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April 18, 2009
Quinn, Jeffries, Towns Look to Reverse-Engineer Development Bubble
City Hall
Here's a plan to make use of luxury living units now sitting empty after the housing bubble has burst.
Flatbush Avenue was once a hotbed of development in the new downtown Brooklyn. Glittering towers filled with pricey condos began to dot the landscape, rezoned by city planners ushering in a would-be renaissance.
Developers cheered that vision, rallied by the surging housing market. They even advanced into the heart of Kensington, four miles down the road, where yet another 107-unit luxury project began to take shape.
Now, just three years after ground-breaking, those plans have unraveled. The towers are vacant relics of the housing bubble. The Kensington project, not even complete, faces foreclosure and possible demolition.
Some see the failed projects as nothing more than monuments to a reckless development era. But others have seized them as an opportunity to try and reverse-engineer the city’s housing bubble by paring down the city’s condo glut and adding to its affordable stock.
Housing advocates and policymakers are piecing together plans to convert many of those luxury units into cheaper ones, either through subsidies, affordable housing programs or new tax incentives. Or perhaps even government intervention.
“There are hundreds of units of empty luxury apartments that developers are unable to sell or rent because of the declining housing market,” said Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn), whose district includes some of the newest high-rises in Brooklyn. “It makes sense to figure out a way to convert those empty luxury units into affordable housing for the community.”
The plan is seen by advocates and even some developers as a creative if untested strategy for easing the city’s housing woes as credit tightens and prices plummet.
NoLandGrab: Maybe - just maybe - there are already enough luxury units on the market and no need to use public subsidies to create thousands of units for the proposed Atlantic Yards development.
Posted by steve at April 18, 2009 6:54 AM