Well, the circle is completing, as others recognize that "affordable," income-targeted units at the 662 Pacific (B15, aka Plank Road) tower are aimed at middle-income households
From Brownstoner yesterday, Don’t Call It Affordable Housing: Lottery Opens for Pacific Park Tower in Prospect Heights
It's all "affordable" now, I wrote in early 2015. Now, maybe less so.
The developer, The Brodsky Organization, has applied for a tax break under the state’s 421-a program and as a result, the building has income-targeted, rent-stabilized units whose lottery launched last week. Interestingly, Brodsky is not calling them “affordable” but rather “middle income.”
Indeed, as I wrote nearly six years ago about the evolving rhetoric in the project,, for the first few years after Atlantic Yards was announced, the developer and project supporters used a more precise, if less self-serving, locution: "affordable and middle-income housing."
The reticence to use the term "affordable" for below-market but relatively high-priced units likely reflected the understanding that a subsidized, income-linked unit that now rents for more than $3,000 fits few New Yorkers' notions of "affordable."
Only later was it all generalized as "affordable," which papers over the vast differences in expected rents bit serves as a magic mantra in an ever more expensive city.
So it's all been muddied. The Atlantic Yards "affordable housing" was sold to, and supported by, community groups like ACORN that represent poor and working-class people, not middle-income residents.
It's all "affordable" now, I wrote in early 2015. Now, maybe less so.
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