The impact of delay: 622 Pacific got its Temporary Certificate of Occupancy Oct. 14. The Housing Lottery won't close until Jan. 18. Then comes processing.

In an issue brief last week, Brutal Bureaucracy (also embedded below), the Citizens Housing and Planning Council concluded that it takes way too long to get people into affordable housing. From the report's Key Findings:

• On average it takes 371 days to fill all the units in a NYC housing lottery, despite units being available and ready for occupancy.
• Project variables such as building size, AMI level, or number of applications received are not correlated with prolonged rent-up times.
• One in three housing lotteries did not begin until months after a building was already ready for occupancy, resulting in units sitting empty despite being ready to house New Yorkers.
• The Mayor's Management Report does not measure the time it takes to rent up the affordable housing units that HPD finances and builds.

Indeed, 662 Pacific St. (Plank Road, or B15) qualifies as among those one in three buildings. It got its first Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO) on Oct. 14, including residential floors 6-15 and 27-28, and got a second TCO for the building's full residential section on Oct. 28. (The lower floors will be a middle school.)

Market-rate tenants are already there. But, as I wrote, only yesterday did the building appear on the city's Housing Connect lottery portal for middle-income affordable units, with applications due by Jan. 18, 2022. After that it will presumably take time to vet the applications, so it should be at least a few more months before those "affordable" units are occupied. 

More on the building

Apparently some news (er, stenography) outlets got a press release yesterday, such as 6 sq ft:

“Pacific Park prides itself on being a mixed-income community welcoming people from all backgrounds and walks of life,” Alexander Brodsky of the Brodsky Organization said. “The rent stabilized units at Plank Road will allow us to provide residents a greater value than they could find at market rate, and enhance the diverse community within the building and the neighborhood as a whole.”

Patch also had an article, without the press release.

What's needed

What the solution? According to the CHPC:

City agencies must: evaluate the administrative burden of their programs; set performance goals and measure progress over time; work with State and Federal government to streamline regulations; and seek alternative methods (such as using administrative data) to collect and verify eligibility information.

How long does it take to fill up?

The report analyzes “Rent-Up Time”: the length of time between the TCO Date and the date the final unit in the project is leased. 

As the chart from the report shows, rent-up times vary greatly. While 7% of projects were rented up in less than 90 days and 21% of projects within 4-6 months, 73% of lotteries took more than six months to completely rent up, and 13% took more than two years.

While researchers heard that "anecdotally, low-income units rent up more quickly but that moderate-income units take longer"--confirmed to my knowledge in the case of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park buildings like 535 Carlton Ave. and 38 Sixth Ave.--the report found, surprisingly, that average Area Median Income (AMI) level of projects was not correlated with rent-up time. 

However, there's a caveat: "It is important to note that this analysis relies on average project AMI and average rent-up time for the project overall, but more detailed data at a unit level could reveal a different pattern." I suspect it might.