An Affordable House of Cards
Long Island City residents lead charge against affordable housing, fear infrastructure inadequate
As school year began last year, Jillian Tangen looked forward to enrolling her daughter into Kindergarten. The mom of two, applied to the local public school for her eldest. But her daughter didn’t get a seat and was placed 48th on a wait list. Jillian lives only a few floors above the school, in the same building in Long Island City, Queens, NY.
Just a few blocks from her home, Hunter’s Point South is a massive three phase construction undertaking in the area that is promising 60 per cent of its units as affordable housing. The lottery for 925 affordable apartments completed in first phase of the project received 93,000 applications last December.
These numbers, almost a hundred applications per house, paint a vivid picture of the clamor for residential housing in Long Island City, something that is not new to New York City as a whole. Development of affordable housing would then perhaps then be a good solution to combat sky high rents that this demand-supply mismatch creates.
However, these very numbers are forcing Tangen and many more New York City residents to take a stand against affordable housing. Their primary concern — the city’s existing infrastructure may not survive a flood of new residents in their neighborhoods brought on by this onslaught of affordable housing development.
Residents in all five boroughs of New York City voted against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious affordable housing plan that hopes to create and preserve 200,000 residential units over the next ten years. Long Island City was one of the first, where residents took a stance against the proposed plan in early November. As it was debated across the city, residents in other parts of New York City followed suit, and through their Community Boards and Borough Boards, rejected the plan because it fails to provide a credible strategy to reinforce infrastructure and ensure affordability.
What is affordable housing?
The Mayor’s plan is driven by two major changes. The first a change in zoning regulations that would allow for taller buildings in some areas and more affordable homes, especially for senior citizens.
The second proposal will mandate developers to reserve almost a quarter of the residential space built to those that fall in a certain income band.
That would mean, at the lowest end of the spectrum, a family of three with an income of approximately $46,600 renting a two bedroom apartment for about $1,100 in a shiny new building, as compared to the market rate of over in $2,600 for a same sized apartment in an older walk-up or elevator building in Long Island City.
While at first glance, these numbers look good, the de Blasio administration is facing flak on the question of affordability from think tanks, residents and other government authorities.
But high on the priority list for most residents is fixing problems of short supply of schools, inadequate transportation and scant access to healthcare services.
“Change is inevitable, but I feel some stipulations that can be made still,” said a nursing student of Asian descent in her twenties who has lived in Long Island City her whole life, “it has to be a win-win for everyone.”
“If you don’t have the infrastructure, you better not put the housing there because people will be very disappointed,” says Peter Johnson, an academic and a resident of Long Island City since 2009.
As that holds true especially for Long Island City.
The Neighborhood: Then and Now
Long Island City has changed dramatically over the last six years due to a boom in residential construction. Once a quiet neighborhood sprinkled with low rises and walk ups, today it boasts of an impressive increase in shiny high rise glass buildings that dot its skyline.
Tangen has lived in Long Island City since 2007, “before there was even a grocery store, and if you didn’t buy your groceries on your way home from work in Manhattan, you either had to order in from some place or see what you could scramble for at the bodega on Queens Boulevard,” she said.
According to the 2015 Annual Report of the Long Island City partnership, the neighborhood has over 8600 new residential units since 2006. The same report goes on to say that currently there are over 22,500 residential units in various stages of planning and construction.
Journalist Nicholas Deleon has been a resident of Court Square in Long Island City for almost two years. His building is the only residential building in the area for now, but it will not be that way for long. “From my apartment, I can see something like ten active construction sites in the neighborhood, so those will all be starting to come on line in the next 2–3 years. So the neighborhood will absolutely be growing very quickly,” he said.
Deleon said that the area around his building may not have the trappings of a neighborhood yet, but with construction of high rise buildings on at full steam, there needs to be a push for more doctors, parks, transport before buildings are mandated to provide affordable housing and more people move in.
Too many kids, too few schools
New York City’s Independent Budget Office reported that in 2013–14, city schools needed 75,000 additional seats to bring down overcrowding to a level where schools operated at 102.5 per cent or just a little over full capacity. In a report earlier this year, the IBO conceded that the Mayor’s affordable housing plan is only going to add to this deficit.
It points out that school districts in Brooklyn’s East New York and Manhattan’s Harlem “could experience greater need as they were among the six neighborhoods targeted for increased residential units through up zoning under the Mayor’s affordable housing plan.”
Forced to apply to another school that was a half hour by bus, last year, Jillian spearheaded a petition for a new school in the area. The city added two additional kindergarten classes for the school to accommodate the children, but there is no word on a new school just yet. Add to the current chaos the future residents of the second phase of Hunter’s Point South, the construction for which has just broken ground.
The rush hour travel nightmare
“The real crisis will be with the public transit,” says Peter, and in true academic style does the math of increase in public transport usage due to increase in number of homes in his head. His numbers were as conservative as Ronald Reagan.
According to Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) data, subway ridership in 2014 was at 1.75 billion. On an average, 5.6 billion people rode the subway on weekdays and 6 billion over the weekends.
Further, it says that 15 out of 20 lines are at peak track capacity including 10 lines that are at peak track and passenger carrying capacity.
