The Kalahari in Harlem is Open For Business

Posted by Chloé A. Hilliard at 3:32 PM, May 6, 2008

Harlem’s first green luxury apartment building (located directly across the street from the peejays) is open and ready to help already skyrocketing neighborhood rents go even higher.

The Kalahari will be affordable to households earning middle- and moderate-incomes, ranging between $63,810 to $131,165 for a family of four and $44,640 to $91,760 for a single person, according to a HPD press release.

“The Kalahari shows that affordable housing can also be sustainable housing,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “As we work to build housing for the million new people expected to come to New York by 2030, we need to ensure that we are building homes that people can afford and that allow the city to grow in an environmentally responsible way."

But not everyone in the community is appreciative of the green building and its back-to-the-motherland motif, as the Voice reported last May when the building was under construction.

Apartments in the two 12-story towers sell for up to $1 million and, according to Edwards, they're going quickly. Luxury condos and multi-million-dollar brownstones have become the norm in central Harlem, where the estimated average household income is $24,261. What makes the Kalahari unique are the colors of its facade (a checkerboard of charcoal, beige, and brown) and its co-developers (black). But knowing that the Kalahari isn't just another case of white developers cashing in does little to ease the concerns of residents who are threatened by gentrification.

"We get along to a certain extent," says Lucille Wright, describing the neighborhood, which is made up largely of African-Americans and West African immigrants. "We're the same color but not of the same mentality."

From Community Group to Condo: The Saga of 49 E. Houston and Times Up!

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 4:15 PM, April 29, 2008

Even among the old New York holdouts to gentrification, 49 E. Houston was a little strange. Not only did the one-story storefront stick out next to nearby remodeled walkups and rising glass facades, but until recently, the grassroots environmental non-profit Times Up! hosted bike repair workshops, political rides and activist meet-ups out of the aging building. The new 49 Houston should be strange too, but in a very different way. The product of real estate maneuvering and architectural ambition, the building will stand 14-stories high, with a cantilevered upper half that will suspend seven of its stories 25-feet above an adjacent walkup.

The ambitious new building provides a visually striking example of the effort to maximize floor space with minimal ground floor space. Hanging seven stories of condo a full 25 feet over an adjacent building has never been tried in New York, and the new building has already stirred controversy at the real estate porn blog Curbed. According to city documents, 49 and 51 Houston are part of the same zoning lot, and an agreement between the owners of the two lots will allow #49 to over flow to the east with its cantilever design.

Amid all the depressing tales of New York City gentrification, just how 49 Houston Street went from community organizing space to condos is a story all of its own.

“It was a real community kind of space," said Bill Dipaloa, the Director of Times Up!. "The space gave a lot. It was the reason a lot of community gardens got saved”

Dipaloa said the group has been getting angry calls about the group’s recent relocations, but wants to challenge treating the move as the all-too-typical gentrification story: “The real story for Times Up! is that for many years, that building was not gentrified” he said.

Times Up! moved into 49 Houston full time after owner Steve Stollman got involved with the group during the 2003 “Bike Summer.” After a little while, he offered them use of the building’s basement to create a ‘bike library’ and educational space for mechanics and workshops. Up until then, Stollman had run his own business out of the storefront, and for many years had allowed other community groups to gather and work in the space. Eventually, the trials of activism and issues with money caught up with Stollman.

“To have a one story building when you could have 12 there—that’s not very viable. I sustained it for 33 years because I didn’t give a fuck.” Stollman said. Eventually, “I got tired of not being able to pay my bills.”

Stollman give Times Up! the heads-up on a possible sale in advance, setting them off on a city wide search for new funding or comparable space that continues today, after an unexpectedly short residence at The Hub bike shop in the West Village.

“For the past two years, we’ve been having weekly meetings to try to save the space” Dipaloa said. “We had to build enough energy to save the space or buy a new one.” That led to a wide range of efforts, including a series of fundraising dance parties, and a search process that turned Times Up!’s cadre of anti-authoritarian bike mechanics and other volunteers into realtors-on-the-prowl for a mixed-use, ground-floor space that might measure up to their digs at 49 Houston.

Running a non-profit group in a decisively for-profit real estate market has left Times Up! in a sort of permanent limbo, a situation that most likely will dog the group for the years to come—not that they're not trying.

Their efforts included attempting a partnership with Science Adventure Camps, a summer camp program that needed to expand, and whose owner, Science Teacher Sarah, was a fan of Times Up!. The partnership has yet to bear fruit for either of the organizations. Twice the groups have found a suitable space, only to have it sold before they could make an offer.

“Whenever we find somewhere cheap enough and centrally located, it tends to get sold within 12 hours” Sarah said. “In any other city, I’m sure these problems would have been solved by now.”

Chinatown Residents Fight Gentrification

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 12:55 PM, April 28, 2008

The ongoing war between the forces of gentrification and the middle and working classes of the "old New York" has hit Chinatown too.

A new organization, calling itself the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, has taken aim at what it says are three threats to the neighborhood: a lack of affordable housing, a rezoning plan that could push upscale high-rise development from the Lower East Side to Chinatown, and a potential Business Improvement District that they say would tax small businesses out of existence.

The Coalition’s biggest battle thus far has been over rezoning laws, which Josephine Lee, a leader of the newly formed Coalition, calls racist for its exclusion of neighborhoods of people of color from protections against luxury and high rise development. According to Lee, the rezoning plan “excludes Latinos and Chinatown” and would encourage taller, pricier development to move East and into Chinatown by setting limits on development in trendier parts of the Lower East Side.

“All we’re asking for is accountable development” said Lee who is also a member of the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association. “If you have a whole community that caters to tourists, where will community needs go—the doctors, the grocery stores? Where will residents go? They will be priced out their community.”

Another potential culprit in the changing neighborhood is ‘inclusionary zoning’ laws, that allows taller development in exchange for developers setting aside 20% of new housing units for affordable housing. However, community activists say this is inadequate to ensure the neighborhood stays affordable.

“They’re not going to build housing affordable for the people in the area” said Hoon Kim, another member of the coalition, who works with the group National Mobilization Against Sweatshops. He said the standard for what is ‘affordable’ sets the bar too high for residents in the area, using a measure derived from median income for the metropolitan area. Lee says residents would have to make $60,000 a year to afford to live in the units, in a neighborhood where the average income is around $20,000 a year.

Debate also continues over a proposal to create a Business Improvement District for Chinatown. A total of 59 BIDs have sprung up over New York, providing marketing, beautification and public safety services to its members according to the City’s Department of Small Business Services. Two groups—the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation, and the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative—have begun advocating for the formation of a Chinatown BID, a process organizers say is at its “embryonic” stage. The Coalition opposes a BID because it would add one to five percent to property owners’ taxes, forcing businesses operating at the margins into closing.

“[The BID] is a tool, a marketing tool. If I didn’t believe this was helpful to Chinatown, I would drop it immediately.” said Wellington Chen of the Chinatown Partnership LDC. “The discussion is whether Chinatown will participate in the party, or will it be on the floor scrubbing.” Chen points to the BIDs that surround the area, and to Chinatowns around the country that operate under BIDs as reasons residents should invest in forming the district. At least one business owner with the Coalition takes issue with this approach.

“The Boston Chinatown, the LA Chinatown— they’re horrible shells of what they used to be, and much of the reason is that they’ve been taxed out” said Jan Lee, who also took issue with the comparison to other neighborhoods in New York. “Other BIDs in New York City have anchor businesses such as Lincoln Square for Lincoln Center, or 34th St. which has Macy’s. Trying to tap landlords in a place like Chinatown, the same equation doesn’t apply.”

Ultimately, community activists point to the visible liveliness of Chinatown’s streets as the best reason to fight the impending changes. “It would be different if Chinatown were a depressed neighborhood, if there was no commerce there” said Rob Hollander of the Lower East Side Residents for Responsible Development. “It’s a low income but viable neighborhood. Not every neighborhood has to be about luxury.”

