From Common Edge: Delays Undermine Promises of Affordable Housing in Brooklyn (plus new infographic)

From my new essay in Common Edge, headlined Delays Undermine Promises of Affordable Housing in Brooklyn:

The megaproject Atlantic Yards (aka Pacific Park) in Brooklyn was announced in 2003 under the slogan, “Jobs, Housing, and Hoops.” Of 4,500 rental apartments, half would be below-market "affordable housing," memorialized—so it seemed-–in a 2005 agreement that original developer Forest City Ratner signed with the grassroots group ACORN...

That housing promise, to be fulfilled in ten years, was key to gaining political and community support for the 16-tower project, despite concern about subsidies, scale, eminent domain for a basketball arena, and an end-run around democracy. Atlantic Yards, though, faced delays and revisions. As condemnations finally loomed in 2010, a lawyer for targeted property owners argued that a newly extended project deadline, to 2035, vitiated promised benefits. That argument failed. “Whatever the pace may be for the delivery” of such benefits, a state court judge wrote, “the nature of those benefits remains the same.”

That observation has proven hollow…

The article also includes the debut of a new infographic by Ben Keel, detailing not just the affordability “band” for each below-market unit delivered, but the actual cost.

So it shows not just a skew toward middle-income apartments but how they have become more costly over time, even as developers recognize that they can’t ask for the allowable “affordable” rents.

Go here for the rest.