Is the Atlantic Ave. Mixed-Use Plan asking for too much (as per City Journal & the Real Deal)? It doesn't even seek the affordability CM Hudson negotiated last year.
Charts from NYC HPD |
The most generous [proposed zoning], along Atlantic Avenue, would rezone to a residential floor area ratio (FAR) of 9.0. (The FAR is the amount of total floor space allowed in a building, relative to the area of the lot. A FAR of 9.0 means that on a 10,000-square-foot lot, 90,000 square feet of multistory housing is permitted.) Such buildings could be up to 185 feet in height. On the side streets off Atlantic, permitted FARs and building heights would be lower.Given high rents, he suggests the city should simply upzone:
Allowing for ground-floor and second-story nonresidential space, the plan envisions up to 4,000 new housing units being constructed in the area... But is that actually possible?
If the city simply allowed apartment buildings, the 4,000 units would likely materialize within a few years. Sadly, however, the city doesn’t intend simply to allow apartment buildings. Instead, the rezoned area would be subject to the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) Program, which requires buildings larger than ten units to allocate between 20 percent and 30 percent of units to low-income households (the different percentages of required affordable units are based on the targeted income levels). The city projects that of the 4,000 new units, 1,150 to 1,550 will be “affordable.”
This is where the whole enterprise takes on an air of unreality. Units mandated at rents affordable to low-income households can’t pay for their own construction. That burden then falls on the remaining market-rate units. Real estate developers still expect a competitive return on their investment; they won’t subsidize the affordable units unless they’re compensated in some way.
For a time, the fortuitous melding of high market rents and generous tax benefits in this particular neighborhood made new private, mixed-income MIH housing feasible. For example, a site at 1010 Pacific St., currently under construction, was rezoned to require MIH in 2019 and “grandfathered” under the expiring 421(a) legislation. It would provide 52 of a total 175 units as affordable housing. But in the post–421(a) era, that’s no longer true.Also fortuitous: a spot rezoning in which the applicant "contemplated" 25% units affordable at 60% of AMI, but instead could deliver 30% of the building at 80% of AMI. That translates to 1-bedroom units listed at $1,681, well below the upper (2022) guideline of $2,002.
What's next
At a minimum, the administration needs to suggest a Plan B that allows housing construction even if the legislature fails to reinstate the 421(a) tax exemption. If that breaks the “consensus,” then it’s telling: perhaps the plan all along was to take the city’s money to build the promised 100 percent affordable housing on two city-owned sites and let the rest of the neighborhood continue to stagnate. That’s not a deal the city should accept.
Presumably this is not the only rezoning where either a 421-a replacement or--even more difficult--a citywide revamp of tax policy is needed.
Keep in mind that New York State is already offering a 421-a equivalent to developers in Gowanus, and something like that may be under consideration for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park.
It ain't over. And if 421-a or its equivalent returns, the question shouldn't be whether to include affordable housing, but how much, and at what levels, given the example set by private rezonings.
In The Real Deal
In Zoning wars: City’s developers, future at mercy of politics, the Real Deal's Erik Engquist Oct. 16 wrote:
Seeds of their prosperity or decline will be laid in the next year as rezonings play out along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, around four Metro-North stations in the Bronx, in Manhattan’s Garment Districtand perhaps in western Queens.Regarding Atlantic Avenue
Zoning largely dictates what gets built... But what determines zoning? Politics, ideology and ignorance. Mostly politics.
Engquist writes:
Wait a sec. It's not just political theater but a recognition of the complex reality. Engquist doesn't mention what was negotiated in the private rezonings, but writes:Take Atlantic Avenue. City planners are optimistic because Council member Hudson initiated the process. Upon taking office, she was confronted with applications from developers seeking spot rezonings to replace underperforming properties with apartments. Hudson realized a proactive, sweeping rezoning made more sense than reacting to proposals one by one.
Yet when the Adams administration released the plan, she immediately distanced herself from it. That doesn’t mean she’s against it. This is part of the political theater essential to New York City rezonings.
But if she responds by demanding more affordability than the market and the city can subsidize, little housing will be built. East New York is a case study.
OK, but East New York is not Prospect Heights/Crown Heights/Bedford-Stuyvesant. And the city's unwillingness to demand the affordability to which developers have already agreed to in private rezonings means that Hudson has to play catch-up.
Is it unrealistic for her and colleague Chi Ossé to demand that publicly-owned sites be used for 100% affordable housing, that some private buildings contain 50% affordable units, and that the city's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) be revised toward deeper affordability?
Maybe. Surely some of that is a negotiating position. But to defend upzoning without asking more from developers is "politics" too.
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