Locals Fear City Will Destroy Coney Island In Order To Save It

Posted by Neil deMause at 3:20 PM, April 24, 2008

Its ass is Gras? The Grashorn Building, dating to the 1880s, could be replaced by a 30-story hotel.

When the city Economic Development Corporation announced last week--via a New York Times article by Charles Bagli--that it was revamping its years-in-the-works rezoning plans for Coney Island, much was still unclear about the details, beyond that the zone reserved for outdoor rides would shrink (from 15 acres to 9) and more buildings would be allowed in the traditional amusement district between the Cyclone and Nathan's.

A week later, Coney denizens have started to get more details on the EDC plan--and several now worry that the city is preparing to destroy Coney Island in order to save it.

"Things were looking so good in Coney Island about a month ago," says Dianna Carlin, owner of the boardwalk-side Lola Staar Boutique and founder of Save Coney Island, who was briefed by city officials on the revised plan earlier this week. "I had such a positive attitude for the summer--now things are looking somewhat dismal. It seems as though they're compromising their goal of preserving the amusement district."

The amusement district--the traditional rides and carny games that have defined Coney Island for more than a century--was the centerpiece of the the rezoning plan the city released last November. As it was announced then, the entire area between the boardwalk and the Bowery (the pedestrian walk that runs behind Surf Avenue) would be designated as city parkland, with only outdoor amusements allowed there. (Landowners wouldn't be forced to sell, explained CIDC president Lynn Kelly, but if they chose not to, they'd be stuck with the current C7 zoning, which allows only amusement uses anyway.) And while the plan allowed for new apartment towers and stores, it mostly relegated them to the north and west of Keyspan Park--easing worries that the onetime mile-long stretch of amusements would dwindle to a handful of blocks.

In the latest plan, according to conversations with EDC officials and those who've gotten city briefings, the balance has shifted--though how much depends on who's doing the talking. Now, a new street would be created running roughly from the current site of the Astrotower to the Parachute Jump; between it and the boardwalk still would be reserved for outdoor amusements, but north of there would be opened to new low-rise buildings for "entertainment retail" uses. Meanwhile, the three-block stretch of Surf Avenue immediately west of the Cyclone--most of which has been snapped up by developer and would-be condo builder Joe Sitt, including the Grashorn Building, Coney's oldest surviving structure--would be opened up for hotel towers as tall as 30 stories.

Coney Island historian Charles Denson was shocked to hear, in a phone call the night before the Times piece ran, that the city was switching gears. "The original plan was a compromise, and I supported that completely," says Denson. "In exchange for saving the amusement area, they were allowing 5,000 condos at the outer edge. Now it's such a reversal--although it does preserve a small amusement area, it's so completely different from what they'd initially proposed that you have to wonder what's going on behind the scenes."

Meanwhile, even those who've been granted sitdowns with city officials haven't been able to suss out precisely what such terms like "entertainment retail" would include--EDC staffers have stressed indoor rides that could draw visitors in bad weather, but there have also been dark murmurs of a Dave and Buster's or even a Niketown. "Are we talking about a mall with a merry-go-round in the corner? Or are we talking about an amusement park with a gift shop?" wonders Carlin; she says she asked EDC project manager Nate Bliss and Brooklyn city planning chief Purnima Kapur, but they "couldn't give me an answer." (City officials said they couldn't yet provide specific details of what would be allowable uses under the new zoning.)

Other locals who are still awaiting their meetings with the city are more circumspect, for now. Dennis Vourderis, co-owner of Denos Wonder Wheel Park (part of which would be opened for development under the new plan) calls the new plan "a step in the right direction" but is still concerned about the city's declared intention to seize the Wonder Wheel and adjacent kiddie park and turn it over to a city-licensed operator. Astroland operator Carol Hill Albert, while saying she's glad that "long-term" landowners will get dealt in on development rights, says it's "crushingly disappointing" to see the 15-acre amusement zone whittled to 9 acres. Sideshows by the Seashore artistic director Dick Zigun, meanwhile, says he "obviously has questions" and is "withholding comment or support" until he gets further details--which he's hoping will emerge when he gets his turn with EDC honchos today.

Meanwhile, the big question in everyone's minds is: Why now? The city's change of pace was so abrupt that CIDC president Lynn Kelly, who has been the public face of the rezoning plan, was on vacation in Europe when the announcement was made-- not that that stopped EDC from sending out a press release in her name last Thursday, citing that day's Times article and assuring Coneyfolk that the changes represented mere "modest adjustments" to the zoning framework.

One theory, promulgated by the New York Observer, credits Coney councilman Domenic Recchia for forcing the city to scale back its plans. (Recchia is on vacation this week; his spokesperson Rob Hart said the councilmember is "optimistic" that the new plan is closer to "striking a balance between the needs of the city and making sure the landowners" are satisfied.) Yet Recchia--who called Joe Sitt a "good friend" at a March forum on the future of Coney--has been a critic of the city's plan from the start. Unless the EDC thought it had misplayed its hand--or Recchia performed some unrevealed feat of horse-trading in the interim-- it's unclear what changed between last November's bold city pronouncement and last week's backtracking.

"Something happened," concludes Carlin. "There's definitely some pressure from somebody. There was a sense of urgency. They kept saying these desperate things, like 'This is as good as it's going to get, and if we don't get this to happen, we're not going to get anything."

And if it just comes down to a rush to get a Coney rezoning done before Mayor Bloomberg's City Hall countdown clock hits zero, Carlin hopes the city reconsiders. "Once these 30-story buildings go up," she says, "they're not coming down."

UPDATE: This story was updated at 4:15 to reflect a statement from the EDC.

New Buildings Commish Takes a Hammering at Hearing

Posted by Tom Robbins at 1:42 PM, April 24, 2008

With just two days on the job, acting city buildings commissioner Robert LiMandri had a right to be nervous this morning as state legislators grilled him about his agency's many problems.

Even before the state pols got off a question, LiMandri lost his place while reading a prepared statement.

The new buildings commish was in the midst of offering praise for Jim Brennan, the Brooklyn assemblyman who chaired the hearing and who has often been at odds with the agency. "Truly groundbreaking," LiMandri said of a Brennan-sponsored law that lets the agency block architects and engineers who file misleading records with the department.

Then he paused for several seconds. "Please continue," said Brennan.

"I seem to have lost my place," muttered LiMandri, before quickly recovering.
A few minutes later, the hammering began as LiMandri got a taste of official anger over the surge in construction deaths—13 in the first four months of this year compared to 12 in all of last year.

"These are valid and important questions that we need to review," said LiMandri who has launched a new $4 million review of high-rise construction procedures by his department.

Willets Point Redevelopment Hits Potholes

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 12:30 PM, April 23, 2008

The city’s plan to acquire and raze 61 acres of land in Willets Point in Queens has “no chance of surviving the public review process” Councilmember Hiram Monserrate charted in a letter—endorsed by 28 other Councilmembers—to city officials in charge of development plans for the site.

The plan for Willets Point proposes a smörgåsbord of mixed uses for the area including “residential, retail, hotel, convention center, entertainment, commercial office, cultural, community facility, open space, and parking,” at a positively Moses-ian 8.91 million square-feet of building space, according to an Environmental Impact Statement Draft. The project would use a single developer, but that developer has not been named.

With the backing of the city Economic Development Corporation, the plan entered the zoning process—known as ULURP or the Uniform Land Use Review Process—on Monday, despite community opposition that includes legal accusations of systemic neglect on the part of the city.

The area lies immediately adjacent to Shea Stadium and the under-construction Citi Field, and has long been an apple in the eye of New York’s big planners , including Robert Moses and Mayors extending back to Ed Koch. The added twist in this go-round is the brand new Citi Field already under construction nearby, and a law suit that alleges the City has neglected the area to lay the ground work for condemning and seizing the area.

“It’s our land we’re not going to leave it” said Dan Feinstein, a member of the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, which has filed suit against the city. He also runs Feinstein Iron Works in the area currently under review for rezoning.

