Arbor House, a 124-unit affordable housing complex in the Bronx, embraced green building practices.

New York City's public housing complexes are small cities unto themselves, sealed off from the grid and flow of surrounding streets, pinwheels of bricks and concrete with scant patches of green. Built in 1956, Forest Houses, a 46-building New York City Housing Authority complex in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, is characteristic of its era. Besides the fact that the buildings top out at two stories, they do not relate to their immediate environment, let alone the environment.

More than 50 years later, affordable housing remains one of the city's greatest challenges (if not its greatest). The architecture, on the other hand, has improved considerably. Arbor House, a privately-owned 124-unit, housing complex that abuts Forest Houses, opened today at 770 East 166th Street. It boasts not only energy-efficient features and a living green wall, but also a 10,000 square foot hydroponic rooftop farm.

The living green wall.

"This building is incredibly advanced, it's at the forefront of green and affordable housing," RuthAnne Visnauskas, deputy commission of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development told The Observer. "It uses recycled materials and has been built with a big focus on air quality, which is really important for areas with high asthma."

Built via a public-private partnership between NYCHA, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Blue Sea Development, Arbor House is the result of a program that pairs dilapidated and vacant NYCHA land with private developers to create affordable housing. Since 2004, the program has produced some 2,000 units and has another 2,000 under construction and in pre-development in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Besides the living wall and the rooftop hydroponic farm, Arbor House has other features more commonly found in luxury developments than low-income housing: it's LEED platinum certified, has air-filtration systems, low and zero VOC finishes, indoor and outdoor exercise areas, and was built with local and recycled products. The eight-story building also has easily-accessible, windowed stairwells to encourage residents to take the stairs and thus increase their daily exercise.

The building's 124 rental units—16 studios, 33 one-bedrooms and 75 two-bedrooms with one superintendent apartment—are designated for low-income households earning less than 60 percent of the area median income, which is $49,800 for a family of four. Twenty-five percent will have a preference for NYCHA residents and those on NYCHA's waitlist. While the building's official opening was today, the building is not yet occupied; Ms. Visnauskas said that residents should start moving in within the next month.

Arbor House cost approximately $37.7 million, a cost that was heavily subsidized, with $36.76 million provided in the form of local, city and state subsidies, Reso A funds, tax credit equities and tax exempt bonds. Additionally, NYCHA sold the land to Blue Sea Development at below market rate.Ms. Visnauskas said that HPD is increasingly embracing green building practices—Via Verde, another HPD affordable housing complex in the Bronx whose units went on sale last year, was widely lauded for incorporating green building techniques, environmentally-friendly features and decked gardens. But she added many of Arbor House's features, particularly its living green wall and its rooftop farm, are a first for the department.

While many people tend to associate green building with additional expense, she said, this is not always the case. Indeed, features like windowed stairwells, smart thermostats and energy-efficient appliances save money in the long run. And the rooftop farm, to be operated by Sky Vegetables, is expected to generate money by selling produce—a percentage will be set aside for the building's residents and the local community to be purchased via CSAs and the rest will be sold commercially.

"We've been able to work innovative, green elements into our projects without bursting the bank" said Ms. Visnauskas. "In this case the urban farm is an income-generating business, it’s a productive use. Green building doesn't necessarily mean building more expensive, it means building smart."

kvelsey@observer.com

She's digging in. (Getty)

As promised, the City Council overrode the mayor’s veto of Intro 730, a bill dubbed the HPD Transparency Act, by a unanimous vote. Speaker Christine Quinn defended the 46-0 override saying, “This piece of legislation, which is simple in many ways, it’s just transparency. It’s just the info. Why don’t we want to have the info behind our Department of Housing out there? Why don’t we want New Yorkers to have all the facts out there.”

The bill has been criticized for it’s wage reporting standards, which opponents say adds an onerous bureaucratic burden for small firms and MWBEs. Opponents of the bill argue that the supposed transparency of the bill would do little to ensure quality construction. Just knowing how much someone gets paid does not guarantee a better building, the ostensible reason for the bill. When asked about how the bill might still achieve this, the speaker stood by Intro 730.

“The truth is to some degree you get what you pay for," Speaker Quinn said. "And we’ve unfortunately heard terrible stories of people being paid off the books, under the table, corruption and things to that nature. Knowing exactly what wages are getting paid and how will give us a clear paper trail of where the money is going and we can then really do almost a comparison. What homes are standing up the best. What homes are having the biggest level of complaints. What homes are basically not standing at the end of the day. Who built them? How much? and How much did they pay their workers?”

Speaker Quinn was less forthcoming when answering the claim, in accordance with the Mayor’s own veto statement, that the wage standards were simply a way for the unions to break into public development. “What the unions do or think of this bill you’ll have to ask them," she said. "All of the reporting requirements are in one way or another, these developers are supposed to be reporting.” HPD argues the bill requires considerably more reporting and will cost the industry tens of millions of dollars, meaning less housing will get built.

