Key Coalition Backs NYCHA Infill Plan | Rents Rise Fastest for Non-Luxury Apartments

Photo credit: Adi Talwar / CityLimits.org

1. Key Coalition Backs NYCHA Infill Plan, with Conditions “NYCHA’s plan to build affordable housing at existing public housing developments has generated skepticism and opposition from some residents. But an alliance of advocates, tenant leaders and elected officials offered qualified support for the proposal in a letter to the authority this week. The Alliance to Preserve Public Housing acknowledged steps the de Blasio administration has taken to shore up public housing, the continuing fiscal threat facing the agency and its huge and growing capital backlog. The Alliance also noted the potential for NYCHA’s infill plan—which is supposed to create 17,000 units of new housing, 80 percent of it “affordable”, on 50 to 60 of NYCHA’s 328 developments—to create needed new housing and generate revenue for the cash-strapped authority.” [CityLimits – 08/13/15]
2. Rents Rise Faster for Midtier Apartments than Luxury Ones “The Verona apartment complex in suburban Denver doesn’t have the flashy amenities some tenants covet. No infinity pool. No rooftop lounge. No concierge service. Still, demand at the 1980s-era complex is so strong that the landlord has raised the rent 72% on some apartments in just two years, after renovations. Modest apartment buildings like the Verona that cater to middle-class and working-class families are becoming scarcer as fewer are built nationwide and older ones are demolished. That has resulted in a severe shortage of midtier apartments, causing rents for these units to rise at a faster pace than for luxury ones. Even though construction of multifamily rental properties is running at the highest level in decades, the overwhelming majority of new units—more than 80% in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas—are luxury, according to CoStar Group Inc.” [Wall Street Journal – 08/16/15]
3. High Housing Costs Raise an Obstacle for Women Fleeing Abuse “One in four women will suffer domestic violence in their lifetimes, though the crime is dramatically underreported, according to the advocacy group Safe Horizon. It is the third-leading cause of homelessness among families, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Because of the nature of the crime, victims, mostly women, often have no access to money, no recent job history, and no friends or family they can turn to. The national rental vacancy rate dipped to 8 percent in 2014, its lowest point in nearly 20 years, as rents rose at a 3 percent rate — twice the pace of overall inflation, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. In Boulder County, north of Denver, where rents average more than $1,300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, an advocacy group has only 12 affordable housing units available for about 300 domestic violence victims who need them.” [Associated Press – 08/15/15]
4. Owner of Dilapidated Landmarked Harlem Home Sued in Rare Move by City “The city is suing the owner of a dilapidated landmarked rowhouse in order to hammer home a message — fix it. In a rare move, the city Landmarks Preservation Commission filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Nina Justiniano to compel her to rehab her red-bricked home on historic Astor Row in Central Harlem. The interior floors and walls of the 133-year-old three-story home have collapsed and most of the roof is missing after years of neglect. The commission, which has only filed 13 lawsuits like this in the past 12 years, took the unusual step after repeatedly requesting the work since 2012. City law requires landmarked homes to remain in good repair. The lawsuit asks a judge to fine Justiniano $5,000 a day until she renovates the home.” [DNAinfo – 08/17/15]
5. Big Apple Leads Nation in Multifamily Construction Dollars “The New York City metropolitan area led the nation in new commercial and multifamily construction starts during the first half of 2015.  That’s the word from Dodge Data & Analytics, which reported $17.3 billion in commercial and multifamily projects broke ground in the metro in the January-to-June 2015 period, easily outdistancing the Miami area’s $3.0 billion in starts. ‘The multifamily housing expansion remains in full swing, and it’s broadening in geographic scope,’ Robert Murray, chief economist at Dodge Data & Analytics told MHN.  ‘Not only New York and Miami are seeing strong growth, but healthy percentage gains are being reported in such metropolitan areas as Boston, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and Atlanta. There are a few markets that showed earlier strength that now appear to be pulling back, such as Washington D.C. and Houston. But by and large, the upward trend for multifamily housing is still in progress.’” [Multi-Housing News – 08/14/15]
