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NYC Launches New Affordable Housing Program Under Mamdani

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:09:08 GMT

NEW YORK – Today, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg and Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Commissioner Dina Levy announced the new Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, an expedited process to speed the delivery of affordable housing on City-owned land. With Neighborhood Builders, HPD will pre-qualify affordable housing builders and shorten the pre-development Request for Proposals (RFP) process by eight months for certain projects – cutting the time to select an affordable housing developer by nearly half. Together with the new Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP), which the Mamdani administration has moved quickly to implement following its approval by voters in November, these programs will cut the pre-development process by more than two years.

“Our city is facing a historic housing crisis -- the last thing we need to do is tie ourselves in red tape,” said Mayor Mamdani . “The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track will speed up housing development and make it faster to build on city-owned land. This administration is willing to move at the speed of need to make this a city New Yorkers can continue to call home.”

“New Yorkers deserve a government that doesn’t just deliver high-quality, affordable housing – but that also delivers it efficiently and effectively. I am proud to launch the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track alongside the HPD team who are working to deliver affordable housing across the five boroughs,” said Leila Bozorg, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning . “I’m also excited to be advancing affordable housing projects at 784 Myrtle Ave, 1337 Jerome Ave, and 109-43 Farmers Blvd that will help create more vibrant, affordable neighborhoods, including new homeownership opportunities.”

"New York City needs more affordable housing, built faster and at lower cost — and HPD is not waiting to deliver it," said Dina Levy, Housing and Preservation Commissioner . "The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track will reduce costs, speed up timelines, and maximize affordability. Public land is a public good — and we will not let city-owned sites sit idle while New Yorkers struggle to find an affordable home."

HPD is releasing a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) due May 8th for affordable housing developers who will pre-qualify for the Neighborhood Builders program, with a focus on nonprofit organizations and minority- and women-owned businesses. Once development teams have been qualified, the faster Neighborhood Builders process will be used at sites such as 784-800 Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, 1337 Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and 109-43 Farmers Boulevard in Queens, which will together deliver as many as 300 new affordable homes, including around 100 affordable homeownership opportunities at the Bronx and Queens sites. HPD expects to use the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track to advance development of as many as 1,000 new homes over the next two years.

The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track advances the Mamdani administration’s critical goals of creating affordable housing, especially on City-owned land, and speeding up the delivery of housing across the city. On the first day of the administration, Mayor Mamdani signed Executive Orders 4 and 5, establishing the Land Inventory Fast Track (LIFT) and Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development (SPEED) task forces, both of which will deliver recommendations this spring. The LIFT Task Force is working to identify opportunities for housing on City-owned sites, and the SPEED Task Force is working to reform the affordable housing production process, including pre- and post-construction approvals, project financing, and lease-up.

“I look forward to working with Mayor Mamdani on the Neighborhood Builders program to deliver urgently needed affordable housing,” said Council Member Chi Ossé . “Since taking office, I have made one priority clear: build more housing and keep our neighbors here. The inclusion of 784-800 Myrtle Avenue in our district is both an honor and a recognition of Bed-Stuy’s need for deeply affordable homes so longtime residents and low-income New Yorkers can continue to contribute to our shared Brooklyn heritage. I’m proud to have approved thousands of units — spanning deeply affordable, middle-income, and supportive housing — that meet the diverse needs of my constituents. With Neighborhood Builders accelerating this work, we can move faster to confront rising rents and prevent displacement, because the people who give this city its life deserve to remain part of its future.”

“With the highest loss of black residents in the city, Mayor Mamdani picked the perfect place to start - Bed Stuy. Transforming vacant city-owned land to 100% affordable housing. This is what we have been calling for. This is hope. This is a downpayment of what is to come - building thousands of affordable homes in Bed Stuy and Central Brooklyn so the people who live here can stay here. Moving from words to action,” said Rev. Dr. Adolphus Lacey, Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Bedford Stuyvesant and Co-Chair of East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC) .

