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October 22, 2009
State must keep Ratner on hook for affordable housing
The Brooklyn Paper, Editorial
The nine words in the Sept. 17 Empire State Development Corporation staff memo defy all previous agreements made between [Bruce] Ratner and the state about the developer’s requirement to include a sizeable number of below-market-rate units in the mega-project.
Previously, those units were an iron-clad promise. Now, according to the new language, the affordable housing is merely “subject to governmental authorities making available … affordable housing subsidies.”
Make no mistake: Ratner has always said that he would build the 2,250 rental units with the help of taxpayers, who pay for those housing subsidies as part of a larger goal of keeping the city affordable and its neighborhoods comprised of families of mixed incomes.
...Of course, we are confident that a developer of Ratner’s reputation will make good on his prior promises to build the affordable units, which gave the project virtually all of its political support.
NoLandGrab: It's impossible to tell if whomever wrote the Brooklyn Paper's editorial was smirking or rolling his or her eyes when writing that last paragraph, but as far as we're concerned, Bruce Ratner's reputation is the precise reason why we've never trusted a thing about the Atlantic Yards project.
Posted by eric at October 22, 2009 11:24 PM