6. Could the City of New York Build a “Sixth Borough”? “What would it take to dredge and construct an entirely new sixth borough in the middle of New York Harbor? It’s an interesting question that preoccupies writer Jon Methven over at The Awl. Methven recounts the history of land reclamation in the city—from the dredging of Battery Park City and Liberty Island, to the bizarre proposals to fill in both the East and Hudson Rivers. Once such plan was ‘LoLo’—or, ‘Lower Lower Manhattan’—a 2011 proposal put forward by Columbia University’s Center for Urban Real Estate to connect Governors Island to Lower Manhattan and Red Hook via dredged land bridge. The plan, argues researcher Scott Hayner, was economically and physically feasible, and would have been less expensive than building a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The reclaimed land would also provide much needed housing and other infrastructure. ‘Affordable housing, no matter who you talk to, is one of the things the city is lacking,’ Hayner tells The Awl. ‘You can provide developers the opportunity to build affordable housing, at a price that makes sense because you’re able to dictate the amount of land and development rights to be used for office and residential use.’” [Curbed NY – 08/16/15]
7. Report: Foreclosure Filings Have Leveled off, But There’s Still a Problem “The foreclosure crisis persists in New York, even worsening in some suburban and upstate areas, the state comptroller reported Monday. Filings against homeowners unable to make mortgage payments spiked after the housing bubble burst in the 2008-2009 recession, according to the reportm. New cases nearly doubled over three years to 47,664 in 2009. New filings then declined for two years under revised court rules that require lenders to affirm claims to property and not simply produce rote documents. However, after dropping to 16,655 in 2011, they climbed sharply again, reaching 46,696 in 2013. New filings were 43,868 last year. ‘The foreclosure crisis is far from resolved,’ Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. ‘There are still too many people losing their homes. In many places, the situation has continued to get worse.’ The pending caseload has held fairly steady at around 90,000 since the start of 2013 with courts backlogged, involving one of every 88 housing units in New York.” [Crain’s New York Business – 08/17/15]
8. Towering Silliness: How the City’s Skyline Is Shaped by Tax Breaks “ITS prospectus declares that One57 will redefine luxury New York living; its bland interiors are, apparently, the acme of Danish modernism. The best condominiums in the building are said to sell for $100m. Strangely, the sales pitch does not mention that this luminous skyscraper beside Central Park benefited from tax breaks generously provided by New York city. Uncertainty about the future of that handout helps to explain why the city is in the midst of a building boom. After collapsing in 2009, demand for residential building permits has been rising steadily for five years, and lately has begun to surge (see chart). Census figures show that developers for residential buildings secured permits for nearly 42,000 units in the first six months of 2015 alone—more than double the number issued in the whole of 2014. Almost half these units are slated for Brooklyn, where land is less dear than on Manhattan.” [The Economist – 08/15/15]
9. Background to the Council’s Three Tenant Buyout Bills “The City Council on Thursday passed three measures meant to protect tenants from pressure to agree to buyouts—cash payments for renters who give up stabilized units. Other news accounts have reported the passage, but for those interested in the nitty-gritty details: [summary of Intro 682, 700, and 757]. All three measures passed with but one negative vote, from Staten Island Republican Councilman Steven Matteo. City Limits broke the buyouts story last year. While there are no statistics on how common the offers are, there’s anecdotal evidence that their frequency is increasing as more neighborhoods gentrify. Rent stabilization laws permit landlords to raise legal rents when a regulated apartment is vacated, and each rent hike pushes a unit closer to the threshold for ‘high-rent vacancy destabilization’ (sometimes referred to as ‘vacancy decontrol’), a mechanism that has drained tens of thousands of units from the stabilization system over the past two decades.” [CityLab – 08/14/15]
10. Demolition of 6 Apartment Buildings on Second Avenue to Start, Records Show “Six apartment buildings that have stood empty on Second Avenue for a year are finally set to be demolished to make way for two high-rises, according to records and neighbors. Icon Realty Management bought up two parcels of properties along Second Avenue — one at 1538-1546, between 80th and 81st streets, and another at 1562-1564 — over the course of eight years, and now demolition is finally set to begin, according to the Department of Building’s online records. Since last summer, the two sites have been cleared out of tenants, creating a string of vacant storefronts just a few blocks from ongoing Second Avenue Subway construction. Between 2007 and 2014, Icon Realty, which owns more than 1,800 apartment units throughout the city, purchased the southern block for $44.8 million and bought the northern block in May for an undisclosed amount, according to online records. For the latter site, the developer filed plans with the Department of Buildings to build a 164-foot, 14-story residential building there. The DOB disapproved the plan, though the reason was not immediately clear.” [DNAinfo – 08/17/15]