But given a spate of scandals at HPD, it was easy for the bill to get broad support, whatever the motives. “Our focus on this bill is responding to horror stories from New Yorkers who scrimped and saved and bought homes through HPD programs and then found the work not at all what they bought, not at all what they paid for," Speaker Quinn said. "They're kind of a little bit of the American dream and nightmare.”

It’s a point echoed by Brooklyn Councilman Dominick Recchia, one if the cosponsors of the bill. “We want people to have home ownership, but we want it built the right way," he said. "They shouldn’t be getting something half-assed. It’s not right.”

In a statement, HPD Commissioner Matt Wambua condemned the bill yet again as "special interest politics driving bad policy."

"It places a massive burden on local, minority, and women-owned businesses that don’t have the capacity to meet the Council’s wage reporting mandate which goes far beyond current requirements," he continued. "These are the same businesses that Council Members ask HPD to include on projects to support the local economy in their districts. The real loss comes to local minority and women-owned businesses, the City’s economy, and working-class New Yorkers who badly need affordable housing."

Oh rats.

On March 23, Wendell Walters plead guilty to two counts of racketeering and bribery. As the assistant commissioner for development at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, he oversaw billions of dollars in city contracts to build and repair the city’s vast stock of private affordable housing. The projects only grew over the past decade as Mayor Bloomberg launched a program to create or rehabilitate some 165,000 units of affordable housing.

During that time, the kickbacks to Walters also grew, totaling some $2.5 million over the course of a decade involving at least 10 different affordable housing developers in the city. Some payments were made in coffee cups, others in thick envelopes stuffed into Walters’ golf bag as he and the builders took in a round of golf. Among the gifts received was a brownstone on 139th Street in Harlem, free renovations to the townhouse and a honeymoon in Greece.

When he was arrested last October, Walters was paraded in front of the Brooklyn Federal Court House. Like so many perps, he was caught by surprise and still wearing his morning clothes, a black fleece pullover and black sweatpants. Tall and handsome with a shaven head, the 49-year-old Walters looked shocked, embarrassed, dismayed.

So was Matthew Wambua. Appointed exactly a year and two days before Walters’ plea deal, the new commissioner of HPD looks remarkably like his former colleague—trim, tall, of clean pate. He has spent a good deal of his term trying to clean up after Walters, implementing new measures to bring transparency and accountability to his agency. With an an annual budget of more than $1 billion, HPD touts itself as the largest municipal housing agency in the country.

“I will be the first one to tell you we are not perfect—far from it,” Mr. Wambua said during a recent interview in his office overlooking the on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. “But we take these matters extremely seriously and are working everyday to address them.”

But the actions of Walters and other bad actors at the agency and at its work sites has brought considerable scrutiny to HPD. It has led to exposés and editorials, hearings and harangues. The most significant consequence so far is a new bill at the City Council, Intro 730. Known as the HPD Transparency Act, the bill requires the department to make public a number of its operational procedures. Sunshine is the best disinfect.

It might also be a disaster for the department. As currently constituted, the bill would impose millions of dollars in costs on the agency and, more significantly, the firms that do the building for it. The big dog developers would have limited problems covering these costs—though it would still eat into the funds available for building new affordable housing projects—but the smaller firms, the new businesses and the women- and minority-owned firms, argue they could not afford the onerous wage reporting requirements within the bill.

“We’re about housing, but we’re also about economic development, about lifting up the community,” Mr. Wambua said of his agency. “We’re building housing in the community, and, as much as possible, we’re building it with firms from the community, we’re building it with workers from the community.”

This may become less and less the case. The bill passed the council in July, but the mayor vetoed it the following month. Today, the council is expected to override the veto, and it will go into effect on January 1.

When that happens, housing insiders fear it could open HPD up to renewed attacks from labor unions, as they interrogate the books of the department and its contractors and developers, looking for any opportunity to score political points and, more importantly, win work. The unions have never much bothered with affordable housing jobs. The work is neither very technical or sexy. But as a recession that has eviscerated the industry drags on, any job is a good one.

This may help explain why some of the city’s biggest construction union groups, including the Building and Construction Trades Council, the District Council of Carpenters and the Mason Tenders District Council, helped to conceive and deliver Intro 730 at the council. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that unions that have never had any involvement with HPD have suddenly taken such a keen interest in it?” one affordable housing expert said. “And not just the legislation, but almost every news account, where there is a complaint about HPD, there is a union rep there doing the complaining.”

Indeed.

“Somebody has to have the courage to stand up, blow up HPD and rebuild the way we do affordable housing,” said Richard Weiss, communications director for the Mason Tender’s District Council. He was referring to mayoral candidates, but he just as soon could have been talking about his guys.

There are three pieces to Intro 730. The first requires HPD to post on its website the standards it uses in selecting contractors who are pre-qualified to do jobs with the department, as well as what firms have been qualified and those who have been disqualified for a myriad of issues, from bad work to bad wages. The second requires the department to list all of its projects on a quarterly basis, who is working on the project, how much subsidy it is receiving, any problems with the project and so on.

