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August 15, 2006
YOU GOTTA GIVE IT TO ACORN
City Limits
By John Atlas
ACORN continues to defend its position on Atlantic Yards with the latest City Limits editorial, written by John Atlas, the president and founder of the National Housing Institute.
Whether you oppose or support Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, you have to acknowledge the work of ACORN, the group that negotiated the affordable housing agreement (City Conversations - "Supporting Atlantic Yards: Simply Not Enough Housing in Brooklyn, July 31). ACORN's staff work for low salaries, their leaders are dues-paying poor and working-class volunteers, and they work long hours. More than almost any other group in NYC, ACORN has proved that it can mobilize low-income people of color, win concrete victories and build grassroots political power.
ACORN continues to contend that the Ratner affordable-housing plan allows for 50% affordable housing depite the addition of market-rate condos after the agreement was signed, and the fact that most of the affordable units would not be affordable for ACORN's constituents.
In this week's editorial, Atlas adds a new new term to Atlantic Yards Newspeak, "50% non-market affordable housing."
As Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report revealed, "the term 'affordable' was initially used to describe only the lower-income housing." The program from which Forest City would gain subsidies uses the term "Mixed-Income."
We can now assume that "Non-market" affordable housing means anything priced at 30% of the various income bands of Ratner's plan, even though some of those units would be offered at rates comprable to the marketplace. Oder points out, "Some 900 of the affordable units would rent for more than $2000 for a four-person family."
Posted by lumi at August 15, 2006 9:24 AM