“You might think ‘How can a place in NYC have no streets?’ We don’t.” Nothing’s been fixed here in 30 years” said Feinstein. “We don’t have street sweepers, we don’t have streets to sweep.”

The suit calls for the city to provide basic utilities such as sewers and road maintenance that plaintiffs claim have been denied to the area, and monetary damages to cover loss of business. Restoring basic services to the area will allow redevelopment without the use of eminent domain, according to Feinstein.

“We don’t believe the city should profit off its own misdeeds” said Michael Gerrard, lawyer for The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association. “We believe city should not be able to drive down value then seize it at bargain basement prices.”

The letter from Councilmember Monserrate throws another wrench in the works. Monserrate represents Willets Point and the areas surrounding it, and the opposition of 29 Councilmembers would be sufficient to block any proposal going through the council.

Vagueness and lack of public input remain a sticking points for businesses and other community members. Both Feinstein and Gerrard claim that the city has made little to no effort in reaching out to landowners for relocation, and the letter from Monserrate claims that “The plan provides no guarantees that the displaced workers and small businesses will be treated fairly or compensated with meaningful benefits to the surrounding communities such as housing affordable to the average family.”

Large-scale development projects in New York have been receiving rough treatment lately, and the tea leaves seem to be predicting another difficult path for Willets Point.

Buildings Commissioner Resigns Amid Construction Chaos

Posted by Michael Clancy at 1:34 PM, April 22, 2008

Faced with mounting concerns about a spike in construction accidents, including 13 construction-related deaths this year, Buildings Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster tendered her resignation this morning, which the mayor accepted.

"Over the past six years, Patricia has moved the Department of Buildings a long way forward by fighting corruption, strengthening inspections and oversight, increasing the public’s access to information, and bringing increased levels of professionalism and integrity to all levels of her agency, " said Mayor Bloomberg in a press release, which was a far cry from some very critical, off-the-cuff remarks he made yesterday.

“I don’t think anybody should be fully satisfied with the Department of Buildings’ performance,” Bloomberg said, according to The New York Times. “Whether somebody could have done a better job — I’m trying to — whether they could have done a better job I just don’t know.”

The New York Post quoted Bloomberg as saying: "Whether they've done everything they can is something that I'm looking at. But clearly, we've had a dozen fatal accidents in the industry in the first six months of the year, and last year there were a dozen all year.... There was an issue of a building where a crane collapsed where they twice though't the building plans were compliant with the zoning, and then a third look decided it wasn't."

The mayor's harsh assessment came a week after it was revealed in a City Council hearing that a tower on East 51st—which was the site of crane collapse that killed seven and injured 24— should have never received approval from the buildings department because it was too tall.

Second Avenue Met Foods Threatened by NYU Rent Increases

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 3:14 PM, April 9, 2008

East Village residents are circulating a petition to ask NYU to keep the Met Foods grocery store in its current home on 2nd Avenue.

Word of the store’s potential closure has been making the online real estate blog-rounds — it began with Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, then made the rounds at the Curbed network . Community Board 3 has the issue on it’s April 15th agenda, and judging by the tone of recent NYU-Community meetings, tensions will be running high. NYU and other large institutions have been the target of community outcry for a variety of projects that will transform the skyline and street life of the East and West Village.

Residents are worried the grocery store's displacement would remove a low-cost food source in a neighborhood sandwiched between the Union Square Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s twosome, and Whole Foods on the Bowery. According to a spokesperson from the school, NYU has made an offer to relocate Met Foods as well as replace the current tenants with another grocer. Rising rents seem more threatening considered along with rising food prices, and NYU’s history in the nabe. Met foods is only a few blocks away from the under construction 12th street dorm, which remains a sore spot for preservationists and community members alike. This isn’t the first time NYU has run into foodie problems– the Morton Williams supermarket at Bleeker and LaGuardia has been on the chopping block for years as a prime site for new university building, becoming the target of preservationists seeking to label the site a landmark and slow new building in the West Village.

Just one more sign of the times in a rapidly changing city.

Lawsuit: Columbia Expansion Poses 'Biohazard' Risk

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 4:28 PM, March 27, 2008

The largest landowner threatened by Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion has filed a suit against the school and city, alleging that the environmental review process for the expansion was insufficient. The process may have even ignored the risk for potential biohazard threats to the West Harlem community, the plaintiff's lawyer said.

“I think it’s selfish for Columbia, it shows a level of uncaring for the people of West Harlem” said Nick Sprayregen, the owner of Tuck-It-Away Storage, the lead petitioner in the suit, which was filed Wednesday afternoon.

At issue is the construction of a massive underground "bathtub" structure that would extend about seven stories below ground throughout the development, a planned expansion that would include a research facility that the university calls a "biosafety" center, while the plaintiff calls it a "biohazard" center . According to the plaintiffs, the placement of such a structure on a geological fault in a flood zone poses a risk to the surrounding community. But according to Columbia, the research facilities will be built above grade and pose no risk.

“The rim of the bathtub is barely above the Hudson river, we believe it poses a risk of catastrophic failure” said Norman Siegel, Sprayregen’s lawyer. He cited global warming and its connected risks as an issue of serious concern.

“There exists a likelihood of a storm surge that would come over the bulkhead and flood the bathtub” and “hazardous materials from these facilities could be washed out into the West Harlem community” he said.

The suit challenges whether the City Planning Commission took the required “hard look” at environmental hazards for the site. The suit claims that the planning commission "provided that the engineering issues raised during the environmental review process would be resolved at some later unspecified date.”

However, “Neither the engineering consultants… nor Columbia University consultants outline in any detail what those solutions are, what the impact of carrying out those approaches might be” the suit claims in a quote from Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, the chairman of Community Board 9.

Columbia declined to comment on the pending litigation, but said in a statement: “We are confident that the extended public land use and environmental review processes were rigorous and comprehensive. They underscored that thriving universities are essential for New York City to remain a leader in attracting the talent that pursues new knowledge and creating the good, middle-income jobs for people who seek to improve their lives here.”

A Columbia spokeswoman clarified the nature of the research facility, taking issue with the plaintiff's use of "biohazard. " “There are no plans to put biosafety facilities below grade,” said the spokeswoman La-Verna J. Fountain.

Sprayregen’s concerns extend beyond the bathtub to the facility itself.

“It just boggles the mind why Columbia, supposedly an altruistic institution, would but a biohazard research center in Manhattan” he said. “I question the wisdom of placing, particularly after 9/11, a biohazard facility that sticks out like a sore thumb for any potential terrorists” in the city center.

“These are bio-safety rooms” Fountain said. “These are not whole buildings, just rooms.”

No matter the result of this current suit, litigation about the Columbia expansion seems bound to continue. The suit filed yesterday is the fifth which Siegel has been involved in, and he sees the potential for at least one other suit. “If eminent domain is used, transferring private property to a private university, we will litigate that issue” he said.

The activist group Coalition to Preserve Community announced a protest for Monday at Columbia. Continued community resistance to the Manhattanville plans has been a driving force for the ongoing legal battle between landowners and the school, and both Sprayregen and Siegel cited community activists as a key factor in their decision to file suit.

“You need the community behind you on this” Siegel said. “Property owners have standing, but the community members were the heart and soul of this lawsuit.”

More from around the web:

[Mom and Pop NYC]

[NY Sun]

[Columbia Spectator]

[Crain's New York Business]

High Court Deals Death Blow to East Village MegaDorm

Posted by Sarah Ferguson at 7:45 PM, March 25, 2008

The state’s highest court has nixed developer Gregg Singer’s plan to erect a 19-story dorm on the site of the now landmarked P.S. 64 school building on East 9th Street, just off Tompkins Square.

On Tuesday, the New York Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the city’s refusal to issue Singer a permit for his so-called “dorm for hire” because he has not managed to line up any schools or universities to lease the place.

The 7-0 ruling overturned a split decision by the midlevel Appellate Division, which ruled in Singer’s favor last June.

This time, the Court of Appeals found that it was “more than prudent” for the city to require a developer attempting to make use of the so-called “community facility use” zoning bonus to prove some kind of “institutional nexus” upfront, rather than risk ending up with another oversized apartment building that may or may not house students:

“It would create needless problems if [the] petitioner built a 19-story building, only to find that it could not use it in a legally permitted way. The City would then face a choice between waiving the legal restrictions and requiring the building to remain vacant or to be torn down.”

City attorneys were ecstatic at the news. “We’re very happy because it confirmed the Department of Building’s ability to deny a permit when it believes a proposed use is illegal,” said Gabriel Taussig, chief of the city’s administrative law division. Singer's attorney Jeffrey Glen declined to comment.

The Appeals Court ruling could also put a crimp in Singer's $100 million damages suit against Mayor Bloomberg, the Buildings Department, and various other agencies. In that suit, which has been on hold pending the outcome of this case, Singer alleged that the city's refusal to grant him a dorm permit was part of a political conspiracy against him.

Of course there’s nothing to stop Singer from submitting a new application to for a smaller dorm at the site. But this time, in addition to all the neighborhood opposition, Singer will have to deal with the fact that the century-old P.S. 64 is now a landmarked building.

“His 19-story dorm plan is for all intents and purposes over,” Taussig said.

Building Inspector Arrested For Filing False Report at Deadly Crane Crash Site

Posted by Michael Clancy at 6:15 PM, March 20, 2008

Photo by digiart2001 via Flickr

A city buildings inspector was arrested on Wednesday for falsifying a inspection report on an East Side crane just 11 days before it came tumbling down killing seven and damaging a nearby building in one of the city worst construction accidents.

Edward J. Marquette faces up to four years in prison for filing a report alleging that he inspected the crane on March 4th—after a retired buildings inspector alerted city officials that the crane on E. 51st was not properly fastened to the building.

On March 16, the day after the deadly accident, Marquette told the city Department of Investigation that he had properly inspected the crane on March 4 and found no problems. He had also filing a report indicating the same. After gathering information that suggested otherwise, city investigators interviewed Marquette again on Wednesday and he admitted that he didn't do the inspection and falsified his reports.

The crane was inspected the day before the accident, and Marquette's failed inspection would not have prevented the accident, said Department of Buildings Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster.

"Based on the preliminary findings of the ongoing investigation, it is unlikely that a March 4th inspection would have prevented this horrific accident," said Lancaster in a statement. "We continue to believe (it) was caused by human or mechanical error during the crane jumping operation on March 15th."

The city has ordered an immediate re-inspection of all the cranes inspected by Marquette over the last six months.

Atlantic Yards Opponents Look With Hope to Gov. Paterson

Posted by Julie Bolcer at 5:39 PM, March 14, 2008

Copyright 2006 Jonathan Barkey

In the war of attrition that characterizes the epic struggle against the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, opponents feel guardedly optimistic that the unexpected ascension of Lieutenant Governor David L. Paterson to New York’s highest office might allow them to make progress on the hitherto stymied political front.

“I think we’re going to have a more responsive governor in the months ahead,” ventured Dan Goldstein, spokesperson of the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn coalition, during a community forum on Thursday evening that drew over 100 people to hear an update on the status of the largest development project in the borough’s history. The forum, scheduled before the shockingly abrupt resignation of Governor Eliot Spitzer on Wednesday, presented an unanticipated but welcome opportunity to inject political speculation into discussion of the legal and economic hurdles facing mega-developer, Forest City Ratner, as it seeks to finish an expensive and controversial job.

Hastily approved without community input by the outgoing Pataki administration in December 2006, the $4 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards development would plop 17 buildings, including looming residential towers, office buildings and an 18,000-seat basketball arena for a relocated New Jersey Nets, over seven square blocks near Downtown Brooklyn. Despite the lack of legislative oversight for the project, which is being shepherded by that opaque public authority, the Empire State Development Corporation, independent analysis finds that the public would help pay to build Atlantic Yards through a combination of $2 billion in direct cash contributions from the city and state, tax incentives and subsidies for Forest City Ratner.

Moreover, some private businesses and residents would be displaced by the state’s use of eminent domain to grab essential parcels of land that Forest City Ratner has not been able to buy. Opponents are challenging the constitutionality of that tactic in an ongoing lawsuit that could reach the Supreme Court, or more likely get refiled in state court. Along with a case now in state appellate court challenging the integrity of the project’s environmental review process, the courtroom double punch has created a drag on the project at the same time that the economic outlook for risky real estates adventures like Atlantic Yards has taken a nosedive.

A slipping economy, credit crunch, battered real estate market, and increasing construction costs all threaten the underpinnings of the Atlantic Yards proposal, of which the celebrated arena portion appears unlikely to reach its scheduled 2010 completion date. Some specific drawbacks include the soaring costs of the arena, estimated to exceed $650 million by this point, and the absence of financing for the affordable housing component of the project, which opponents charge has taken a back seat. In order to build the 2,250 rental units that would be considered affordable under the plan, Forest City Ratner would require a subsidization of $1.4 billion in federally tax-free housing bonds from the New York City Housing Development Corporation.

However, there is currently a housing bond cap of $1.6 billion per year for the entire state, and plenty of other applicants are in line for the scarce funding.

Here is where Atlantic Yards opponents envision a potential role for Paterson, the incoming governor, depending on the circumstances. Should the cap in bond financing jeopardize the affordable housing component, for instance, they ask whether and how he might intervene. They also wonder if the escalating arena costs might encourage another vote by the Public Authorities Control Board, which gave final approval for the financing in December 2006. Then, the all-powerful controlling members of the PACB were Governor George Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Now, Paterson enters that mix as one of the proverbial three men in the room.

Still, City Councilmember Letitia James, who represents areas directly affected by Atlantic Yards and was the only elected official to appear at the community meeting, cautioned in an interview afterward, “The reality is that at this point in time there is a contract and obviously he [Paterson] is going to have to comply with the contract because the state of New York is obligated.” Earlier, during her remarks to the forum, she said of the governor-in-waiting, “I don’t know what his position on Atlantic Yards is going to be, and whether or not we’re going to go back to the table.”

Although the Brooklyn-born Paterson has not taken a public stance on Atlantic Yards, other community leaders sounded hopeful as they considered hints from his background, and contrasted his more congenial style with the confrontational tone of Governor Eliot Spitzer.

“Despite the horror this week for New York,” said Candace Carponter, the DDDB legal chair, “It’s a breath of fresh air for us because Spitzer wouldn’t listen to us. He has always either turned a deaf ear to us, or has been abusive to us.” She recalled a particularly rancorous meeting over two years ago, when Atlantic Yards opponents including herself, Goldstein and James met with the then-Attorney General and gubernatorial contender to present their community’s opposition to the project. Although Spitzer had not yet publicly expressed his support for Atlantic Yards, she says the son of a real estate developer belittled their concerns in a shouting match that ran over 20 minutes.

“I have never been berated the way we were in that room,” remembers Carponter. “He was so condescending and so dismissive – I think dismissive is probably the best word –but in an incredibly rude way.”

Paterson, on the other hand, hails from a family of career politicians, and demonstrates a base of support that may make him more sympathetic to affordable housing needs. Tellingly, Atlantic Yards opponents recalled a moment from his tenure as Senate Minority Leader in 2005, when he joined a rally on the steps of City Hall, with Councilmembers Leticia James, Bill Perkins and others, to call for a statewide moratorium on eminent domain use in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. City of New London decision. That decision is widely interpreted to have expanded the potential for eminent domain abuse.

If the ultimate stance of Paterson remains uncertain, Atlantic Yards opponents do find some clarity in their immediate agenda. In the coming weeks, they plan to continue their litigation efforts, lay the groundwork for a conversation with Paterson, and protest the annual ball at the Brooklyn Museum that will honor Forest City Ratner head Bruce Ratner on April 3.

Meanwhile, the bigger political lessons of the week continue to feel raw, but strangely relevant to Atlantic Yards.

“This is what happens when someone walks around thinking that the rules do not apply to him,” said Councilmember James, drawing a parallel between the cavalier behavior of Forest City Ratner and Spitzer, her former employer. “What happens is that you fall down in disgrace.”

Tenant Harassment Bill To Become Law

Posted by Eileen Markey at 9:24 AM, March 13, 2008

Ramona Santana knows when she's not wanted. Two years ago her landlord offered her $5,000 to get lost, she said. That was after a fire she calls suspicious damaged one apartment in the building a few blocks south of Fordham University where Santana and much of her family have live for 25 years.

"I told him no. I'm not going anywhere. I have the hospital right near me, my clinic," she said in a voice still heavy with the accent of her native Puerto Rico. When the landlord wouldn't renew her lease she brought him to housing court. "I have a paper from the judge. It says he's supposed to bring to me my lease in 30 days. But he don't want to bring me my lease. He won't give me that lease. He wants me gone," she said.

Santana believes the landlord's delay in renewing her lease, the fires, the monetary offer if she vacates her home and the vandalism and poor repairs in her building are all part of a campaign to chase out long time tenants with low stabilized rents - in favor of higher paying tenants.

But Santana ain't going anywhere. Except to City Hall that is. Santana intends to join scores of other tenants and their supporters at noon today on the steps of City Hall to celebrate the passage of an anti-tenant harassment bill.

The new law will make harassment itself an offense over which tenants can take their landlords to housing court. She'll be in the Blue Room when Bloomberg signs the bill into law at 1 p.m.

Santana twice testified in favor of the legislation, introduced by Council members Dan Garodnick and Melissa Mark-Viverito.

"It's good because (Bill No.) 627 protects tenants and landlords. Some landlords do too much harassment for the tenants. The tenants need protection," she said Wednesday night.

Tenants can currently bring complaints against their landlords for failing to make certain repairs, for heat and hot water complaints and sundry other offenses and can obviously file a criminal complaint if a landlord threatens them physically. But each offense is separate. Tenants and housing rights advocates argued that in many neighborhoods across the city landlords wage concerted campaigns against their subsidized and rent stabilized tenants, hoping to chase them away in favor of higher paying new comers.

The piece-meal system of adjudicating each heat and hot water violation or each instance of a broken elevator doesn't address the real problem, the staff attorney for South Brooklyn Legal Services argued in testimony before the council in December. Instead tenants need a mechanism to call out landlords who are trying to push tenants out with a campaign of harassment.

The council agreed. At 1 p.m. Bloomberg will sign Local Law 7, making harassment of tenants for the purpose of encouraging them to vacate their apartments an actionable housing code violation. The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of 90 neighborhood housing organizations, said tenant harassment is a significant problem for its members.

"As market rents continue to rise in neighborhoods across the City, there is more and more incentive for landlords to use non-legal methods to push out tenants who are paying less then the market will bear," the association said in a statement. "Harassment is a major contributing factor to the rapid loss of the City's affordable housing stock, including the de-regulation of 13,000 apartments each year. Many unscrupulous landlords buy buildings with the expectation that they will be able to maximize their profit by using harassing tactics to push out existing residents."

Remember these guys in Prospect Heights?

Trinity House Residents Seek 'Kool Herc' Reprieve

Posted by Eileen Markey at 1:22 PM, March 10, 2008

The city may have kept the birthplace of hip hop affordable for long-time residents last week when it prohibited the sale of a Mitchell Lama building where Kool Herc rocked his first block parties, but other residents facing Mitchell Lama conversion are asking “What about us?”

The residents of one such building owned by the Trinity School on the Upper West Side say that same logic that helped save Kool Herc's building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue should applied to their building on 91st Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. The tenant association at Trinity House has appealed to city Department of Housing Preservation and Development to reject the sale, on the same basis: there's no way the new owner would be able to afford to maintain it as affordable housing if they pay a crazy-high sale price.

HPD will not say how much Pembroke Properties is offering the Trinity School and neither will either party in the proposed sale, but Amy Chan, a Tenants & Neighbors organizer who is working with Trinity House residents said the school told parents it expects to net $24 million from the sale. If that's the case the building will sell for an even higher price.

"If they are paying upwards of $24 million, the rents would have to double or triple to sustain that," Chan said Friday. "So we think it would be an even easier decision for HPD."

Pembroke and Trinity have assured tenants that if the building is bought and removed from the Mitchell-Lama program there apartments will shift to rent stabilization. And when apartments are sold as condos, whoever can't afford to buy can stay in their rent stabilized apartment.

That's not protection enough for Jim Paul, co-chair of Trinity House's tenant association. "The sale price means the buyer is under pressure financially to sell these units and therefor to get tenants out," he said Friday. "That has been the pattern in New York. Then you start having harassment and whatnot."

Even if tenants were able to stay in their apartments happily and without hard sell tactics, Paul said, the sale and conversion is still a loss of affordable housing in a neighborhood increasingly out of reach for most New Yorkers. Under the terms Pembroke offers, once a unit is vacated it will no longer be governed by any rent restrictions.

With an aging population at Trinity House, Paul predicted even all the hold-out units could be converted to high priced condos in 25 years. Paul said about a quarter of his neighbors in the 200-unit building have low enough incomes to receive Section 8 rental assistance, others are teachers, firefighters or middle class professionals. There are a few college professors and Paul directs a public policy NGO focused on United Nations issues. These aren't the dishwashers and supermarket cashiers that live in the Kool Herc building at 1520 Sedgwick, but they aren't the million dollar condo crowd either.

They are the people who used to populate the Upper West Side, before it changed, as WNYC's Brian Lehrer once said, from East Village north to Scarsdale south.

"Most people are just ordinary folks who really benefit from affordable housing, from not having to pay 65 percent of their income on rent," said Paul. "That the city of New York allows all this to go forward is insane," he said, referring to the proposed sale and conversion. "They talk about affordable housing and even attempt to build some and then at the same time they let all these things go though."

Friday morning a spokesman for the Trinity School said he would return a call seeking comment on the building's sale and its price, but he never did. Trinity House is hardly the only Mitchell-Lama building facing sale to a deep pocketed owner intent on taking it out of the program. A map of recent and pending sales shows Mitchell-Lama developments across the city slated for conversion to cash cows.

Since 2002 a handful of private investors have bought fifty subsidized and rent stabilized complexes, then taken them out of their affordable programs, according to research conducted by Tenants and Neighbors and the Urban Home steading Assistance Board (UHAB). If the city's HPD or the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal had vetted those sales as closely as the home of hip-hop sale more than 16,000 units of affordable housing might have been preserved.

Dina Levy, director of policy and organizing at UHAB was effusive in her praise for HPD's decision to quash the 1520 Sedgwick deal but later last week she urged HPD and its state partner DHCR to look as carefully at similar deals where affordable housing is being sold at sky-high prices. "This is a great thing. We're very, very happy HPD acted, but this can't be a one-off," she said.

Levy and Amy Chan, Mitchell Lama organizer for Tenants & Neighbors, urged HPD and DHCR to adopt clear regulations governing the sale of Mitchell Lama buildings to codify under what conditions they would not approve a sale.

HPD spokesman Neill Coleman said the agency examines each sale on an individual basis and said the 1520 Sedgwick decision was not indicative of a new policy.

"What they did commit to was that they will look at sales now," Levy said. "There was a time when HPD was not even asking for contracts. Now for sure both agencies are taking the sales as an opportunity to vet."

Freezing Tenants Put Heat on Landlord With Takeover Action

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 3:43 PM, March 4, 2008

A sign outside 1849 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx labels the building a shelter in the event of nuclear fallout, but residents in this recently privatized building say that they have received scant protection from more immediate harms: mold, rodents, and New York City winters.

“Over the last six years, this building has totally deteriorated. Rents have increased but services have decreased. The lack of heat and hot water has made this building a disaster” said Eugenie White, the President of the Morris Heights Tenant Association.

“This is the worst it's ever been” added Rosa Williams, a 26-year resident of the building.

Now, with the help of the Urban Justice Center, 70 of the building's tenants have called on a judge to transfer control of the building to an independent administrator in order to make long-neglected repairs—a rare action to fix what residents call a rapid deterioration in services since the ownership exited from the Mitchell-Lama program 6 years ago.

“It took me 8 years to move in because there was a long list of tenants trying to get in” when the building was government-owed said Estelle Rollins. Now, as of December 18th, there were 784 code violations in the complex, and some long time residents have started to leave. “It was a family building, now a lot of those old families are starting to move out” she added.

Since leaving the Mitchell-Lama program, the building has changed hands twice, and today’s action was just the latest step in a history of problems for the residents. According to tenant Portia Shaw, residents went on strike against the previous owner to demand a return to cut services. Last August, half of the building’s residents went to court demanding repairs but to little results. “We’ve been unable to get the landlord to live up to stipulations” said lawyer Garrett Wright. “The only alternative left to us was to file this action.”

When under Mitchell-Lama, the building was serviced by unionized janitorial workers. Now White said that cleaning and janitorial services were “at the zero level.”

The building is now owned by Mario and Lucia Milevoi, who bought the property in early 2002. The Milevois also own a building next door, 1871 Sedgwick, where resident Carolyn Bryant said she’d like to undertake a takeover as well.

Residents said they had difficulty organizing the action, owning to changes made to the building over the past few years. The landlords have transformed community meeting areas, laundry rooms and storage areas to apartments, leaving little room for meetings between residents, according to Williams.

Today’s legal action comes as part of an upswing in organizing surrounding current and former Mitchell-Lama buildings, including efforts to keep 1520 Sedgwick under government ownership and a decision by the City Comptroller to prevent investment of pension money in speculative real estate deals involving public housing.

The position of tenants here and elsewhere was laid out in simple terms by Eugenie White: “It isn’t right for him to take all and give nothing.”

Stories on Comptroller’s Mitchell- Lama Investment policy [Community Investment Network] and [Atlantic Yards Report]

Herc's Building Saved, But What About Other Mitchell Lamas?

Posted by Eileen Markey at 12:59 PM, March 4, 2008

Photo by ra41 via flickr

BIRTHPLACE OF HIP HOP — The city's housing department beat the wolves from the door of a Bronx building, saying no to a developer whom tenants feared would kick them out and flip their building—credited as being the birthplace of hip-hop—for a handsome profit.

Kool Herc, who pioneered hip-hop in the summer of 1973 in block parties he DJed at the Mitchell Lama building at 1520 Sedgwick spoke warmly of his life there and of the need to maintain places for people without buckets of money to live. "I didn't know what this whole thing would turn into, but we never gave up," he said of campaign dubbed "Save 1520". “I just hope people realize it's a we thing, not a me thing. It's about everybody's affordable housing, not just 1520. It's about people getting that step into the American dream."

But the wolves are still circling at affordable housing developments across the city. Tenants and housing activists say the decision that saved 1520 Sedgwick from a speculative deal needs to be repeated across the five boroughs.

This is the first time HPD has prohibited the sale of a Mitchell Lama building. But tenants at 1520 and affordable housing advocates hope it won't be the last.

"We are hoping that this will be a model for other buildings," said Maggie Russell Ciardi, executive director of Tenants and Neighbors, a statewide housing pressure group. "In the past few years 16,000 units of Mitchell Lama housing have been lost to speculative sales. It is imperative that HPD say no to speculators who are trying to flip these properties and are putting New Yorkers at risk."

On Monday the city's department of Housing Preservation and Development quashed a bid by Mark Karasick, a private real estate developer who wanted to buy 1520 Sedgwick from its current owner, saying the price was way too high.

"We felt the purchase price did not make financial sense," said Neill Coleman, spokesperson for HPD. "Basically it was a decision on the economics of the sale price which we didn't feel was supportable for a Mitchell Lama building," he said.

HPD compared how much money the building generated in rent with how much Karasick would have to borrow to pay the undisclosed amount he and owner Frank Phelan were discussing and decided the numbers wouldn't work, Coleman said. "Looking at what current rents are, what rent increases would be permitted under Mitchell Lama, what the costs of running that building are and acknowledging that they would want to make some profit, we determined they would not be able to make a profit without seriously cutting services, significantly increasing rents or deferring maintenance. We wouldn't want to see that happen in any way."

An attorney for Mr. Karasick did not return a phone call seeking comment on the quashed deal. HPD has jurisdiction over the building because it is part of the Mitchell Lama affordable housing program, under which private landlords receive a variety of tax breaks and financial assistance in exchange for keeping rents at prices low and moderate income people can afford.

Some Mitchell Lama buildings are supervised by the state and others by the city. Owners can take their buildings out of the program, renouncing the tax breaks and paying off debts to the city after thirty years. Once a building has left the Mitchell Lama program the city or state no longer holds supervising authority. Frank Phelan, the owner of the Sedgwick Avenue building has not taken it out of Mitchell Lama. Calls to his home and attorney were not returned Monday evening.

On Monday a score of tenants crowded into the first floor community room Monday to cheer as U.S. Sen Charles Schumer announced HPD's decision and Kool Herc rallied forces for a broader defense of affordable housing. They called the HPD decision a bold rebuke to the culture of real estate speculation they feared would chase them from their homes.

"I think this decision is great, that HPD finally stepped up. It's a victory, basically, but we're not there yet," said Shioban Bermudez, 26, whose factory worker and school aide parent's raised she and her siblings at 1520 and who is raising her family there in a three bedroom apartment that costs $1,345. Rental assistance for her disabled son and elderly father provides for part of that amount, she said. "Obviously I didn't have anywhere else to go," she said, explaining why she was deeply involved in the months-long campaign to keep the building affordable.

Schumer praised HPD's decision and said real estate speculators should be on notice. "Speculative buyers in New York had better look elsewhere to make a quick buck. This decision means this building can't be bought for this huge, huge price and then flipped," he said. "With housing prices rising and the foreclosure crisis gripping countless communities, we need to be doing everything in our power to keep low and middle income New Yorkers in their homes. Blocking this sale is nothing less than a milestone in that effort.”

Manhattan DA: Sub-prime Double Standard is 'Un-American'

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 4:01 PM, February 28, 2008

A sign of the times: even Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has been caught up in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. During a press conference to announce a City Council resolution calling for changes in US bankruptcy law, the longtime DA said that his mortgage has been recently sold to Countrywide Financial. “It used to be that mortgages were between bank and borrower” he said, commenting on the lend-and-trade practices of lenders, practices which are blamed for the current ‘credit crunch’ in the financial markets.

Morgenthau attended the conference to support a City Council resolution to be introduced by David Weprin, chair of the City Council Finance Committee, calling for national action to change bankruptcy rules for individuals with mortgages, asking that they operate under the same obligations placed on corporations.

The resolution asks that individuals filing for bankruptcy be allowed to renegotiate mortgages for their primary residences under terms similar to those of corporations. Currently, corporate entities can modify the terms of loans and debts, while individuals are explicitly prohibited from re-negotiating the terms of loans for primary residences.

“Shame on lenders who argue against changes” Weprin said, pointing out that over 50,000 homeowners in New York City have sub-prime mortgages. He also said that 22,000 of those are currently undergoing ‘pre-foreclosure,’ having been given a notice of default and threatened with removal from their homes.

“Legislators need to do everything we can to keep homeowners in their homes” said Councilmember Robert Jackson. He pointed that that even though most of his constituents are renters, they have a stake in the subprime crisis, because it “impacts the economy, and so impacts us.”

Morgenthau concluded with a condemnation of current regulations. “The supervisor authority has been asleep at the switch” adding that “it’s un-American to say that we can change the terms for corporations but not individuals.”

More sub-prime and bankruptcy from around the web:
Battle Lines are Drawn on Bankruptcy Bill for Homeowners Facing Foreclosure [DMI Blog]
Morgenthau: Bankruptcy Laws "Unamerican" [Daily News]
NYC Housing Bubble [blog here]
Daily NYC Real Estate Hulaballoo [Curbed]

Subprime Mortgage Wasteland in the Bronx

Posted by Eileen Markey at 9:39 AM, February 26, 2008

Williamsbridge — The glass is gone from the windows of 767 East 216th St. The wooden house sits on a sinking yard — its windows staring out with dead unblinking eyes. At 762 East 217th St., menus and newspapers clutter the tiny vestibule, the front door doesn't lock and the buzzers don't buzz, although people still live in the apartments. The house at 749 East 213th St. just looks disappointed; the proud brick three-story could have sheltered several families but it faces the intersection hollow, no glass in its storm door, no life in its windows. At 1041 East 216th St., newly built and utterly empty, a line of pink violation notices from the Department of Buildings hangs like some sad bunting welcoming the foreclosure age.

This is what the subprime meltdown looks like: block after block of brick one and two family homes in this working class neighborhood in the northeast Bronx are for sale, in foreclosure proceedings or simply abandoned, blank doors and windows gaping like open mouths. Fifteen lis pendens — notices of foreclosure — were filed for property in Williamsbridge since February 15. There were 86 during January; 54 in December.

There are six homes in foreclosure or headed there on one short block of East 217th Street, just off the commercial district of White Plains Road. Tenants at 720, a newly constructed brick building sold as co-ops, are in foreclosure. CitiBank's mortgage unit alerted the owner of 732 just up the block that it began foreclosure proceedings the day before Valentines. 746 is in foreclosure. So is 747 across the street. And 760 is up for auction. And 762 next door. And Nancy Lewis at 815 on the corner of the next block is getting notices from Washington Mutual, who sold she and her handyman husband a $400,000 mortgage in 2006.

"A lot of people got scammed," she said last week, after picking up her daughter from school. "People got riped off. Mhmm. And I'm one of them," she said, shaking her head. The Lewises bought their house so their grown children and grandchildren could all gather in one place. "We wanted a place they could all come to, a backyard for the kids to play."

Ms. Lewis was reluctant to discuss her finances in detail, but the $3,000 a month mortgage payments are unaffordable. She believed the mortgage broker's version of new math when he sold she and her husband their home, not realizing until later that brokers earn a cut of every mortgage they sell, the bigger the mortgage, the bigger the cut.

She’s not alone. In 2006 Williamsbridge had one of the highest rates of homeownership in the Bronx, 31 percent, nearly matching the citywide average, according to data analyzed by NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Public Policy. But while the neighborhood had the highest rate of mortgage lending in the borough bankers once shunned, a full 50 percent of those mortgages, and 51 percent of home equity loans, were subprime.

Many had adjustable interest rates that exploded to usurious levels after two years, which is now. With a median household income of $31,000, many people in Williamsbridge couldn't afford to pay their mortgages to begin with. Before the subprime boom and the development of innovative mortgages products that lenders sold to investment banks and investment banks sold to investors, these loans never would have been granted. But the masters of the universe on Wall Street figured out a way to spread the risk of rotten mortgages. They forgot about where the risk ultimately resides, in a neighborhood like Williamsbridge, which is watching as its wealth is sucked right downtown.

View Larger Map
Click the "+" button to zoom in and see all of the properties in foreclosure in one small section of the Bronx.

Like so many of the neighborhoods across the United States feeling the first effects of the subprime meltdown,Williamsbridge is a community of first-time homebuyers and working poor struggling to leap into the property class. Major banks targeted their sub prime, some would say predatory lending, on low income neighborhoods in the Bronx, southeast Queens (think Jamaica and Cyprus Hills) and central Brooklyn, according to analysis of lending data by University Neighborhood Housing Program, a Bronx not for profit that advocates for and manages affordable housing.

And like more than half of the two million people the Center for Responsible Lending estimates hold subprime mortgages nationally, Williamsbridge is black. Sixty-five percent black, mostly people from Jamaica, Nigeria and Ghana.

It's a topic Richard Duodu, owner of the African Market on the corner of 215th Street and White Plains Road hears his customers discussing when they come to the noisome shop to buy salted fish, fufu flour or Nigerian movies.

"A lot of people are complaining about it, how they are losing their houses," said Duodu, a native of Ghana who rents his apartment upstairs from the shop. "Most of my customers, they own their own houses and another one," he said. "If it's affected the house owners, it's affected the businesses too. People come in and they are counting their dollars, how much can they spend?"

The neighborhood is bracing for disaster. "This is just starting," said Isaac Dare, owns 11 newly built apartment buildings he intended to sell. They are each and every one empty, because no one is interested in buying. "It's going to get much worse."

That's exactly what Rev. Richard Gorman fears. He is a Roman Catholic priest and has been chairman of Community Board 12, which covers much of the northeast Bronx, since 1990.

"I do not think it's in the interest of society to allow these people to lose their homes," he said. "You'll have all these ill effects from vacancies, the properties being an attraction for criminal activity and families are devastated. Something like this tears at the fabric of a community."

Gorman said some homeowners were foolish or greedy in buying homes they couldn't afford, but he lays the blame for the wave of foreclosures threatening his neighborhood squarely at the foot of Wall Street.

"A lot of folks who bought homes were just entering the home-owning class. I don't think a lot of people really understood the costs incumbent on owning a home. Now they don't have their homes, their credit is destroyed and their are people who were involved in the speculation who walk away with the money," he said. "In a financial crisis like this the people who are making money always end up with more and the people who had little are walking away with less," Gorman said. "To me it's just a sign of the greed of the banks."

A variety of state and federal plans are nibbling at the edge of the crisis, encouraging refinancing for homeowners two or three months behind on mortgage payments, who still have decent credit and bought their homes within certain time periods. Gorman said the state and federal governments need a much more comprehensive response, before Williamsbridge and countless other black and working class neighborhoods are bled dry. "We need legislation that is going to undo these unconscionable lending arrangements. We need to make arrangements for these mortgages to be paid in a realistic way, so working class people can move into the home ownership class," he said.

Gorman urged homeowners in foreclosure or who are struggling with their mortgages to visit a seminar and open house on Saturday Feb. 23 at Cardinal Spellman High School on Baychester Avenue in the Bronx. Borrowers can meet face to face with ten banks to learn about payment programs and get advice from mortgage counselors not affiliated with the banks.

Could the Bond Market Hurt Atlantic Yards Affordable Housing?

Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:48 PM, February 22, 2008

Could the limited pool of affordable housing bonds jeopardize the 2,250 units of subsidized housing that developer Bruce Ratner pledged as part of his Atlantic Yards mixed-use stadium project?

Norman Oder, of the Atlantic Yards Report, seems to think so. Ratner seeks $1.4 billion in such bonds, which would allow him to borrow money at discounted rate over the course of the 10-year project. But it's not clear whether Forest City Ratner has applied for those bonds, and there is a lot of evidence indicating that there might not be any money available if Forest City did, Oder wrote. The city's Housing Development Corporation wouldn't say whether the agency received the bond application from Ratner or not.

Either way, sounds like it's gonna be tough to build the affordable housing.

Bronx Landlord Gets Jail Time for Violations

Posted by Michael Clancy at 5:39 PM, February 20, 2008

This video is pretty tough to watch if you are bothered by poor folks forced to live in squalor, or if you're bothered by the conventions of TV news journalism. But the building condition is pretty appalling. And now its owner is facing jail time. So you don't even have to watch it at all (but there are literally holes in the floor).

A Bronx landlord was sentenced to nine days in jail and fined $156,000 for failing to address 2,268 open violations at his building on 1055 Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, the city Department of Housing Preservation & Development said on Wednesday.

The landlord, Hamid Khan, signed orders in 2006 and 2007 to correct the violations—collapsed floors and ceilings, water damage, broken fire escapes—but never much to fix it. So now he'll spend nine days in the lockup for criminal and civil contempt—becoming the first landlord jailed for housing violations since 2006.

But advocates for the homeless point out that the city Department of Homeless Services had been paying Khan thousands a month last year for giving "shelter" to homeless people in his decrepit building as part of the now defunct Housing Stability Plus program.

The State Of the Union Ignores the State of Sub-prime

Posted by Eileen Markey at 3:30 PM, January 31, 2008

In his final State of the Union address Monday night, President Bush concentrated on talking up the occupation of Iraq. The speech had an even greater air of a lazy student mailing it in than most Bush efforts. The viewer got the idea that he knew a lame duck president with through-the-basement approval ratings, a hostile Congress and an electorate focused somewhat talismanically on the word "change" is really kind of yesterday's bad news.

Still, he dutifully trumpeted his HOPE Now program which encourages the banks who peddled, sold and resold abusive mortgages to voluntarily offer re-financing to a very narrow slice of borrowers on the brink of foreclosure. Volunteerism is heart-warming and all, but with even mega investor George Soros saying lax regulation of the banking industry got us into this credit crisis, it's hard to believe voluntary measures are going to work. After all, the banks could have voluntarily agreed not to push sub-prime mortgages with opaque repayment stipulations on people who qualified for good old 30-year fixed rate mortgages.

Bush also said Congress should act to modernize the Federal Housing Administration and reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the federally chartered, privately held mortgage insurers. Both agencies operate on a secondary mortgage market, buying mortgages from banks and thus keeping the money flowing, something economists say is necessary at a moment of economic slowdown and anemic credit markets. In an analysis of the State of the Union that they must have been up working on all night, the Drum Major Institute explained the role of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae this way, "When lenders have the ability to sell mortgages on the secondary market they have the means to readily refinance mortgages and help ordinary homeowners escape unaffordable loans."

But Fannie and Freddie can currently only buy small and medium-sized mortgages. DMI supports Bush's plan to up that limit. "FHA modernization must be accompanied by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae modernization which will expand the conforming loan limit and enable Freddie Mac and Fannie to buy mortgages up to $730,000."

The idea is that permitting the federally chartered entities to buy pricier mortgages would be a kick in the pants to the slow real estate market: sales of single family homes fell 13 percent in 2007, the largest drop in 25 years, according to DMI analysis.

People on the front lines of the sub prime and foreclosure debacle here in NYC told Runnin' Scared last week that all the efforts to mitigate the crisis, whether state, city or federal need to be more robust. While New York State's Keep the Dream program is more ambitious than Bush's Hope Now, it still is too narrow, said Oda Freidheim, staff attorney for Legal Aid Society's Queens Neighborhood Office.

In fact, since its institution in September, Keep the Dream has helped count em, two people, secure restructured mortgages. That's because the state program can only help people who are not yet in foreclosure restructure their loans, not the hundreds who have already gone over the brink. Housing counselors, neighborhood housing experts and attorneys like Freidheim who deal with a steady stream of people sinking into foreclosure say none of the mortgage crisis responses so far proposed in Washington or Albany actually help the people in most dire need.

While the ticking time bomb of adjustable rate mortgages about to balloon has everyone scrambling to avert mass foreclosure, in some neighborhoods the bomb has already exploded. With the stricter personal bankruptcy law Congress passed last session, many New Yorkers are high and dry as the homes they couldn't afford are sold out from under them, Freidheim said.

Hope Now and Keep the Dream are both focused on prevention, not rescue. It's something like testing the smoke detectors when a house is in flames.
"We need a remediation fund. The idea of having a wholesale approach among lenders, that's what we need because its hard to do it one by one by one," said Friedheim, who advocates a federal response that would provide the financing and mandate to restructure all the sub prime mortgages in danger of default. "It's not enough to say 'prevent resetting' most of these loans were not affordable in the first place," Freidheim said. "Unfortunately a lot of people really got duped. Brokers got bonuses for pushing even higher interest loans. There was a strong incentive for brokers to peddle these aggressive loans. A lot of new programs need to address that yeah, people got duped."

Priscilla Almodovar, president and chief executive of the State of New York Mortgage Agency and Housing Finance Agency admits the Keep the Dream program has started small, but said it isn't meant to help everyone.

"It's a very complicated issue. No one program or response could help everyone," she said in an interview before Gov. Elliot Spitzer's state of the state address. "What Keep the Dream was trying to do was lessen the burden going forward. Let's find a way to reset (the interest rates) for those who are current in their payments. It's not mean to help everyone." Keep the Dream targets homeowners with decent credit who are no more than two months behind on their mortgage payments. "People tend to call us or the counseling agency when its too late," Almodovar said, explaining why the agency has received hundreds of phone calls requesting a life line but only been able to secure loan restructuring for two clients. People have called SONYMA to plead for help because their home is being sold at auction the next morning, Almodovar said. There's nothing her agency can do at that late stage. "The earlier you try to get help the better."

One major limitation on SONYMA's reach, Almodovar said, is that most of their underwriting comes from Fannie Mae, which sets strict limitations on the loan size. Bush's call to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could in turn give the state's program more breathing room, permitting Almodovar to cast a wider net for distressed homeowners.

"As with any government program the issue is getting the word out. We only started in September. We want this to be successful," she said.

Kool Herc Fights to Save Birthplace of Hip Hop

Posted by Eileen Markey at 4:37 PM, January 22, 2008

Kool Herc is fighting to save the rec room where he first wrecked it.
Photo by Flowizm via Flickr

Maybe there is hope for political hip hop after all. Last week DJ Kool Herc—known as the godfather of hip hop for using breakbeats and toasting in the streets of the Bronx in the bad old 1970s—led the latest in a series of events to highlight the erosion of Mitchell Lama affordable housing.

That's because the owners of the building where he grew up and where hip hop was born, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, are about to leave the state sponsored affordable housing program. That means hundreds of tenants in the boxy building in the shadow of the Cross Bronx Expressway could see their subsidized rents skyrocket. The owner, BSR management can officially opt out of Mitchell-Lama on February 23.

Faced with the prospect of losing their homes, residents of 1520 Sedgwick kicked it old school, calling the equivalent of the block parties that used to animate the neighborhood. Last summer they brought in Kool Herc to draw attention to their cause. Now the tenants are taking a play from the old days when hip hop incubated in the Bronx streets that landlord arson and municipal abandonment had turned to wasteland: They want to buy the building.

Back then tenants sometimes banded together to buy their home from landlords that had withdrawn services and walked away from buildings they couldn't make money off. That was fiscal crisis NYC.

In the new NYC, even with the looming recession, the threat to tenants is reversed. It's not that they can't make money, rather they can rake in so much from market rents that landlords and management companies are willing to walk away from the state dole to do so. Mitchell Lama isn't a subsidy to tenants. It's a series of financial aid and tax incentives that landlords collect for providing affordable units to low and middle income people.

Once upon a time there were 105,000 Mitchell Lama units in the city, spread across 269 developments built by the state after the program was launched in 1955 to meet the housing needs of the workers that ran the city. Stuyvesant Town was Mitchell Lama. So was Starrett City and Coop City.

But developers can buy out of the program after 25 years, which is what BSR is contemplating. More than 25,000 units left the program between 2004 and 2006 alone, according to a study by the Comptrollers Office.

Another 37,000 units are in danger of disappearing if the current rate continues, according to an analysis by the Community Service Society, City Limits reported this week.
The 1520 Sedgwick Avenue tenants raised $11.5 million—a combination of private donations and subsidy commitments from the city. But they are still far shy of BSR's $14 million asking price.

Bricks and Mortar will keep you posted on the fate of hip hop's birthplace and the future of Mitchell Lama apartments throughout the city. In fact, 41 percent of the Mitchell Lama rentals that were home to NYC's working class in 1990 are out of the program now, rented in an unregulated market that makes $4,000 the average rent for a one bedroom in the city.

In other words, nearly twice the monthly salary of a rookie cop.

"Frosty the Goldman" and Other Odes to Subprime Profiteers

Posted by Eileen Markey at 10:30 AM, January 8, 2008

This video of protesters greeting Goldman Sachs investment bankers outside of their holiday party may be a week or so old, but the sentiments are timeless. And hearing the lyrics to "Frosty the Goldman" would melt even the coldest heart (unless of course that heart belongs to the bankers who profit off the sub-prime disaster.

As ballooning monthly payments on subprime mortgages