“If you’re there (Queensboro Plaza Subway station) at 8’o’ clock in the morning, there are definitely days where you’ll have to wait one or two trains because it is just so crowded,” said Deleon even when there is just one residential building near the station, “As these really big buildings come up and come online where are these people going to go on the subway?”
The MTA admits that new residential development is driving ridership growth in Long Island City. Data shows that last year, weekday ridership grew by 1,500 customers per day, at the Vernon-Jackson Av Subway station, and nearly 2,000 customers, at the Court Sq Subway station. And even though the MTA has increased hourly 7 trains from 27 to 29, it is but a small drop in bridging the gap.
Cabbie first, doctor later for the sick
And if the daily commute doesn’t give residents of Long Island City a headache, finding a doctor definitely will. According to 2013 Community Health Survey data from Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, over 700,000 New York adults did not get required medical care, this number for the Long Island City and Astoria neighborhoods was higher than the average for all neighborhoods at 19,000.
And for a lot of residents it is not by choice, but because of poor access to healthcare facilities.
For Deleon who doesn’t own a car, the nearest Duane Reade is a solid 20 minute walk from his building. “My doctor is in Woodside, Queens which is nowhere near Long Island City. My girlfriend had an issue and the nearest urgent care was up in Astoria, you have to take a cab to get up there,” he said.
Tangen too, recounts a recent incident where her daughter fell sick and had to be rushed to an urgent care clinic in Astoria. She feels lucky that her family owns a car, but wonders if those who qualify to live in affordable housing units will have cars or will be able to afford taxis to get access to their healthcare needs.
“Long Island City was always at the cusp of something, but nothing has really followed. Aside from the condos and the high rises nothing has ever really followed. Doctor’s offices, healthcare hasn’t followed either. I mean there’s one primary care doctor for adults in the neighborhood and one doctor for pediatrics,” said Tangen.
How affordable is affordable housing?
This sorry state of affairs could, perhaps, be justified if it led to the fulfillment of a good cause. But the question is whether Mayor de Blasio’s propositions are truly creating affordable housing for those in need.
Last month, Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, in its report evaluating the proposal said, that over 83 per cent of the 1.1 million rent-burdened households in New York City will not qualify for affordable housing under the proposed scheme because their incomes are lower than the prescribed income bracket.
The report went on to state that nearly a third of New York City residents are well below the cut off prescribed for affordable housing and that the Mayor’s scheme “misses the core of the housing crisis and even the core of NYC’s population.”
After studying the impact of this affordable housing strategy on the East New York area, New York City’s Comptroller Scott Stringer too believes that the implementation of the current plan will not serve the intended purpose, both in terms of price and quantity. Not only is the price expected to be out of reach for those vying for affordable homes, but a large chunk of the population will not be able to rent out homes at the market rate.
In a letter to the Chairman of the City Council on December 2, Stringer said, “our analysis shows that 84 percent of East New York residents and the surrounding communities will be unable to afford the proposed market-rate units created under the plan, and more than half — 55 percent — will be unable to afford the proposed “affordable” units.”
Johnson too, is skeptical of the implementation of affordable housing programs and the actual benefit for those in need of cheaper living. “Who lives in these buildings?,” he said, “It is essentially upper middle class, largely white people. So everyone else is subsidizing a group of people that don’t need any subsidization at all.”
Opposition due to reverse gentrification?
For some residents, the reason to oppose this plan is not all black and white. A discussion on gentrification, or in this case reverse gentrification, is seldom complete without talking about the subjects like race, immigration and the fear among current residents about the neighborhood once low income families move in.
“People are worried about being kicked out of their own home, because new people are coming in and trying to take over,” the young nursing student said, but she adds that she believes that eventually communities will help out those in need rather than “casting them out.”
While he agrees on the basic principal of affordable housing, Deleon feels even though he doesn’t know anyone but there may be fear among residents with low income families moving into the neighborhood,” I absolutely can see people automatically assuming bad things, just because of stereotypes I guess,” he said.
The politics of getting your way
Despite popular dissent, Mayor de Blasio refuses to concede defeat. On more than few occasions over the past few weeks, he lashed out at the detractors of his pet project, sometimes even using a veiled threat that community boards and borough presidents can only voice opinions, the decision still rests with the City Council.
According to transcripts of the Mayor’s Press Office, de Blasio when questioned on the future of affordable housing in the face of opposition told reporters that he was ‘resolute’ and went on to say that, “Those objections should be heard and we should, you know, think about them, and where we see the need to make certain modifications we will. But in the end, the community boards aren’t the final decision makers. The Mayor and the City Council make the decisions, in some cases, obviously, with the City Planning Commission.”
The question is will consensus lose out to political posturing? de Blasio’s heart maybe in the right place, but his method clearly isn’t. Should he impose affordable housing in this manner?
“Honest answer? I think it is foolish and I think it is destructive for the city. It is just really poor decision making and he needs to think about it a little bit harder, because you’re destroying the city for families that are invested in it,” Tangen said.
Editor’s Note- This story was originally published with the name of the young nursing student, who requested not to be named post publication.
