The long-anticipated negotiations for Columbia University’s Community Benefits Agreement will kick off this Friday, a necessary step for the university to gain the City Council’s approval for its $7.4 billion proposed expansion into Manhattanville.
Designed to be more sophisticated than the CBAs at Atlantic Yards and the Bronx Terminal Market, this Read More
As so often happens in New York City, affordable housing isn’t always affordable. In the case of Queens West, the city’s biggest new middle-income development in 30 years, this reality is particularly ironic.
The 5,000 rental apartments slated for the 24 acres on the Long Island City waterfront are targeted at families making from $60,000 Read More
A report this month by the Pratt Center for Community Development says “workforce linkages”–which seems to be another name for community benefits agreements–work, and “have not, as some have warned, driven land developers away or discouraged property investment.” (PDF of report)
No mention made of the Atlantic Yards or Bronx Terminal Read More
The Pratt Center for Community Development report finds just 47 percent of units built with tax-exempt bonds administered by the state Housing Finance Agency were affordable–a percentage that went down to 28 percent last year. See full press release on our sister site The Politicker.
-Matthew Schuerman
This bodes ill, I’d say, for Governor George E. Pataki as he girds for a national run.
From the AP:
A state agency that is supposed to finance the construction of affordable housing in New York has instead provided most of its money to developers building luxury homes over the past five years, according Read MoreThe complete report by the Pratt Center for Community Development and Minerva Partners on redeveloping downtown Brooklyn’s mall is now up on the web. The report’s writer, Vicki Weiner, seems to think that despite the racial and social landmines posed by making a (largely African-American) shopping strip more attractive to its (increasingly white) neighbors, it Read More