HPD has already taken steps to comply with these parts of the law, putting the information online with the plans to update it on a regular basis, though not every quarter, as currently requested by the council. As for the issue of responsible actors the bill is meant to target and root out, the department launched its Enhanced Contractor Review Procedure earlier this year. It has since identified 11 contractors who either had issues with construction quality or wage issues. They undergo increased monitoring of their work, though HPD also stresses that they are not immediately 86’d, because mistakes happen and everyone deserves a second chance.

“It’s not like we want to work with bad contractors, they’re just as bad for us as everybody else,” Mr. Wambua said. “They hurt our bottom line and our work. And we are working to root them out.”

It is the third prong of Intro 730 that HPD and its partners take issue with. It requires all contractors on the department’s jobs to file detailed wage reports for every employee on a job. This includes not only how much money is paid to every worker but also a job description, details about the work performed, what jobs are being worked on when and so forth. Despite language in the bill to suggest otherwise, this goes beyond the level of reporting required by the State Department of Labor, requiring detailed accounting from both the department and its contractors.

It is the complexity of affordable housing that makes this especially challenging. On each of the hundreds of job sites around the city, a contractor hires subcontractors to address each part of the project—demolitions, foundations, plumbing, heating, ductwork, and so on. In turn, these subcontractors may bring on additional subcontractors to assist them with different parts of their work, to speed things up. Three different subs may be used to hang drywall, and then they might hire two additional subs among them to do half that work part of the time if they need assistance.

This is done to encourage local hiring, a mandate of HPD, to keep costs down and to speed up work. For a contractor to gather up all this information would require at least one dedicated full-time accountant, constantly monitoring the wages on a site from day to day. It is a cost many of the smaller firms fear they would be able to afford.

“I’m barely competitive with my bigger peers,” Karim Huston, principal of the Genesis Companies said. “Any added costs, and I won’t be able to compete.”

According to the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, an industry group known as NYSAFAH, the new requirements could add some $40 million in costs to the field of affordable housing in the city. With 200 to 250 jobs going on a year, wage monitoring would cost about $150,000 per job, with the addition of some to track them at $50,000. “And we think that is a conservative estimate,” Alison Badgett, NYSAFAH’s executive director said. HPD predicts it would cost the department an additional $2 million a year to collect and store all this data through the hiring of new staff and the implementation of a system to track it.

The fact is, this level of reporting approaches that required for union jobs. On some of its more complex projects, known as prevailing wage jobs, HPD actually does do this level of accounting, but both the department and the contractors get additional funding from the federal government to do the work, which accounts for less than 20 percent of all HPD jobs.

Critics of the department, and particularly the labor unions, argue that a lack of reporting allows contractors to take advantage of the workers on their site. “Look, why would they be fighting this so hard if they weren’t trying to hide something,” Mr. Weiss said. “These guys are trying to cheat the system, and they’re not going to get away with it any more.”

It seems possible that as the wage requirements get closer to that of the unions, the bigger contractors may decide it is easier to simply work with them than deal with the problems of doing non-union work and then potentially being hassled by the unions, which have a history of picketing sites they find unsuitable to their standards. Think of all the inflatable rats that have been deployed across the city over the years

This is one of the greater fears of the wage reporting requirements within the bill. There is no clear explanation of what the information will be used for or even why the council wants it. The belief among the affordable housing industry is that it will allow the unions to dig through the documents looking for firms who have made reporting errors—even a simple mathematical mistake can get a firm put on a list of disqualified firms, also a new provision of the bill that would bar them from working with HPD in the future.

Even for developers and contractors willing to spare the expense of compiling all the necessary wage statistics, the threat of having your work stalled and even being disbarred from working with HPD almost makes it not worth the trouble. Especially when working with a unionized shop would simply solve that problem. But is it really worth it to give in?

Former Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is running for mayor next year, believes the idea is to complicate matters for everyone but the unions. "It just doesn't make sense why you would want to add additional red tape, especially during difficult financial times," he said in an interview. "Why add to that burden at this time?"

There are two cardinal arguments for excluding unions from affordable housing. One is that it will cost more. Union labor generally costs a 30 percent premium over non-union jobs. This means either fewer projects are built or building the same number costs more money. HPD insists that it is not seeking to underpay anyone, but simply the jobs are less technical, and even more problematically, union work rules make it hard to hire all the subs to get the projects done in the time frame required. “When we are spending public funds, we ought to get the best value for our money,” Mr. Wambua said.

The other issue is diversity. “I want people on these sites who look like me,” Mr. Wambua said. “Frankly, the unions do not have a good habit of hiring locally, of hiring minorities, of hiring women. I see that as as much a part of my mission as building affordable housing, to help these people find work and get jobs.”

The unions argue from the other side. Better wages are better for workers, and their workers  provide a level of quality not found on non-union jobs. (Mr. Weiss also bridled at the notion that his workers were not from the community. “At least 50 percent of my guys are minorities,” he said.)

