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September 8, 2009
EMINENT DOMAINIA: The Big Apple Bites!
Gothamist, Will Eminent Domain Fight Turn Broadway Triangle Into Bermuda Triangle?
In a highly contentious July decision, Brooklyn's Community Board 1 voted to convert a 31-acre area zoned for manufacturing on the border of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant into 1,895 low-rise apartments—905 of which would charge below-market rate rents. Opponents say the buildings would be too small and accuse the city of awarding housing contracts to non-profits tied to influential Assemblyman Vito Lopez—the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and the Bushwick Ridgewood Senior Citizens Council—without putting the sites up for bid.
Another objection? The city plans to use eminent domain to force five property owners to sell, and another 14 businesses will probably be zoned out now that the area is no longer devoted to manufacturing. Anyone familiar with the Willets Point and Atlantic Yards development wars won't be surprised that legal battles are looming. Today the Daily News takes a close look at the individuals who would be displaced.
The NY Times, Tenants Making Way for Subway Ask: You Want Me to Move Where?
When eminent domain may be used for a more traditional use — in this case, the Second Avenue subway project — the task of finding comparable housing in the neighborhood is not going so well.
Under federal law, the transit authority must find replacement housing deemed “comparable,” a phrase that officials have interpreted to mean an apartment of a similar size and rent, in the same neighborhood or nearby. If the tenant chooses a more expensive replacement, the authority must pay the difference in the rent for three and a half years.
But New York’s real estate market makes this an onerous task. Many of the residents live in rent-regulated units that cost far less than similar ones in the neighborhood. Rents could be an additional $1,000 a month.
Such a situation was not anticipated by federal eminent domain law, which says the authority is obligated to pay each tenant up to $5,250 in subsidies over the three and a half years, a pittance on the Upper East Side. In a pamphlet distributed to tenants, a sample case involves a move from a $500-a-month apartment to a $600 one.
Posted by lumi at September 8, 2009 5:06 AM