Volume Number 1 Issue Number 9 / November 24 -30, 2006
Task force tracks the facts on affordable housing sites
By Lawrence Lerner
The development of affordable housing in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen took center stage at Community Board 4’s Housing Development Task Force meeting last Thursday, which was held at the Hudson Guild.
Led by task force chairperson Joe Restuccia, the conversation covered topics such as the joint Department of Housing Preservation and Development/New York City Housing Authority housing that will be constructed on parking lots at three public housing projects as part of the West Chelsea and Hudson Yards plans. The buildings will be erected on lots at the Fulton Houses (18th St. between Ninth and Tenth Aves.), Elliot Chelsea Houses (Ninth Ave. at the corner of 25th St.) and Harborview (55th and 56th Sts. between Tenth and Eleventh Aves.).
But it was the board’s efforts to track H.P.D.’s Inclusionary Housing Program within its established boundaries that prompted the most discussion.
C.B. 4 is working with a Columbia University graduate student in urban planning — funded by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Office — to produce a mapping system that will keep tabs on I.H.P. developments, the distribution of affordable housing units within each development, rent schedules and other pertinent issues.
According to Restuccia, there are five developments in C.B. 4 currently opting into I.H.P. He gave a status update on those developments.
“We don’t know everything we need to know about these projects, but we’re in contact with H.P.D. to get the additional information,” he told the audience of about 20 people at the meeting. “We also are going to impress upon H.P.D. that, by law, developers must send their project plans ahead of time to both H.P.D. and community boards simultaneously. We’ve been getting plans very late and, in some cases, not at all. It’s impossible to weigh in on projects without building plans.”
The committee realized it also needed to implement another tracking mechanism.
“We not only need to track affordable housing units, but we also need to track where the benefit of those units goes in terms of bonuses developers get for including affordable units in their projects,” said Restuccia. “Since these are basically commodities that can be transferred off site or sold, we need to track where they go.”
Prior to the meeting, the task force passed out drafts of affordable housing guides that H.P.D. has authored for both the West Chelsea and Hudson Yards districts. Skimming them quickly, audience members found myriad mistakes. Task force members asked everyone in the room to proof the guides for mistakes so the board can present edits to H.P.D.
“We need to make sure these are corrected before they go up on H.P.D.’s Web site or are distributed to developers,” said Restuccia. “Otherwise, it is sure to create havoc.”