This issue of quality has been the underlying argument for the bill. A number of developments have been revealed to have suffered from poor craftsmanship, particularly some associated with the Wendel Walters schemes. There are particularly problems with a number of home-ownership projects. Owners have had problems with leaky roofs and cracked foundations, issues that have gotten considerable play in the press. But they only account for some 598 units. That is 11 percent of all home-ownership developments (though it happens to be largely contained to three troubled developments), but also less than 1 percent of the 141,000 units HPD has developed over the past decade.

The unions argue that wage reporting will help put a stop to such construction problems. “Bringing transparency to projects that receive enormous sums of public funds and tax breaks will promote better housing construction, safety and economic opportunity for tenants, taxpayers and workers,” Building and Construction Trades Council president Gary LaBarbera said. But so far no one has explained how knowing whether a guy gets paid $12 and hour rather than $13 an hour to hang sheet rock will ensure better construction.

“We’re the ones who have to fix these mistakes, so it is an issue for us,” Mr. Weiss said. The question is, are things really as bad at HPD as he and his union buddies insist, or are they capitalizing on a few bad actors, like Wendell Walters, to win entree to billions of dollars in construction jobs.

"The whole place is corrupt," Mr. Weiss insisted.

In July, the council voted unanimously for Intro 730, but reservations persist about the wage reporting issues. A number of council members spoke about the potential for adversely affecting minority and women owned businesses, but they voted for it anyway. After all, Council Speaker (and mayoral hopeful) Christine Quinn strongly supports the bill, and the unions play a critical role in city elections.

“These are not people you want to cross, especially with the elections coming up next year,” one City Hall source said.

In a statement, Speaker Quinn dismissed complaints about the bill: "It's preposterous to suggest that requiring developers to report payroll information that they're already required by law to collect and keep would hurt small businesses. The Council voted unanimously to bring transparency to how taxpayer dollars are spent on affordable housing. We will override the mayor's veto on Monday."

HPD maintains that the reporting standards go beyond those required by law, nor would they somehow ensure quality work is done. When asked about this, a spokeswoman for the Ms. Quinn only said that more transparency would lead to more accountability.

So is this transparency for transparency’s sake? The mayor has already said he may challenge the bill in court if it becomes law. In the meantime, the little guys are scrambling.

“I guess we could try and partner up with some other guys and muddle through,” Mr. Huston said. “But you have to wonder what’s in it for them? And what’s in it for me if I’m not the one calling the shots anymore.”

You know that people care about something when they're willing to sit in sweltering heat for it. (Jess Schiewe)

Last Friday morning, Felix Guzman woke up early, grabbed his fishing pole, and headed over to the East River for some catch and release fun. For 40 years he has lived in the same building on Academy Street in Inwood and in that time he has “seen a lot.” So when he got back to his apartment around 11 am and saw that his street was teaming with newscasters, elected officials, cameramen, and local community members, he wasn’t surprised. They’d been there before. “It’s always been tough here,” Mr. Guzman said. “I’m glad they’re doing something about it.”

The building in question was 552 Academy Street, a crumbling 72-unit brick building located across the street from Mr. Guzman’s apartment. A year ago he had stood outside and watched as dozens of tenants dragged their belongings onto the sidewalk, confused and frightened and wondering where they would relocate to next.

The building, the city told them, was unsafe, which was why they had to vacate the premises. Although Mr. Guzman had never been inside, he heard rumors that at times the units lacked gas, running water, and electricity. “This is what happens when you get these slumlords and all they care about is the money,” Mr. Guzman said, referring to the building’s landlord, Rachel Arfa, whom the City blames for the hazardous conditions.

With the help of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the tenants—31 families in total— were relocated to temporary apartments around the city, in neighborhoods like Hillside, Thayer, and Elmwood.

But on Friday, many of the tenants were back in their old neighborhood, rubbing shoulders with the suits and construction workers who were there to announce the good news: 552 Academy Street would be rehabilitated and open for residency in the next 18 months. As part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, the structure has received $21.1 million in funding that will be used to rebuild, stabilize, and improve the old, defunct building.

“This is a really big step for us,” said Iris Bertoni, a representative of the building's tenant association who had lived in the same apartment on the third floor for 50 years. "We're coming back home."

In addition to improved mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, the building, which was formerly a walk-up, will be redesigned to include an elevator line, a community room, and new kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry room. The renovations, which will modernize the building and bring it up to code, are the result of a lengthy  battle between the City and Arfa for possession of the building. According to the Department of Building's website, Arfa was charged with allowing "structural stability and egress issues" to develop over the last ten years, and has since been removed as the building's owner.

"This building has a history that is unfortunately not as uncommon as we would like," HPD Commissioner Mathew Wambua said,"but one thing that it has in its favor is a support network equal to no other." The rehabilitation of the building, Mr. Wambua said, as well as the selection of a new owner, will be spearheaded by the Community League of the Heights (CLOTH) and Alembic Development Corporation.

Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, who donated $1 million to the project from his discretionary funds, was at the event on Friday, donning a plastic hardhat and black suit. “I feel great,” he said minutes after plunging a golden shovel into a pile of dirt as part of the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony. Not only was he glad that the tenants would be able to return to their former homes, he said, but he hoped that the event would serve as a warning to inept landlords throughout the city. “We have no tolerance for negligence,” he said. “This is a message to any other landlord who doesn’t reflect what they are supposed to be doing in terms of providing decent living situations for their tenants.”

The new units, which will not only be affordable, but top quality, also excite Mr. Rodriguez who hopes that it will encourage more people to move to the Inwood neighborhood. In the last 10 years, “we have lost 18,000 residents,” he said. “People can’t afford to pay the rents.” The average annual income of residents in the neighborhood is $30,000 a year, he said, adding that he hopes the revamped and reasonably priced 552 Academy Street building will be the start of a new housing trend.

Across the street, wearing a black “I Love Inwood” tee shirt, Mr. Guzman mused about the past, present, and future of his neighborhood. “A lot has changed,” he said, referring to the demographics and socio-economic levels of his community. Inwood has had its ups and downs, he said, and although he still loves it (hence his shirt), the neighborhood is due for a change. Improving the conditions and affordability of the residences is a first step, but Mr. Guzman hopes to see more improvements.

“For one thing,” he said, leaning on his fishing pole, “it would be nice if some of these people hired the people in the neighborhood to do some of the work, like labor and construction. A lot of us are unemployed and it would be nice to be a part of the community.”

Richmond Hill, one of two pilot developments. (HPD)

"We've been doing it the same way since before we had email," affordable housing developer Martin Dunn lamented, speaking to The Observer about the grueling process through which New Yorkers have historically had to apply for subsidized housing in the city.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn put it even more starkly in her 2011 State of the City address, when she called on the Bloomberg administration to find a way to digitize and streamline the process: "In a 21st century world—where you can do everything online—we still make people apply for housing using 18th century technology."

Today is the day, as they say, and as of working hours, NYC Housing Connect should be live, the first one-stop shop for subsidized housing online.

"This lets our customers do four important things: learn, look, save and apply," Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Matthew Wambua said. "This is an initiative we're incredibly proud of because we believe it will streamline the process for everyone."

Historically, applicants for affordable housing had to reach out to each individual developer about any developments they were interested in applying to, then fill out a separate application for each. Not only does the new website centralize the projects, as well as information about who is eligible for affordable housing in the city, but it also it also simplifies the application process.

What makes the new system so special is it allows users to create a profile that they can use for each and every application, so there is no need to continually fill out the same forms over and over again. The system even saves user profiles for easy updating. Should an applicants income go up or down or an address change, he or she simply needs to input it the criteria will be updated for future project.

This automation also helps with the various calculations required of applicants, one of the areas where the department said it saw the most errors. The other big advantage for applicants is that the system will allow them to immediately be notified when their applications is received and its status. "Sometimes we're flooded with 15,000 or 20,000 applicants for a particular project, so it can be just impossible to respond to everyone by hand, but this way we can," Kaye Matheny, the Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Planning, Technology and Administration said.

For developers it means more, and more accurate, applications. "For a lottery by hand, on the bigger projects, we can have 20 people doing it by hand over three or four days," said Mr. Dunn, who is one of two developers taking part in the pilot phase of Housing Connect. His Dunn Development Corp. is launching Westwind Houses, located at 45 East 131st Street, through the program, making the 47 low-income-restricted units available both online and in print.

The other project is Richmond Place, a 117-unit project in the Richmond Hill Section of Queens, developed by the Arker Companies, a third-generation developer of affordable housing. "Any time you can rent up quicker, it's to everyone's benefit," Dan Moritz, a principal at Arker, said. "A larger pool of applicants and a faster turnaround is a win-win for us and the city."

The department stressed that paper applications will still be accepted, to ensure no one feels alienated by the new process, but partnerships will also be forged with various community groups to ensure as many individuals as possible who want to can apply online. The pilot will run through the fall, at which point the department will begin to add more developments to the site, assuming all goes well.

"I think anything that makes it easier for the public to get access to information about housing resources is always a good thing," said Jerilyn Perine, chair of the Citizens Housing and Planning Commission and a former housing commissioner. "As long as they have the traditional applications, this should be to the benefit of everybody."

Ms. Perine even thought of one group of New Yorkers who might take a keener interest in such properties. "Will the hipsters move in, now that it's online?" she wondered. "Well, they're legally entitled, if they fit the criteria, but so is everyone else, and that's the wonderful thing about subsidized housing. I don't know that it will change anything about the make up affordable housing, except to make it easier for everyone to apply."

Things are moving along quite nicely, it turns out.

It may seem as though there has been limited tangible progress since Related Companies was tapped to develop the project in February of last year, but that is because most of the work is being done below the surface—with on the banks of the East River and the banks of housing finance.

Since last spring, HPD and the city’s Economic Development Corporation have been at work on building new infrastructure in Hunters Point South, which had been a Daily News printing plant until a few decades ago but otherwise little else. “There was nothing there,” an HPD official told The Observer.