“Today, Mayor Mamdani is showing us what is possible. Metro IAF called on the Mayor to do what others thought was impossible - develop 50,000 affordable units each year. We said it takes three things - sites, staff, and subsidy. Metro IAF showed him the sites. His staff quickly and thoroughly reviewed the sites. And today, the Mayor is acting to make city-owned land live again,” said Rev. Dr. David K. Brawley, Pastor of St. Paul Community Baptist Church in East New York and Co-Chair of Metro IAF . “We are in a 9-1-1 moment. Mayor Mamdani is showing what leaders do in an emergency. They act. They streamline. They expedite. They cut the red tape. We can’t wait to come back here and welcome the families who will have a brand-new home. We will do it again and again. We are not stopping. Metro IAF will stand with Mayor Mamdani and we will fight. We will fight for affordability. We will fight for maximizing density. We will fight for expediting. We will fight for all New Yorkers to keep New York home.”

“With a 1.4% vacancy rate, New Yorkers need more affordable housing, and fast,” said Annemarie Gray, Executive Director of Open New York . “We need to use every tool to speed up the creation of new homes, and the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track is a powerful new one. By cutting 8 months of process, affordable housing will get built faster, enabling more New Yorkers to access homes they can afford. We're excited to see the Mamdani Administration, Deputy Mayor Bozorg, and Commissioner Levy prioritize the fast delivery of more affordable housing."

"New York's housing crisis isn't years away - it's happening right now. For this reason, government must explore every tool at its disposal to cut the time it takes to build affordable homes. The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track is an initiative that prioritizes organizations that understand our communities and looks to accelerate livability for families," said Carlina Rivera, President and CEO of NYSAFAH . "We applaud Mayor Mamdani and his team for their creativity in finding new pathways to house New Yorkers more quickly and affordably."

“As a third-generation MBE developer and general contractor, Apex Building Group is pleased to see this new Neighborhood Builders initiative that will help broaden the circle of participants in the development of urgently needed affordable units. Speeding up the process of getting from the initial idea to shovel in the ground is essential if we are going to meet the housing demand,” said Lee A. Brathwaite, CEO of Apex Building Group.

“Constructive Partnerships Unlimited is proud to partner with New York City on permanent housing opportunities for underserved New Yorkers and utilize initiatives like Neighborhood Builders Fast Track to lower costs and expedite construction. Building affordable homes is a vital cause that impacts dignity, stability, and opportunity, and we look forward to advancing additional projects so more New Yorkers can find a place to call home and build a meaningful future," said Joseph M. Pancari, President and CEO of Constructive Partnerships Unlimited.

"Comunilifeis committed to expanding affordable and supportive housing, we welcome the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track as a critical step toward an equitable development process. Prioritizing nonprofits and M/WBE developers strengthens local capacity and ensures that the communities most affected by the housing crisis are part of the solution," said Blanca Ramirez, President and CEO of Comunilife.

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Muslims Move to Assert Political Power in New York City

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:36:47 GMT

As a wave of Islamophobic attacks began to spread late in the New York City mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani was quick to respond. He traveled to a mosque in the Bronx to denounce the offensive remarks, surrounding himself with a group of key allies: Muslim faith and community leaders.

It was a telling show of support and kinship among an emergent voting bloc that was quietly coalescing within their communities for years, but whose political power was only beginning to emerge.

Now, with Mr. Mamdani at the helm of City Hall, Muslim New Yorkers are moving to expand their foothold in the city’s organizing networks and to build on their progress after the mayoral election. And they have focused their efforts on the Bronx.

On Thursday, a group consisting mostly of Muslim organizers and faith leaders in the Bronx voted to join the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest nonpartisan organizing networks.

The group’s New York cohort has been at the forefront of a decades-long interfaith push for affordable housing and public safety, and includes the heads of the city’s most influential Black churches, community centers and synagogues. The group has also developed a cadre of organizers in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan who have trained in government accountability and community activism.

