Here’s an interesting piece on a topic close to home in The Bronx: Affordable Housing.
The article skims the surface of what is a tangled web in which affordable housing developers have to navigate which is so much deeper than Next City can even get into but it does speak briefly about the Jerome Avenue Study area and other parts of New York City.
In the summer of 2014, 53,000+ people applied to live in 89 affordable apartments at Artspace PS109. This has become an all too common scene in New York City’s housing market. Decades of public subsidies and assistance for luxury development in NYC have increased property values and rents all across the city. This rise has led to the displacement of working- and middle-class families. The main “community benefit” in return for publicly assisted displacement has been the opportunity to enter an affordable housing lottery and hope Yolanda Vega calls your number, allowing you to remain.
Several affordable housing buildings being constructed in The Bronx are still accepting applications online or via mail but don’t wait as deadlines are quickly approaching for the Norwood and Longwood developments.
Our friends over at YIMBY have revealed plans filed for one of the last remaining tracts of land in the Melrose Commons redevelopment area to be developed by Briarwood and Phipps Housing in conjunction with The Bridge. The development has changed considerably since it was first announced 4 years ago and probably the most significant change, besides the renderings, is that it will contain 60 units in a separate yet connected building of supportive housing for low-income veterans (Check out the old renderings here).
Money Magazine, publication under Time Magazine just published an article on the top 15 least affordable counties for millennials to rent or purchase and the Bronx tops the list for renters and places purchases at number 4 on the list. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as we just reported days ago that a listing in the South Bronx neighborhood of Port Morris in the Clocktower building is asking $1,775 for a 1 bedroom loft and $2,500 for a 2 bedroom loft.
Mayor de Blasio just announced his ambitious housing plan with a 10 year plan to build and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing. In his announcement he said that this will impact 500,000 New Yorkers and also be one of the solutions to address the homelessness situation. Even extreme low income families making under $25,150 will benefit from this plan — a segment that was neglected in the previous administration.
He declared that residents will not be paying 50% of their income going towards rent: something that recently showed Bronxites pay more than 50% of their income towards rent.
The following is a Welcome2TheBronx reader submitted article by Jonathan Keller.
The Bronx is in the midst of a rebirth. Crime is down, demand around the metropolitan area for housing is up, and the old narrative of the Bronx is crumbling, revealing what many of us already know: the Bronx is beautiful and a great place to live and work.
New York State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli released a report today which tells us what we already knew in the Bronx: That there is an affordable housing crisis in our borough.
According to the report, “Incomes and housing costs vary regionally statewide and are generally higher in the New York City metropolitan area, although housing affordability is a statewide challenge. Bronx County, for example, had the highest proportion of renters with housing costs of 30 percent or more of income in 2012, at nearly 58 percent.”
It’s no secret that Bronxites are struggling to make ends meet and even though the Bronx saw some of the highest numbers of new construction affordable housing units in the city, rising rents and stagnant income are keeping many of our residents in a perpetual cycle of poverty.
You must be logged in to post a comment.