According to the EDC's construction report for May, sanitary sewers are 100 percent complete, storm sewers are 96 percent complete and water mains are 82 percent complete. Parks infrastructure is coming along, as well, with subsurface work more than halfway finished and features like a dog run, playground, concession building and waterfront walkways taking shape.

Furthermore, the department has pegged financing to be wrapped up this fall for the first phase of the project—project financing usually closes in May and June, but given the cost and complexity of this deal, more time is being set aside to get it done. After that, a groundbreaking is scheduled for October.

At full build out, Hunters Point South will have 5,000 apartments, 60 percent of which are to be affordable, with a particular focus on middle class housing. Related is developing the first phase with Phipps Houses and Manadnock Construction, a builder of affordable housing throughout the metro area. The two towers are being designed by SHoP Architects and KPF and will house 950 units.

Last November, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel announced that all of those apartments would be affordable units, as opposed to just 75 percent of them as originally planned. Affordability ranges from $32,000 a year to $130,000 a year for a family of four.

As for mega projects in general, the city still sees much strength in that area.

"Willets Point and Atlantic Yards are two of the City’s important signature projects for sure, and the timetables have been recast somewhat," the HPD official said. "Those are two big projects in a city with a lot of big projects, so I don’t know if using them as a catch-all to characterize the state of housing production in City development projects is the right way to go."

The official also pointed to progress on projects ranging from Gotham West to Arverne as other large housing projects that continue to make progress in spite of surrounding economic issues.

And now, for some mood music:

Home sweet home. (Property Shark)

It used to house cast offs from some of the city's oldest buildings, but soon it could house low-income New Yorkers.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development is seeking a developer to turn a  Williamsburg warehouse that served as storage for the Landmarks Preservation Commission into an affordable housing development with 50 apartments. The development, at 337 Berry Street, sits on a 15,000-square-foot lot and calls for commercial or community space on the ground floor, as well as about 1,200 square feet of open space for residents.

The views are not too bad, looking out on the Williamsburg Bridge and Manhattan, though the rumble of the J-Train just might intrude on the apartments, as well, barring some good windows.

“This RFP is a prime example of City agencies working together to put our resources to the best use while continuing the growth and revitalization of this community,” said HPD commissioner Mathew Wambua said in a statement. “The new apartments that will be created at this site will transform it from a forbidding façade into a resource of affordability for the neighborhood and provide safe, quality housing to hardworking New Yorkers.”

The city decided the landmarks warehouse was ripe for redevelopment as the commission's need for storage has dwindled. In the past, it would collect historical architectural detritus from abandoned and demolished buildings, saving them for future resale to other builds. The program ran from 1980 until 2010, when it was cancelled due to budget constraints and the entire stock of the warehouse was sold off. Rather than waste a vacant building, LPC teamed up with HPD to turn it into a new mixed-used building.

"We are thrilled that this site, through a new use, will continue to give back to the city,” preservation commission chair Robert Tierney said.

Submissions to the RFP, which is part of the mayor's New Housing Marketplace Plan that seeks to add 165,000 units of affordable housing to the city's stock, are due by August 31. All units must be affordable for families making 80 percent of the area median income, orabout $66,400 for a family of four.

A ray of hope for run-down buildings? (Kim Velsey)

It's been six weeks since the apartment building at 2 Thayer Street in Washington Heights had gas or hot water—ConEd shut it off as a safety precaution because of leaks in the pipes. The walls are cracked, pieces of plaster crumble from the ceilings and as of a week ago, the 47-unit building had 94 open violations with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. But on paper, at least, 2 Thayer Street doesn't number among the city's worst buildings. Not even close.

In the past, a building with only two violations per apartment would have had a hard time attracting the city's attention. In the wake of the housing crisis, as hundreds of multi-family buildings fell into disrepair, HPD relied on individual tenant complaints to gauge the level of building deterioration, focusing their energies on the most egregious violators, the city's "worst buildings," which often have 10 or more violations per apartment.

Hundreds more were also in bad shape, of course,  and getting worse, as tenants became the victims of real estate speculation gone bust, but inspections and intensive intervention efforts started only after the the building's racked up an appalling number of violations.

But in late April, not only did a team of HPD inspectors come to check out 2 Thayer Street, but so did deputy commissioner Vito Mustaciuolo, who spoke to a group of tenants gathered in the lobby.

"If conditions in your apartment are bad, call 311," Mr. Mustaciuolo said."This is only step one, it's not going to happen overnight, but we'll do it together."

The tenants nodded, somewhat dubious expressions on their faces.

The inspection was part of the Proactive Preservation Initiative that HPD started in 2011. The initiative focuses on kind-of-bad buildings that are at risk of deteriorating into disasters, which are bad for tenants, obviously, but also for the city, which must often make emergency repairs, and then place a lien against the building, without a guarantee of repayment. The initiative aimed to inspect 500 buildings in its inaugural year, but managed to check out 642 buildings, 152 of which were placed on an at-risk list. After a year, 18 have been discharged from the list and 134 remain.

