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....June 8, 3:32 PM |
| Priced Out?: Queens Fights To Preserve Middle Class Housing
By ANDREW MOESEL Over the last decade, New York has become an increasingly attractive place to live: the crime rate is down, the job rate is up, and both residential and commercial developments are booming.
But that success has come with a price. As new residents clamor to find living space, and the cost of living continues to spiral upward, the housing market has grown progressively more competitive. Competition has pushed up prices for both houses and apartments, making them difficult to afford not only for low-income residents, but for working and middle class families as well. City officials are worried that police officers, schoolteachers, mechanics and civil servants – the community roots and tax base that have defined New York – are fleeing to the suburbs in search of cheaper homes. While the city’s housing stock swelled by more than 52,000 between 2002-2005, the most since the early 1990’s, the Department of Housing and Preservation found that market demands made affording those homes increasingly challenging for New Yorkers. Experts believe the population is simply growing faster than housing resources. The situation has prompted politicians to intervene. City officials are exploring ways to provide housing options to keep middle class residents from leaving. Such was the case in Queens last month, when the Department of City Planning revised a rezoning plan in Woodside and Maspeth to encourage affordable housing along a stretch of Queens Boulevard. Called “inclusionary zoning,” the first initiative of its kind in the borough, the move could shape the future of the borough’s housing market. Marketplace New York City is rapidly expanding, with some estimates predicting the population will grow by 250,000 by 2012, roughly a quarter of which will happen in Queens. Last year alone, Queens grew by 14.2 percent, the second fastest of any borough, putting it on pace to overtake Brooklyn as the most populous borough in the next several years. Yet some have charged that new housing construction has not kept pace with this continuous growth. Queens has the lowest vacancy rate in the city – a meager 2.82 percent –a substantial portion of which could be considered luxury accommodations, officials said. The lack of affordable housing has pushed people into uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous living situations. Many young adults take up residence in their parent’s basements, while new immigrants cram three or four families into small apartments. “People can’t find anyplace where they can afford the rent in their neighborhood. I’ve seen it over and over,” said Pastor Lancelot Waldron, president of Queens Congregations United for Action. “Those who do find a place, both parents have to work to afford it, and they have to have jobs that pay a substantial amount to have a decent place.” To compound the situation, existing affordable housing is drying up, according to a recent report from New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson. Over the past two years, landlords have filed to withdraw 25,000 units from the state Mitchell-Lama and Limited Dividends programs, initiatives that give tax breaks to developers who built low cost apartments. After 25 years, however, the developers are allowed to opt out of the programs and convert their rent-controlled apartments to market rate. If all the pending withdrawals are approved, almost a third of the affordable housing created under the programs will be lost, promising to offset many of the gains the City has made, the report concludes. “It’s clear that, despite a very strong commitment by the City to create and preserve affordable housing, we are losing ground to the market forces that are tempting building owners to leave these programs,” Thompson said. A central theme of his 2005 campaign, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched several programs to counteract the downward trend in affordable housing, updating tax incentives and encouraging the use of city-owned land for new projects. In February, Bloomberg announced he would even expand a previous initiative, promising to create 165,000 affordable units by 2013. DHP officials say they are ahead of schedule to meet the original goal of 68,000 affordable units by 2008. Head of the Class When discussing the issue of affordable housing, Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) frequently says that a schoolteacher and a cop should be able to afford to buy a house together. The example strikes close to home: his sister is a teacher who recently married someone enrolling at the police academy. Gioia said he fears they could be pushed out of a neighborhood in which his family has lived for a century. “When I talk about a young couple making between $60,000-$100,000 a year, they now often don’t have enough to buy in their neighborhood,” Gioia said. “If they are pushed out, you lose a good student, a mother and a father who would join a civic association, and someone who would stay in neighborhood for generations to come.” |
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