Housing Starts: Housing Battle on Many Fronts | Eminent Domain | City Infrastructure and its Effects

(credit: City Limits)

1. Advocates want housing battle fought on many fronts.  Three-quarters of New York City tenant households saw their income gains during the Bloomberg years wiped out by rising rents as the city lost to the private market more than twice as many ‘affordable’ apartments as it gained through the former mayor’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, according to a new report by the Community Service Society. The report calls for a multidisciplinary approach by the de Blasio administration to address the housing crisis, one that links public housing, homeless shelters, zoning, the Rent Guidelines Board, comprehensive city planning and traditional affordable housing programs. [City Limits – 01/10/14]
2. Eminent domain: a long shot against blight. But the financial institutions have warned that mortgage lending would halt in any city that tried eminent domain—and they have lobbied Congress to ensure that the threat is not an empty one. Opponents have filed federal lawsuits, while real estate interests have made robocalls to residents and sent mass mailers warning that the plan would allow ‘slick, politically connected’ investors to ‘take houses on the cheap.’ (The idea is actually to buy mortgages, not houses.) [The New York Times – 01/11/14]
3. Can too much infrastructure doom a city? These maps confirmed what researchers had long suspected: the city of Angkor was characterized by a densely populated core surrounded by a sprawling urban periphery. Such settlement patterns, which were relatively uncommon in the preindustrial world, have become a defining characteristic of contemporary urbanism. By studying places like Angkor, Cambodia-based researchers are hoping to show how modern cities can become constrained by their infrastructural legacies, thus limiting their ability to adapt to environmental and population pressures. [Next City – 01/10/14]
4. Gentrification of work in the city.    For SoHo to survive, residents would have to do something else. Manhattan had no need to house the working class. So its neighborhoods catered to Jane Jacobs and company, the creative class. Jacobs did not so much save SoHo as she was invited in to help along the process of gentrification. The blue collar were banished to the fringes of New York to make room for the Sidewalk Ballet. [Pacific Standard – 01/09/14]
5. Linking landmarks to de Blasio’s agenda. The real-estate industry has been waging war on what it sees as an overzealous push by preservationists to landmark large swaths of the city. Now, landlords are hopeful they will find a new ally in new Mayor Bill de Blasio. [The Wall Street Journal – 01/12/14]
6. Manhattan West will have twice as much open space.  Hudson Yards gets the lion’s share of attention on the west side, but just one block away, another mega project is shaping up. It’s been nearly a year since we heard anything about Brookfield’s under-construction Manhattan West development, but at a public meeting last night, the developer reminded the world that the mixed-use project still exists, outlining plans for the project’s public space. Brookfield wants to create nearly twice as much open space than what is required by the city, expanding it from the mandated 1.3 acres (49,400 square feet) to 2.11 acres (91,725 square feet). [Curbed NY – 01/09/14]
7. Patrons mourn the closing of Milady’s Bar in SoHo.    Regulars of the watering hole on the corner of Prince and Thompson prided themselves on looking a bit different than the usual spiffy Soho crowd. ‘Did you look around and see another reason a guy like me would come into this neighborhood?’ asked 51 year old carpenter Paul Sosnowski. He was right at home in his paint splattered pants and scruffy gray beard. He started coming to Milady’s before the neighborhood morphed into a fancy retail destination. [WNYC – 01/12/14]
8. Demolitions dire for poor as affordable-rent gap grows: economy.  The cheapest housing units across the nation are the most likely to be demolished, and new construction typically commands higher rents, according to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Meanwhile, foreclosures that soared after the housing bubble burst in 2007 turned thousands of former homeowners into renters, heating up competition for affordable units. [Bloomberg – 01/13/14]
9. An income gap more like a chasm in NYC. A new report from the CUNY Graduate Center shows the extent to which the rich are getting richer in New York City, while the poor struggle to gain a foothold. In 1990, the top one percent of households in New York made $452,000 a year. By the time of the 2010 census, they were making $717,000 a year. During that same period, earnings for the poorest New York families remained nearly flat. [WNYC – 01/08/14]
10. Sen. Schumer to spearhead initiative to hurricane-proof NYC housing projects. Schumer is requesting $175 million from a federal hazard mitigation fund to help 21 vulnerable housing authority complexes, by installing back-up generators at 15 projects and raising boilers off the floor at five developments.‘We’re going to take what we learned from Sandy and build back stronger,’ Schumer said. Among most of the new construction, the louvers are visible. The mechanical rooms have been raised to upper floors. It’s impossible on existing public housing, but elevating boilers and adding back-up power can be done. [CBS News – 01/10/14]