Now the foundation will incorporate a broader coalition under the moniker, the Bronx First, which includes dozens of churches and community centers as well as more than 40 mosques into its network. By the end of the evening, the self-funded coalition raised nearly $160,000 for their efforts.

Their aim is largely oriented toward policy goals, with their leaders more focused on accountability than access.

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On Thursday, roughly 2,000 people across faiths, generations and socioeconomic statuses filled an auditorium at Fordham University to vote to formalize their addition to the coalition. Their attendance marked a unique show of political power among groups of people not often seen in concert with one another.

“We all face the same challenges as everybody else in the community,” said Haji Dukuray, a board member with the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx who helped organize Thursday’s event. He added, “It’s great we have a Muslim mayor, but that’s just an example of when we come together as a group, how well we can do.”

A handful of speakers were critical of Mr. Mamdani, whose absence some perceived as a slight against the group that helped power his win months earlier. Mr. Dukuray highlighted the mayor’s failure to attend in his opening remarks, to some sneers from the crowd.

“We invited him, and he decided to ignore us. That’s a huge mistake on his part,” he said. “But we don’t need him here to organize ourselves.”

The group affirmed its top demands of city leadership, touching upon public safety, affordable housing and mental health resources. The group has kept a particular focus on the city’s affordable housing supply — efforts that have intensified amid ongoing housing and food affordability crises that have already pushed out hundreds of thousands of longtime residents.

But the group’s newer Muslim members have underscored the need for more public safety measures in their communities, pointing to instances of gang violence that have harmed their members. The increase in detainments and deportations in cities also have added more urgency, as many in the group are immigrants from West Africa and the Middle East.

Mr. Mamdani, a Muslim South Asian born in Uganda, brought his message of affordability to the city’s mosques and Islamic community centers during his campaign. His candidacy galvanized a record number of the city’s Muslim voters, who turned out in droves for him, and pushed his opponents to expand their campaign outreach to Muslim communities.

Democratic candidates have not heavily courted Muslim voters before Mr. Mamdani’s campaign. And when they did try to make inroads, their messaging to the bloc was often flawed, organizers said. The disinterest among Muslim voters was especially pronounced in the Bronx, where turnout has historically been the lowest of the five boroughs.

Still, Muslim New Yorkers more than tripled their turnout in the last mayoral election, growing from nearly 22,000 voters in the 2021 race to just over 66,000 in 2025, according to the polling firm L2.

Many Muslim leaders have been reluctant to become politically engaged and warned congregants to be wary, seeing politics as a corrupt and untrustworthy system. But in the past few years, more have come to believe that not becoming involved would only hurt Muslim communities, especially in the face of quality affordable housing shortages. The shortage has contributed to tragedies like the 2022 fire that killed 17 people — many of them Muslims from West Africa.

“This mentality of ‘listen, we’re here to do well for ourselves and our communities and to show our neighbors that we’re good people’ has kind of shifted over to ‘we’re being treated like crap and need to empower ourselves,’” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization. “This is not the Muslim community trying to gain power for power’s sake.”

The people of the Bronx are joining together

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:46:59 GMT

How New Yorkers can act to melt ICE

Torres and Dukuray Co-chairs of The Bronx First, • February 23, 2026

Feb. 5 was just another frigid Thursday night for most New Yorkers. But for the two of us, it was a night to remember.

We had the honor of co-chairing a founding assembly of The Bronx First — a new citizens’ power organization in our borough. More than 1,500 of our fellow Bronx residents filled the chairs and bleachers of the Rose Hill Gym at Fordham University. Another 370 supporters and allies from East Brooklyn Congregations, Queens Power, and Manhattan Together , along with observers from Maryland, Maine, and New Jersey, braved the cold and traffic to join us.

We became the newest member of the network of organizations built and sustained by Metro Industrial Areas Foundation in New York.

