Plant.

The mayor got his photo op. "There are very few phrases I like better than '100 percent affordable housing,'" de Blasio declared, "so this program is off to a good start." The tower symbolized "what we intend to do with our affordable housing plan over and over and over and over." When I asked about the middle-income skew, the mayor was evasive: "Here, the original vision, in terms of tiered income scale, we intend to achieve."

The presence of Chinese journalists and the Deputy Consul General signaled high stakes for Greenland. Lewis, taking the stage, made a stage bow to de Blasio and to Zhang Yuliang, CEO of Shanghai-based Greenland Holding Group. "To the People's Republic of China," she said in a slight Charlie Chan accent, "welcome to the People's Republic of Brooklyn!”

Lewis praised Forest City: "Bruce and MaryAnne never ever ever ever gave up. They're truly development gangsta." In a press release, Jonathan Westin, Director of ACORN successor New York Communities for Change, called it "a testament to what's possible, in terms of real affordability for New Yorkers."

Times change

But the affordability wasn't so real. Later, Westin would decry "City Hall's focus on building a fake 300k [affordable] units." I challenged him a few times regarding his criticism of city policies after praising 535 Carlton, but he didn’t respond. At the June 2017 grand opening for 535 Carlton, though, he and Lewis—by then estranged from de Blasio—were absent.

If they're estranged from de Blasio, they're even farther from Bloomberg. That said, MHANY, led by Speliotis, is still managing the intake for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park affordable housing, and surely not only wants it to succeed, but also to serve those who need it most.

There's a big pipeline of supply left, and that Memorandum of Understanding surely won't be fellowed. Instead, the applicable subsidy regime will prevail. Under the current Affordable New York program, there are three options, likely to apply to the two buildings under construction, B4 and B15.

Option A has 20% low-income units and 5% middle-income units. Option B has 10% low-income units, albeit at a higher AMI, and 20% middle-income units. Option C has 30% middle-income units, at 130% of AMI.

After that, who knows--there could be special negotiations for each building, especially if one is 50% affordable and another 100% affordable. Lewis may not be at the ceremonies. But she deserves some credit: for getting the affordable pledge, and for giving the developer some slack.