As for 2 Thayer Street, despite its relatively low number of violations, it had come to HPD's attention after Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez told the agency that many problems in the building had gone unreported (also, gas being shut off is the kind of thing that does not go unnoticed).

"It is clear that the landlord who owns the building has not been providing the services that they should, and they should know that it's their responsibility," Mr. Rodriguez told The Observer in a phone interview. "Being a supporter of tenants' rights is one of my first priorities."

The owner of the building is Susan Moy, whose registered address with the city is a P.O. Box in Brooklyn. She could not be reached for comment.

"The building is dirty all the time, we don't have gas, many times we don't have water, we can't cook," said Rosanna Aran-Rodriguez, who lives in the building with her husband Virgilio Oscar Aran and 10-month old son. Mr. Aran is the founder of the labor organizing group the Laundry Workers Center, which has taken up 2 Thayer as a cause. "The landlord doesn't resolve the problems that we have," she concluded.

Ms. Aran paused to situate the baby more comfortably on her hip.

"When he was born, I called the landlord to repair the big hole in the ceiling and he doesn't listen to me," Ms. Aran said. "I was scared because the walls have asbestos and that's toxic for my baby. And me and my family."

Her mother-in-law Ramona Caraballo, has lived in a rent-stabilized one-bedroom for the past 15 years. She said that she'd like to move to affordable housing, but she's been on the waitlist for 10 years and she can't afford to move anywhere that's not affordable.

"When I came here, I needed an apartment, I had two children," Ms. Carabollo said. "The problem is that things are getting worse, instead of improving."

Resident Ilemar Espinal agreed. It had never been good, but things were going downhill.

"From the cracks in the wall we're getting mice like there's no tomorrow," she said with a sigh.

Deputy commissioner Mustaciuolo said that there are many reasons why people don't report problems to 311—sometimes the owner persuades residents that the condition will be fixed, sometimes people are specifically told not to contact 311, and sometimes people simply don't realize that they should.

As it happens, buildings recommended to proactive preservation by local nonprofits, community groups or council members often turn out not to look as good in reality as they do on paper.

In the last two weeks, HPD inspectors have visited 2 Thayer Street twice, gaining access to a total of 38 apartments in the building. The result: the building now has 423 open violations (59 class A, 247 class B and 117 class C, according to the Buildings Department). Bad on paper, and in reality.

kvelsey@observer.com

Down boy! We're clean.

To combat the city's growing bed bug problem, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has gone to the dogs. Say hello to Nemo and Mickey, the latest members of the department's Maintenance Code inspection team. And rather than the vet, the two Beagles were fortunate enough to get their tags—we mean badges—from Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Housing Commissioner Mathew Wambua.

"Awww, look at their little jackets," cooed Ms. Quinn when she first set eyes on the dogs.

Indeed, there was so much baby talk and photo snapping, the scene shared more than a passing resemblance to a new-borns room in a maternity ward, as much as a City Hall press conference.

City Hall is clean.

Behind all the joie de pooch was the serious and very nasty issue of actually being bitten by those pesky bugs. Commissioner Wambua revealed how in the last fiscal year the department had received some 13,000 complaints and 3,500 violations.

"After you use the dogs you will really feel good about sleeping and you won’t have any mental health anguish," said Council Member Gale Brewer. The dogs, she said, have a 98% success rate, which should help put New Yorkers' minds at ease. "Bed bugs create, not a physical, but a major mental health problem," Ms. Brewer said.

With just two dogs, private contractors can also sleep soundly tonight. They have had the bed-bug-sniffing market pretty much cornered, but there is only so much the department can do. "I want to make clear that there is more that needs to be done," Speaker Quinn said. "Two dogs is clearly not enough for 8.4 million people, and god knows how many bed bugs.”

On the topic of private firms Ms. Brewer added, “Unfortunately some dogs aren’t highly trained when you call a private contractor. These dogs the HPD have are very highly trained.”

Speaker Quinn tags the dog.

Today’s announcement has been a long time coming—cities like Seattle and Chicago already have sniffer beagles in place. “In 2009, 1,000 people showed up in Washington Heights for the first meeting with the HBD to talk about this,” Ms. Brewer said. For the representatives at City Hall and residence of New York City, it’s a case of better late than never.

After thanking Commissioner Wambua, Ms. Brewer and everyone who has been part of the bed bug advisory board Ms. Quinn paused, giving her voice an air of gravitas, “Mickey and Nemo, thank you very much.” Mickey had nodded off by this stage. “Mickeys still asleep, I won't take personal offense."

Just resting up for a tough weeks of sniffing ahead, no doubt.

realestate@observer.com

Two of the 22 tenement buildings on the south side of 114th Street, all of which are vacant. (Property Shark)

Better days are ahead for the Randolph Houses on West 114th Street—not that the 36 tenement buildings in Central Harlem have ever truly known good days.