We weren’t just meeting on a cold night in the Bronx. We were meeting on a cold night in our nation — during a period when so many of us are being targeted, detained, deported, and harmed by an administration that has declared war on the very concept of a diverse and dynamic city. We proudly epitomized what some now believe is everything that is wrong with our city and our country

One of us is the proud daughter of Puerto Rican parents who worked incredibly hard so that I could attend Cardinal Spellman High School, then college, and law school. I became the head of one of the boroughs’ largest non-profits, BronxWorks, serving 65,000 people each year.

The other of us arrived in this country from Gambia in 1988 as an ambitious young student. I shared a mattress with my cousin before becoming a successful businessman, and a founder and leader in a network of 11 mosques in the Bronx that attracts 10,000 worshippers every week.

We both grew up and witnessed both the best and the worst of the old Bronx. The worst included the years of arson, abandonment, extraordinary violence, and despair. A parade of public officials came and went, but those conditions slowly improved mostly because of the organizing and community development that local Bronx groups pioneered.

The best, though, was that even in those difficult days, as an imam recently said, you could start at the bottom but rise slowly, from low-paid entry level work and a cramped apartment to a better job and roomier housing. And your kids could rise too.

Both the best and the worst of the old Bronx are gone. Rampant arson is a thing of the past. And street violence is less intense, although the murder of a Muslim Uber driver and a young student still fill our communities with grief and remind us that there is much more work to be done. But the best — the possibility of improvement and social mobility — is also gone.

Today, rising rents crush families. Home ownership is as rare as hitting the lottery. And deterioration and mismanagement in both NYCHA and privately owned buildings are worsening by the day.

But we didn’t gather at Fordham to whine or wring our hands. We heard from East Brooklyn Pastor David K. Brawley, Manhattan Rabbi Joel Mosbacher, and Queens nonprofit leader Ben Thomases, who described the progress that Metro IAF had already made in affordable housing, mental health, and public safety.

In Soninke, Tem, Twi, Bangla, Urdu, Spanish, French, Italian and English, we dedicated ourselves to one another with confidence that our solidarity and creativity will prevail.

On Feb. 5, we charted a new course that finally puts the Bronx — its families, congregations and communities — first. Now we have the power of 50 institutions and thousands of leaders to make that goal a reality.

Torres and Dukuray are co-chairs of The Bronx First, the newest Metro IAF affiliate.

How New Yorkers can act to melt ICE

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:01:41 GMT

In 1990, I found myself at an Anglican Fellowship Center on a hillside between Soweto and Johannesburg. My colleague Arnie Graf and I had been invited to South Africa to conduct training in organizing by Bishop Desmond Tutu, through his relationship with the Trinity Parish in New York. All during the last years of apartheid, the bishop had sent his top clergy and lay leaders to New York to observe the organizing we were doing in East Brooklyn. Our embattled South African guests sometimes lived in new Nehemiah homes and witnessed how decent, affordable housing could be built at scale in neighborhoods that resembled some of the townships back home.

One afternoon, I was conducting a session on action for about 50 of these remarkable leaders and asked the question we normally ask: “What’s the purpose of action?” The group was silent. So I posited the answer: “The goal of any action is to get a reaction.” Hands shot up. “Sir,” a young man said, “in our country we didn’t need to run an action to get a reaction. We got a reaction just because we were who we were, because of our very existence. What do you say to that?”

I paused and admitted that my whole notion of how to organize effectively was based on assumptions and experiences that made no sense in a place where unilateral violence and relentless provocation practiced by those with power were the norms. I have been thinking about that polite young man as I’ve watched the unilateral violence and relentless provocation of ICE.

It’s clear to me that the core purpose of ICE deployment is to instigate reactions that can then be used to justify more extreme provocations and more unrestrained violence. ICE isn’t trying to hide its lawlessness. ICE doesn’t care about “bad” publicity. ICE can’t be shamed. So traditional strategies used effectively for decades that seek to draw attention to ICE’s actions play right into its hands. In-your-face confrontations—great for the media and perhaps satisfying to some—are wins for their team. Appeals to human or democratic values and norms have zero impact on the proud and public violators of those values and norms.

