Housing Starts: Parking into Housing? | Budget Cuts and Housing Support | Manhattan-Brooklyn Prices

The Brooklyn Heights Neighborhood (Shutterstock)

1. Trading Parking Lots for Affordable Housing The ‘9 x 18’ proposal capitalizes on an outdated and onerous zoning mandate that requires private developers to build parking spaces for new apartments in certain parts of the city. The regulation clashes with Vision Zero, the mayor’s new pedestrian safety initiative. It’s also bad for traffic and the environment. And it forces developers to spend what a study by the Furman Center at New York University estimates is up to $50,000 per parking space, money inevitably charged to consumers, increasing housing costs. [New York Times – 09/14/14]
2. Where Will NYC’s 80,000 New Apartments Go? With plans for 80,000 new affordable housing units on the table, every neighborhood will have to take its fair share, experts say. This means nearly every community is aware they will have to accept more density, putting some on the immediate defensive. The administration has stressed that the impending wave of development will be accompanied by sufficient community input; that development will have to suit the communities’ needs. [Epoch Times – 09/13/14]
3. MONDO CONDO: A Wave of New New York City Condos Ranges from Affordable to Astronomical Another condo development wave is rising, but this time it might actually benefit real people. More than half of the 2,500 new apartments slated to hit the market in Manhattan this fall will be geared toward first-time and price-sensitive buyers, according to data from real estate firm Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. [New York Daily News – 09/12/14]
4. Budget Cuts Reshape New York’s Public Housing The rental vouchers allow low- and moderate-income tenants to live in private buildings and to pay about 30 percent of their income in rent, with the voucher program making up the rest. The cost of the program is about $400 million a year. But federal budget cuts under sequestration last year have left the program $37 million short, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development said. [New York Times – 09/11/14]
5. Apartment Building Struggles to Find Middle-Income Tenants Are there any middle-class New Yorkers anymore? A number of ‘affordable’ middle-income apartments in Hell’s Kitchen sit empty, as developers can’t find residents who fit the ­income criteria. In a city with an apartment ­vacancy rate of less than 2 percent, and where an average Manhattan one-bedroom is nearly $4,000 a month, the Gotham West complex has vacant one-bedrooms that cost $2,509. [New York Post – 09/14/14]
6. Forget Liberals vs. Conservatives. One of the Biggest Cultural Divides in the U.S. is Between Renters and Homeowners Turns out Americans view their communities quite differently depending on whether they own or rent their homes. Looking closer at the results of the Atlantic Media/Siemens State of City poll, some key differences emerge between those who pay a mortgage and those who pay rent. [Atlantic CityLab – 09/15/14]
7. Price Gap Between Brooklyn & Manhattan Is Steadily Shrinking Brooklyn rents may have dipped in August, but that by no means the borough is reverting to the good ol’ Brooklyn-is-a-cheap-place-to-live days (who even remembers those days?). The borough’s neighborhoods vary greatly in price, so for a detailed comparison, StreetEasy ran the numbers on median rents and sale prices for all 49 Brooklyn neighborhoods that they track and compared the data to the median rent and sale price for Manhattan. [Curbed NY – 09/12/14]
8. Neighborhood Targeted by Mayor Braces For a Fight On the day after Labor Day in the historically Caribbean neighborhood of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens in central Brooklyn, the thumping bass and steel drums of the annual West Indian Day Parade gave way to a different urban soundtrack: jackhammers and nail guns. At 626 Flatbush Ave., yellow-vested construction workers scrambled around the five-story frame of what will eventually become a 23-story luxury residential tower. Less than two blocks away, at 33 Lincoln Road, work continued on a nine-story apartment building. [Crain’s New York Business – 09/15/14]
9. Housing activists protest Airbnb But housing activists say Airbnb is reducing available housing in New York City’s increasingly expensive and shrinking housing market. They argue Airbnb is pushing thousands of apartments toward use as illegal hotels instead of affordable housing. At a rally Friday, State Sen. Liz Kruger said 14 of 16 apartments in a building in Manhattan are being used for hotel-style apartments. [Fox 5 News – 09/12/14]
10. Bushwick Takes the Spotlight The first development, which just went on the market, 13 Melrose, consists of eight one-bedroom homes with prices from $389,000 to $733,000, and several units already have contracts out. Brookland Capital, the developer, has plans for seven other condo projects throughout Bushwick, some with two to three dozen units, said Boaz Gilad, a Brookland partner. [New York Times – 09/12/14]