Housing Starts: Easing Section 8 Downsizing | NYCHA Selling Stake in 900 Units | Mansion Tax Impacts

Rendering of the first residential tower at Hudson Yards (Photo Credit: Related Oxford/New York Daily News)

1. New York City Housing Dept. Eases Rule Forcing Low-Income Tenants to Downsize New York City housing officials have partly reversed a policy that would have forced thousands of low-income tenants to move to smaller apartments. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development said that participants in the federal Section 8 voucher program who live alone no longer have to downsize to studio apartments if they live in a one-bedroom unit. The change, effective Dec. 1, affects about 3,325 tenants, officials said. [New York Times – 12/04/14]
2. Real Estate Giant the Related Companies Breaks Ground on First Residential Tower at Hudson Yards Real estate giant the Related Companies is getting started on the first of its skyline-altering residential towers at Hudson Yards, even as rumblings about a potential glut in the high-end condo market reach fever pitch. The company has broken ground on a slimline 70-story skyscraper at 15 Hudson Yards, the Daily News has learned. [New York Daily News – 12/04/14]
3. 25 years After Koch Housing Plan, A de Blasio Comparison “...If you look at what we’re trying to do, I think it’s ambitious, but it’s built on the scale of what the Koch plan really did and, in many respects, we owe a lot of what we’re doing to what the unbelievably talented people in the Koch administration did.” Of course, the circumstances are different today than in 1980s New York; polar opposites, really. Residents had been fleeing the city for decades, leaving behind a state of a urban despair that had many—including people working for Koch—saying the city should simply abandon entire neighborhoods, shrink its services and accept what seemed inevitable. [Capital New York – 12/05/14]
4. New York City to Sell Public-Housing Stake New York City’s financially troubled public housing authority will receive hundreds of millions of dollars by selling a 50% stake in nearly 900 apartments to private developers. The deal with L+M Development Partners Inc. and BFC Partner could help test the administration’s efforts to attract more private investment in its stock of public housing. [Wall Street Journal – 12/07/14]
5. East Harlem Landlord Hopes to Opt Out of Mitchell-Lama According to longtime resident and Lakeview Tenant Association head Jo Ann Lawson, once the building leaves the program, one-bedroom units will jump from $847 to $2,000/month, while four-bedrooms would go from $1,776 to $4,500/month. “I can take in a movie if I want, I don’t have to choose between whether to eat or pay rent,” said Lawson. [Curbed NY – 12/07/14]
6. Council Members Push for Housing Counsel, Citing Garner Council members Mark Levine and Vanessa Gibson pushed for increased funding for legal counsel for low-income tenants at a press conference on Friday, casting it as part of a broader battle for social justice. Levine and Gibson are co-sponsors of a City Council bill that would enshrine the right to legal counsel in eviction cases, which several speakers connected to a grand jury’s decision on Wednesday not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner. [Capital New York – 12/05/14]
7. How a Mansion Tax Could Affect Wealthy Neighborhoods To bolster public coffers or to curb rampant growth, a number of cities, including Singapore, Hong Kong and San Francisco, have imposed or increased taxes on wealthy home buyers in recent years. In other major cities, such as New York, London and Paris, new taxes on high-end homes and second homes are on the table. Economists and real-estate professionals are studying the effect of so-called mansion taxes on the property market, and so far their findings are mixed. [Wall Street Journal – 12/04/14]
8. Construction Loans Up 24% in New York City Transformation The transformation of New York neighborhoods from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Harlem is getting a boost from construction loans. Individual homeowners and investors across the country are receiving more of these mortgages to purchase and renovate dilapidated multi-family buildings—often in gentrifying areas where prices are soaring. The loans, which can surpass $1 million, are appealing because borrowers typically only make interest payments until the rehabilitation is complete. [Bloomberg – 12/04/14]
9. Has New York Multifamily Lost Its Sheen? Matthew Galligan, president of CIT Real Estate Finance, said that with New York’s multifamily market becoming increasingly competitive for borrowers and lenders, his team is looking at more opportunities outside the five boroughs. “The cost of land in some parts of Manhattan has gone up from $400 a foot to $800 a foot,” he said. “We find that uncomfortable.” As a result, CIT is putting a greater focus on industrial properties in non-urban markets surrounding the city. Those markets include parts of Pennsylvania with major routes leading “East, West, North and South,” Mr. Galligan said. [Commercial Observer – 12/04/14]
10. More People in Cities Today Live in Poverty Than in 1970 There are certainly examples of neighborhoods where poor residents have been displaced from their homes by rising prices or suffered a reduction in their standard of living due to rising rents — this dramatic transformation has been closely documented in places like Harlem in Manhattan, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and Wicker Park in Chicago. While such instances of neighborhood change are striking, our study shows they are actually quite rare. Less than 5 percent of 1970 high poverty neighborhoods have seen their poverty rates fall to below the national average over the past four decades. Far more common, and largely unnoticed, is a counter trend: the number of high-poverty neighborhoods in the U.S. has tripled, and the number of poor persons living in them has doubled since 1970. This growing concentration of poverty is the biggest problem confronting American cities. [Next City – 12/05/14]