Built in the 1890s, along with thousands of other substandard cold water flats serving the booming population of European immigrants, the buildings were abandoned amidst white flight. Like so many other unwanted apartments of that generation, they were taken over by the city in the 1970s and turned into public housing. Attempts at upkeep have been made over the years, but the upkeep never really was, well, kept up. The buildings have deteriorated to such a state that only 109 of their 452 units are occupied, but the city cannot afford to fix them.

To finally revive the Randolph Houses, the city’s Housing Authority and Department of Housing Preservation and Development are partnering with a private developer to retrofit the properties into modern, low-income housing. A request for proposals was released last week, and the winning developer will be charged with transforming the buildings into a mix of 140 public housing units and at least 155 affordable housing units.

"At the Randolph Houses we are not just breathing a new life into these buildings—we are creating new homes, new opportunities, and a more affordable and sustainable New York," HPD Commissioner Mathew Wambua said in a release.

This is a reduction in the overall number of apartments, including the number of NYCHA units, though for myriad technical (and wonkishly interesting!) reasons, it is actually a three-fold gain for the city’s subsidized housing stock.

It is not simply a matter of disrepair but safety that the Randolph Houses have lost hundreds apartments. The deterioration is so bad that those units are no longer legally habitable. The entire south side of the street, comprising 307 apartments, sits vacant. And since NYCHA only receives federal funds from HUD for occupied apartments, an increase to 140 from the current 109 will actually mean more money for the agency.

“Technically, it’s a reduction in the number of units, but it’s an increase in the number of units that are online today,” Amy Chester, deputy director of NYCHA’s development department, told The Observer.

Why NYCHA is not building 452 refurbished units is another matter. Because of a HUD calculation known as total development costs, only so much money is allocated per unit to housing authorities across the country for construction and maintenance of buildings. With New York’s especially  high construction costs, these funds never cover the full price of construction and rehabilitation projects.

This is not the only reason a partnership with HPD and an outside developer is necessary. Theoretically, NYCHA could take out a loan to cover the difference in costs, but HUD forbids public housing rents be used to cover loan repayments. That is why a developer is needed, to create affordable housing units—in this case pegged a family of four making $49,080, or 60 percent of the area median income—to cross-subsidize the project. (To clarify, the distinction between affordable housing and public housing is that the former is built and managed by private developers with oversight by HPD while the latter is wholly owned and managed by NYCHA as part of the Section 8 housing program. Both are allocated to tenants through income-restricted lotteries.)

The north side of the Randolph Houses are still occupied, though some units sit empty. (Property Shark)

Another factor is a federal statute dating from the 1990s, the Faircloth limit.. This caps the number of public housing unit’s a city can have. Essentially, New York cannot build new projects, certainly not on the scale seen during the middle of last century, and must instead manage the number it has, subtracting a few dozen or hundred from one project while adding others elsewhere.

“NYCHA can’t or won’t be building a new super block with 3,000 units like we used to,” Ms. Chester said. “But you also can’t build solely public housing because of TDC. Whatever you build, it has to be cross-subsidized.”

Those good with math will realize that the city is calling for only about 300 apartments in the redeveloped projects, a reduction of more than 30 percent in the number of units. This is because most of the apartments at the Randolph Houses date to the turn of the last century, when the original buildings were built. "If you go to the Tenement Museum, it looks just love that." Others have been even further subdivided, creating unhealthy and even illegal—they violate current building codes—living conditions.

This addition-by-subtraction might frustrate some hard-line housing advocates, who see any reduction in the city’s low-income housing stock as a threat to New York’s livability and diversity, but Harold Shutz, a senior fellow at the Citizen’s Housing and Planning Commission, thinks the city is making the most of what it has. "I think it’s a very reasonable response to a bad situation," he said. "On the whole a positive, though the advocates probably won’t see it that way."

"They're not only brand-spanking-new apartments, but they're also going to have better units, in terms of quality of life," Ms. Chester said. The repairs being undertaken include removing the back portion of the buildings to create a deeper rear yard, which allows for more light and air to reach the apartments but also reduces the size of the buildings. "Some of the bedrooms are without closets while others barely have room for beds," Ms. Chester said.

Another big benefit is that the program will help reoccupy an entire block of historical architecture. Even if the tenement style may be unloved, it played an epochal role in the shape of the city, its buildings and its inhabitants, so much so the Randolph Houses have been considered for state historic preservation status.

The agencies have undertaken similar projects before. At the Chelsea, Elliott and Forest houses, new HPD affordable housing projects have been built on NYCHA land. The most notorious example may be Prospect Plaza, in Brownsville, where four hulking towers are being demolished and replaced with more contextual, rowhouse type blocks of affordable housing.

What makes the Randolph Houses unique is this is the first time affordable and public housing units will be intermixed within the same buildings. "This initiative is a first by utilizing a HUD mixed finance program combining public and non-public housing in a single development," NYCHA Chairman John Rhea said in the release. "We look forward to the successful rehabilitation of Randolph Houses as a model for future redevelopment.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC