Council Member Inez Barron/Image Credit: John McCarten
The development will bring 503 permanent housing units, both affordable and supportive, to East New York. On December 10, 2019, the City Council approved a land use application for the development of four mixed-use buildings to replace a three-story homeless shelter at 515 Blake Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn. The buildings will be a combination of residential use, commercial use, and community facilities. The land use application, submitted by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, includes a rezoning to a residential district that allows taller and wider buildings to support the project’s size, a transfer of formerly City-owned land to HELP-USA, the project’s developer, a modification of bulk regulations, and a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing designation. The Council modified the project from providing temporary and permanent housing to providing only permanent housing.
On October 16, 2019, the City Planning Commission voted to approve the applications. For CityLand’s prior coverage on this decision, click here.
Originally, the applicants proposed to build a new nine-story 195 temporary housing unit homeless shelter with ground floor retail space, an eight-story supportive housing building with community facilities, and two six-story affordable housing buildings, with ground-floor retail space in one of the affordable housing buildings.
Under the original proposal, the supportive housing building had 70 housing units and one superintendent’s unit. Because the building is constructed under HPD’s Supportive Housing Loan Program, 60 percent of the building’s units must be set aside for the formerly homeless. The remaining units would have been set aside for households making up to an income of 60 percent AMI which is approximately $44,820 for a one person household or $64,020 for a four person household.
The two affordable housing buildings would have had approximately 254 housing units and one superintendent’s unit. Half of the units were set aside for households making 50 percent or less, with 30 percent of those units set aside for the formerly homeless. The other half of the units were set aside for households making between 57 percent AMI, which is approximately $44,820 for a one-person household or $64,020 for a four person household, or 100 percent AMI, which is approximately $74,700 for a one-person household or $106,700 for a four-person household.
The Council made modifications to the project which include eliminating temporary housing, making all housing units in the four buildings permanent affordable and supportive housing, and increasing the affordability of the housing units.
The modifications were made based on concerns Council Member Inez Barron, the Council Member who represents the district where the development is located, made at the November 4 Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises public hearing.
At the public hearing, Council Member Barron had concerns about another shelter in the East New York area and she wanted to see a development for permanent housing built over another homeless shelter. In addition, Council Member Barron believed that the affordable housing buildings’ units AMI targets did not reflect the incomes of households in the local community.
With modifications, there will be a total of 503 units in the four buildings, with 150 supportive housing units and 353 affordable units. Half of the affordable units will be set aside to households making below 50 percent AMI, which is approximately $37,350 for a one-person household or $53,350 for a four-person household. The other half will be set aside for households making no more than 80 AMI, which is approximately $59,760 for a one-person household or $85,360 for a four-person household.
On December 3, 2019, the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises voted to approve the application with the modifications and later that day, the application was approved by the Land Use Committee.
At the Land Use Committee vote, Council Member Inez Barron stated that she was “pleased with the modifications that have been submitted” and that going forward, the solutions to tackling homelessness in the City is not to build more temporary housing but to provide more permanent affordable housing.
Council Members I. Daneek Miller and Vanessa Gibson also agreed with Council Member Barron’s remarks. Council Member Gibson noted that “every community must take its fair share” to solve homelessness in the City and stated that “every neighborhood in the City should be taking more than 10 percent of formerly homeless families.”
The Council voted to approve this application on December 10, 2019.
By: May Vutrapongvatana (May is the CityLaw Fellow and New York Law School Graduate, Class of 2019).