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February 22, 2008
AY affordable housing jeopardized not by lawsuits but by funding "crisis"
Atlantic Yards Report
For years, affordable-housing experts have been warning that the availability of housing subsidies for Atlantic Yards is questionable.
Norman Oder explains:
Forest City Ratner has heavily promoted the 2250 units of subsidized housing in the Atlantic Yards project, and that's been cited as a public use by two courts. However, there's no money available for it right now, more than a half year after a city official cited a "crisis" in the provision of affordable housing bonds. ...
Wrote Marc Jahr, president of the New York City Housing Development Corporation (NYC HDC) earlier this month in City Hall News:It is only February, but over $960 million in private activity bonds are required for affordable housing deals in HDC’s 2008 pipeline alone, while New York State overall has a pipeline of more than $6 billion. Unfortunately, however, New York State’s yearly allocation of cap is only around $1.6 billion.
Atlantic Yards would require $1.4 billion in housing bonds, according to information the Empire State Development Corporation disclosed to the Public Authorities Control Board and made public in the lawsuit challenging the AY environmental reviews.
...
So those bonds would be well behind requests made by many other developers seeking to make use of a very limited pool of affordable housing financing, a situation Shaun Donovan, commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) told Congress last May was a “crisis” threatening 6700 units in the city’s pipeline.
For additional information on the affordable-housing subsidy supply-and-demand crisis check out Brownstoner's recently posted summary of the press coverage.
Posted by lumi at February 22, 2008 5:14 AM