So then what? Let me preface this by saying that my colleagues and I have dealt with groups like ICE before—drug dealers making life in local blocks and housing projects unlivable, shakedowns by a corrupt union and local hustlers, crooked cops, and slumlords who hired muscle to try to intimidate our organizers and leaders. We outsmarted and out-organized every one of them. And we never had a single leader or organizer harmed in more than four decades of work in some of the toughest corners of the city. So I speak from real-world experience, not some political science tract read in graduate school.

First, make sure that people are kept safe. Do not put them in harm’s way with people who are poorly trained, heavily armed, and sure of a pardon if they beat or shoot innocent people. Second, don’t react in the ways that ICE expects and provokes. If they show up on a block, every window should open, and every resident should blow a whistle—both to alert those being pursued of the danger and to expose the ICE attempt. Third, work very closely with the NYPD, whose new motto is “Fighting Crime, Protecting the Public.” Today, the NYPD has an obligation to protect the public from the lawlessness of ICE, and the public has an obligation to support the NYPD when it brings actual criminals to justice. Fourth, explore all state and local avenues to hold ICE agents accountable when they cross the line. Fifth, begin to plan for the dismantling of ICE and the reorganization of an effective, humane, and meaningful new immigration and naturalization agency.
The fecklessness of the old INS created the vacuum filled by ICE. The failure to use authority effectively opened the door, as it often does, to authoritarianism. We need secure borders and a professional immigration system, not a return to the chaos that led to the current crisis. This new challenge demands new responses. If reaction arrives without action, if the very existence of people is used as grounds for abuse, then we have to create strategies that won’t play into the hands of the opposition and will lead to the outcome that most Americans still seek—a sane, fair, and safe city and country.

Gecan is a senior advisor at Metro Industrial Areas Foundation and the author of Going Public.

Affordable housing, sanitation and transportation on the minds of East New York voters

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 15:25:06 GMT

In East New York, Brooklyn, signs of pride and progress are unmistakable.

Rev. David Brawley of St. Paul Community Baptist Church believes the neighborhood has been able to turn around because “leaders, citizens, have imagination and are willing to do the work.

Once known as the murder capital of New York City, the 75th police precinct had 126 murders in 1993. Last year, there were 12.

For many residents, signs of economic development have brought new optimism. Now they hope the neighborhood’s comeback will continue under the next mayor.

“As a pastor here in the East New York section of Brooklyn, every week it feels like I’ve got to say goodbye to members that I love because they can’t afford to live here,” Brawley told NY1.

When he’s not in the pulpit, Brawley is focused on his other calling, building affordable housing in East New York. For 40 years, St. Paul has worked with East Brooklyn Congregations to transform parts of the community like Spring Creek.

“This was a former landfill,” Brawley said. “Our leaders and our people saw more than garbage. We saw an opportunity to build affordable housing for the city of New York. There are 2,600 units here in this area.”

Brawley hopes the next administration in City Hall comes in with a bold vision to build new homes that doesn’t leave longtime East New York residents priced out.

“I would say to the next mayor that this is an urgent existential crisis that demands an urgent response,” he said.

Along the New Lots Avenue corridor, residents Erica Townsend and Eleanor Pinckney shared their concerns about sanitation.

“People are dumping,” Townsend said.

“If you look down the street, you’ll see it’s bundles of garbage all along here, why?” Pinckney added.

City Councilmember Chris Banks believes it’s important to continue “the upward trend in addressing quality-of-life issues.”

Banks believes the next administration in City Hall should be attentive to the needs of NYCHA residents and public transportation in East New York.

NYC mayor’s race: Five Democrats offer big promises on homelessness and housing at interborough forum

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 19:25:01 GMT

NYC mayor’s race: Five Democrats offer big promises on homelessness and housing at interborough forum

Five Democrats in the 2025 NYC mayor’s race pitched their ideas to help the homeless, build affordable housing and improve the beleaguered New York City Housing Authority before a crowd of 2,250 watching from two different venues on Sunday night.

