July 24, 2017

City selects developers to build 400 affordable apartments across the city

Developments will rise on 67 city-owned lots in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan

Bronx development proposed to fill an empty city lot, courtesy Curtis and Ginsberg Architects

New York City's Housing Preservation and Development has picked a group of developers to build more affordable housing on 67 small, city-owned lots, according to the New York Daily News. There will be a total of 400 new units across neighborhoods that include Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and East New York in Brooklyn; Fordham and Melrose in the Bronx; and central Harlem in Manhattan. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, 21 vacant lots will be developed into a mix of two-family homes, three-family homes, and condo buildings.

Small lots aren't always easy to develop, so the city grouped multiple small parcels to give developers opportunities to develop larger buildings. Of the chosen developers, six are nonprofits and two are minority or women-owned firms. Those teams include MHANY; Bronx Pro; East Brooklyn Congregations; Lemor Realty and Iris Development; JMR and Alembic Community Development; Fifth Avenue Committee and Habitat for Humanity; and Shelter Rock Builders.

These projects are part of the housing agency’s New Infill Homeownership Opportunities Program and the Neighborhood Construction Program. “One of the key drivers of the housing plan is the creative use of public land, which is in increasingly short supply,” HPD Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer told the News.

That's brought some controversy to the city agency, as it has tried to move community gardens across the city to build more affordable housing. Such pushes for affordable development are part of Mayor de Blasio Mayor de Blasio's larger plan to create or preserve 200,000 affordable units over 10 years. According to the administration, the city has secured more than 24,000 affordable units since 2014.