The plan of the New York City Housing Authority to let private developers build apartments on city land in order to raise money for the debt-ridden agency, has been criticized by City Council member Ritchie Torres.
Torres, who chairs the City Council's public housing committee, wrote a letter to NYCHA chair Shola Olatoye, expressing "serious concerns about the slow and secretive matter" in which the agency has rolled out its plans for the private developments, reports The Real Deal.
Reports say that the details of the five projects that the city revealed were at half-market rate, were half-affordable developments at Wyckoff Gardens in Boerum Hill and Holmes Towers on the Upper East Side, including 100 percent affordable projects at Ingersoll in Fort Greene and at Van Dyke in Brownsville and Mill Brook in Mott Haven.
But Torres criticized the agency for not revealing information about other developments after the five projects, without explaining how the NYCHA calculated the $300 million to $600 million that they expect to raise through the plan, and without revealing how much the developers will pay to secure the rights to NYCHA property.
Meanwhile, about 100 residents of public housing staged a protest from across East End Avenue. The protesters were carrying signs that read "Funding, Not Gentrification," and "Build it on your own." The residents were there to protest de Blasio's plan to partially fund the New York City Housing Authority by allowing private developers to build luxury apartments on underused portions of public housing property, reported CVH Action.
In 2013, Mayor Bloomberg first floated the plan to infill public housing spaces with private developments. His proposal would allow developers to build 80 percent market-rate housing on public land. With his ambition to run the city, de Blasio, back then, vocally opposed the plan.
But now, de Blasio is making it clear that it was the details of the plan, not its broad outline, that he objected to.