Metro IAF teamed with Manhattan Together, South Bronx Churches, Queens Power and East Brooklyn Congregations to organize the virtual and in-person forum for Democrats seeking to be New York City’s next mayor. The five candidates — former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander, former City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani — addressed a crowd of 2,000 people at the St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, while another 250 watched via video at Temple Sharaay Tefila, in Manhattan.

Ahead of the June 1 forum, organizers reminded the audience of ranked-choice voting in the June 24 primary, and urged them to get to know all of the candidates so they can rank up to five of their top choices on the ballot.

Each candidate supported Metro IAF’s agenda to build 500,000 homes over a decade, “fix” the New York City Housing Authority, and address mental illness as a major issue.

“We can build 50,000 homes right now. We can fix NYCHA now,” said Rev. David K. Brawley, pastor at St. Paul Community Baptist Church and co-chair of Metro AIF and Metro AIF NY. “We can address the mental health crisis in New York City now.”

Cuomo focuses on Rikers

Cuomo, who took the stage and spoke first based on random selection, said within 30 days he would “get every homeless person out of every train and subway station and get them the help they need. ”

“We did it during COVID,” the former governor said. “We brought every homeless person out of the subway system to get them the help they need.”

Cuomo estimated that 20% of people on Rikers Island, which he said costs $500,000 per inmate per year, are “seriously mentally ill.

“In my first 30 days, I’m going to get the seriously mentally ill out of Rikers Island, get them the mental health assistance they need,” he added.

Cuomo said the New York City Housing Authority, a public-benefit corporation controlled by the New York City Mayor, has “been a problem for decades” and pledged more funds to improve it and build affordable housing.

Speaker Adams eyes NYCHA repairs

Speaker Adams, who told the group “your agenda is my agenda,” called an affordable housing shortage a serious issue.

“We have to have housing of all types to meet everyone’s needs,” she said, noting that as speaker she had helped deliver affordable housing. “I have fought for these housing priorities and secured them.”

“We will invest at least $500 million in NYCHA repairs, while improving on our tracking of outstanding NYCHA repairs,” Adams said. “We want our NYCHA residents to live in dignity.”

Lander on housing crisis

Lander said on “day one” he would declare a state of emergency to confront a “housing crisis,” and supported building 500,00 homes, including thousands on city-owned and NYCHA lots.

The current comptroller said he would use four of 12 golf courses owned by New York City to build 50,000 affordable housing units that New Yorkers would rent or own. He said he has a plan to fix New York City Housing Preservation and Development called “Building Blocks of Change.”

“We don’t have to be a city where several thousand of our mentally ill neighbors sleep on the street,” Lander said. “We can end that together.”

Stringer on building affordable housing

Former Comptroller Scott Stringer said he supports rebuilding HPD, increasing subsidies for housing and using city land to build more housing.

“We’re going to turn those lots into true, affordable housing,” he said of free and city-owned land. He told the audience that as comptroller, he helped finance affordable housing — and insisted that the next mayor take swift action to address the crisis.

Mamdani on affordability

Mamdani, who represents Astoria and Long Island City, also called for more affordable housing as a priority. “What good is being in the greatest city in the world, if you can’t afford your rent, your groceries, your childcare?” Mamdani said. “Believing in affordability is not enough. We must deliver affordability.”Rev. Rashad Raymond Moore, pastor at the First Baptist Church in Crown Heights, said voters “need leadership, land, money, and relentless accountability.”

“We get a lot of promises, but we see very little progress,” Rev. Moore said. “There’s only one person who has the power to unlock this land, and that is the mayor of the city of New York. We’re not coming here to beg. We’re coming to build.”

Creedmoor Plan: New Generation's Chance to Call Queens Home

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 19:31:21 GMT

Opinion: Creedmoor Plan is a Chance for a New Generation to Call Queens Home

Lots of people are talking about the state’s plan for 2,800 housing units at the Creedmoor site. Understandably, many life-long residents of the area fear that the project would change the character of the surrounding neighborhoods. Their parents or grandparents worked hard to buy homes in Glen Oaks Village or Hollis Hills: this new plan feels like a threat to their legacy.

