Atlantic Yards For Sale | NYC Housing Connect | City Council Votes Yes on Queens MegaMall

39.2% of land in downtown Detroit is reserved for parking. Surface lots are in red; garages in orange

1. City housing commish joins mortgage firm. The city announced Wednesday that Mathew Wambua, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for the past two years, is stepping down and will be replaced by deputy commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas.” [Crain’s NY – 08/21/13]
2. To enhance Atlantic Yards, a plan to sell a big part of it. The developer Bruce C. Ratner, executive chairman of Forest City Ratner Companies, is looking for an investor to buy up to 80 percent of the rest of the $5 billion Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, which is to eventually include 14 residential buildings and 6,000 apartments near Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. [New York Times – 08/21/13]
3. No room of their own for New Yorkers in need. NYCHA’s budget constraints have for the past decade kept it from expanding to meet the city’s deep needs for affordable housing, which the volatile economy has further exacerbated in recent years. According to studies by New York University’s Furman Center, nearly 80 percent of low-income households struggle to pay rent, with many stuffed into overcrowded apartments. [In These Times – 08/22/13]
4. The housing revolution The dismantling of public housing projects across America has been one of the most astonishing federal initiatives of the past 20 years. After spending billions of dollars to build public housing in every major city, many small ones and some rural areas over a six-decade period, the U.S. government reversed course in the early 1990s and started financing demolition rather than construction. Some 260,000 units out of 1.3 million nationally have been demolished or removed from the public-housing inventory since that time. The government also rescinded long-standing restrictions, such as the requirement that demolished units be replaced one-for-one, and encouraged cities to decrease not only the density of buildings but the actual numbers of public-housing apartments. It has been nothing less than a revolution in the public understanding of how government can best house economically disadvantaged residents. [Wall Street Journal – 08/18/13]
5. How too much parking strangled the motor city. By Rob Linn’s count, 39.2 percent of the land in downtown Detroit has been paved over or built up for the purposes of parking. There are surface lots across the street from each other, parking garages around nearly every corner, more than 5,000 spaces alone within the half mile around Comerica Park. Many downtowns, particularly in the Rust Belt, now look something like this. But so much parking has played a central role in the Motor City, where an attachment to the automobile - both economically and culturally - has helped cause much of the city to hollow out. [Atlantic Cities – 08/21/13]
6. City Planning Commission approves Willets Point mega mall The City Planning Commission approved a plan to build a mega mall near Citi Field as part of a larger redevelopment of the gritty stretch of auto body shops. “Willets Point is on its way to becoming remediated and ultimately becoming an active and inviting destination,” Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden said on Wednesday. The 13-member panel gave its overwhelming approval for the proposal — paving the way for a City Council vote within the next 50 days. Board member Michelle de la Uz was the lone dissenting voice during the meeting. She argued that there are a glut of malls already in Queens and said “questionable and weak” efforts have been made to relocate the immigrant shop owners working in the auto body shops. [New York Daily News – 08/21/13]
7. Upper West Side development is putting in a separate entrance for poor tenants. Upper West Side development is putting in a separate entrance for poor tenants. “ Extell Development Company is building a 274-unit luxury condo building in the Upper West Side, with plans to put in a separate door for people living in its planned below-market-rate units. The reason? It’s a workaround enabled by the city’s Inclusionary Housing law to help Extel collect on some major tax breaks and building allowances. Local residents are upset and have gotten their elected officials to jump into the ring. [Village Voice – 08/19/13]
8. As housing recovers, lots of boats rise in U.S. economy. In just the past week we’ve seen a bunch of signs that the housing recovery is gaining steam. Data out Wednesday showed that existing home sales rose to their highest level in nearly four years, while prices were up 14 percent from a year ago. Retailers Home Depot and Lowe’s both reported strong earnings growth and attributed that to the housing rebound. [NPR – 08/22/13]
9. NYC Housing Connect makes it easier to win affordable housing. Unlike most forms of government assistance-for example, food stamps, Medicaid or Social Security-which are doled out equally to all of those who qualify (even if in sometimes less-than-ideal amounts), affordable housing in New York City is allocated in a far more random fashion. To win a coveted place below-market-rate unit-way below-market-rate, in fact-you used to have to bookmark the city’s affordable housing lottery page and keep going back to it to find out which new developments were accepting applications, and fill each one out individually… ...While the new site will make applying easier, it won’t make your odds of receiving housing any better-in fact, by making it easier to apply (once you’ve entered your information, it takes all of 15 seconds to apply to each new building, depending on how quickly you can remember your password), it will likely make for even longer odds for each building. To that end, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU wants to know what New York City’s would-be mayors are planning to do about it. [ New York Observer – 08/20/13]
10. Hotels girding for a fight against Airbnb. City regulators and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are looking into cracking down on companies that help folks rent out their apartments to tourists. Each week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Special Enforcement fields about 10 complaints about residential apartments that are being rented out to tourists for overnight stays-which is illegal in New York but one of the hardest laws to enforce. [Crains NY – 08/19/13]