As two people who care deeply about the Eastern Queens community, we’ve been listening carefully to our neighbors’ concerns about the Creedmoor plan. We don’t think Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan is perfect: there are plenty of details we want spelled out.

But we see at Creedmoor the opportunity for a new generation of New Yorkers to make a home and leave a legacy for their children and grandchildren. We support the plan’s vision because we see it as a chance to stand up for people just like our parents and grandparents—who struggled bravely to make a life and a future for their families.

It’s in that spirit that we want to address our neighbors’ concerns about the state’s plan for Creedmoor. The first big concern many neighbors have expressed is that affordable housing will bring lower-class neighbors, which in turn will bring a lower quality of life to their neighborhood.

But the families who need this affordable housing are just like us. The cost of housing has far outpaced the wages of working people. Many of us who bought in the neighborhood decades ago, or even just a few years ago when interest rates were at historic lows, wouldn’t stand a chance in today’s market. That’s why we need to build affordable housing for working families.

So far, the Creedmoor Plan has identified housing targets for households earning 80 percent of the city’s Area Median Income (AMI). A single person at 80 percent AMI earns $79,120 per year . The median income of Queens Village is about $85,000, with nearly 20 percent of residents earning less than $35,000 per year, according to the most recent census data. That means the new neighbors who would move into a Creedmoor development are earning about the same as current neighbors, in some cases maybe more.

We will certainly need to build for lower incomes as well, but that shouldn’t scare us either. For example, a two-person household at 60 percent AMI earns $67,800 per year. That’s a single-parent public school teacher looking to raise their kid in a stable and affordable home. We think teachers deserve decent housing like the rest of us.

Some of the housing in the Creedmoor plan will be set aside for seniors, like our own aging parents, and formerly homeless folks, like our most recent neighbors at Zion Church in Douglaston. These folks also need our compassion and support. Many New Yorkers don’t realize that between 30 percent and 40 percent of single people in shelters are employed and just need a helping hand to get an affordable apartment. We should all be able to empathize with folks in this situation because, as Councilmember Vickie Paladino said at a town hall about the Douglaston women’s shelter, many of us are one paycheck away from being in the same place as they are.

Our neighbors’ second big concern is about density: we’ve heard people say that building mid-rise housing will destroy the character of the area. But in Eastern Queens we already have numerous examples of six- to eight-story buildings existing side-by-side with two- and three-story garden apartments and single family homes.

Right here in Bellerose, at 245-10 Grand Central Service Road, we have 250 families living in three, seven-story apartment buildings that most residents probably don’t even realize are there. Other examples include the Windsor Park co-ops in Oakland Gardens, the Cambridge Hall buildings in Hollis Hills, and we would be remiss as members of Zion to not mention Douglaston, which has blocks of multi-family apartment buildings existing side-by-side with some of the most desirable single-family homes in the borough. Those mid-rise buildings haven’t ruined Douglaston, and they won’t ruin Glen Oaks or Queens Village.

The last concern we have heard a lot about is why we should subsidize the creation of affordable housing at all. Once again, let’s think about our parents and grandparents before pointing fingers at our new neighbors. The truth is that most housing in the United States, let alone New York City, has benefited from some subsidy. Glen Oaks Village would not exist today if the developers in 1947 had not received $54 million (nearly $750 million in 2023 dollars) in subsidized low-interest loans from the Federal Housing Administration.

Most apartment buildings have benefited from some state-backed subsidy, like 421-a, J-51 , or the 1955 Mitchell-Lama program. And the largest housing subsidy over the last century has been for single-family homes. Homeownership today is built on pillars of government support, from the explicit insurance of FHA loans, to the implicit support of a massive federally-sponsored secondary mortgage market, to the mortgage interest tax deduction.

The GI Bill of 1944 put many of our grandparents into homeownership for the first time—and kept many Black and brown families out of it. We believe that everybody deserves the same support and investment that our parents and grandparents received. This Creedmoor plan is one way to make that a reality—to make this city a place where everybody has a shot.

It’s only human to be nervous about change—especially in the places our families call home. But we think the state’s plan for Creedmoor represents an investment in the essential workers who make this city great.

We’ll keep pushing the governor to ensure that the Creedmoor site—public land—is used for the public good. Because our hope is that in 75 years there will be second and third-generation residents of this new development who love their neighborhood as much as we love ours now. Supporting this plan is part of the legacy we can leave to them.

Hochul’s Creedmoor Housing Plan ‘Not Acceptable’ to Locals Stripped of Land Use Review

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 18:14:15 GMT

Hochul’s Creedmoor Housing Plan ‘Not Acceptable’

to Locals Stripped of Land Use Review

New York State finally has a plan to turn the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center into thousands of units of housing. It will also have full power to approve the plan — angering neighbors who feel they’ll be sidestepped on a project that could transform the low-density neighborhood in eastern Queens with “tall monstrosities” up to eight stories high.

Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled details this week of her plans to redevelop 58 acres of the state-owned Creedmoor site, a sprawling project that will likely span into the next decade.

The blueprint, developed in large part by the state-controlled authority Empire State Development (ESD), would create a new residential community that includes 2,873 units of new housing and 14 acres of amenities, including a daycare center, neighborhood retail, open space, and set-aside locations for a potential school and recreational center.

For decades, the century-old, 125-acre mental health care campus has been largely underutilized except to inpatients at a Creedmoor Psychiatric Center tower, outpatients in a handful of supportive housing complexes and newly arrived migrants in a congregate tent shelter.

“This would represent the area’s single largest new investment in housing since Glen Oaks Village in the 1950s and its largest single expansion in homeownership opportunities since the construction of North Shore Towers in the 1970s,” the master plan reads.

Among the thousands of new housing units proposed, 1,633 will be co-ops, triplexes and two-family homes the state hopes to set aside for future homeowners. The remaining 1,240 proposed units are either intended as income-restricted rentals geared toward seniors or included in the city’s affordable housing lottery, or supportive rentals for tenants with mental illness. Veterans will also be given preference in about 13 percent of the affordable lottery apartments and 25 percent of the supportive housing rentals.

But the state has yet to determine the units’ level of affordability in relation to the area’s median income, said ESD project manager Doug McPherson in a community webinar Wednesday night — except for 200 homeowner units that will be developed first.

Those units will target households earning 80 to 100 percent of the area median income — or $90,400 to $113,000 a year for a two person home, which is, according to the report, “approximately the starting salary for a Creedmoor Psychiatric Center registered nurse, raising a single child on their own.”

More than 55% of housing units will be set aside for homeownership under the Creedmoor proposal

About 13% of all 1,240 proposed rentals will give preference to military veterans

The announcement follows ESD’s months-long campaign to engage local residents and civic associations — who came forward with a vision for low-density development and objections to developing buildings taller than four stories on the site. Multiple buildings under the state’s current plan announced Wednesday, however, will be six to eight stories tall.

“I know height will be something that is an issue,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards during Wednesday’s webinar, who emphasized the dire need for affordable housing and more robust infrastructure in the area. “But once again, I will say we are trying to solve a myriad of issues and we have to make the financing work.”

The project will be developed in phases once the state completes an environmental review that is slated to begin early next year with the drafting of a “General Project Plan” proposal.

That plan, McPherson said, would allow the state to pursue land use changes on the state-owned property without the city’s multi-layer land use review process, known as ULURP, which involves advisory input from the local community board and the borough president. ULURP also gives up-down voting power to the City Council and mayor to nix or approve the project.

For Creedmoor, only the state will have that power.

“I am concerned without the ULURP process,” said Queens Community Board 13 chair Bryan Block, who represents the area including the Creedmoor site. “Since that’s been taken away from us, and taken away from the community, we have a problem with that.”

The proposed building height and development density is “just not acceptable for the community,” Block told THE CITY. The community board’s land use committee, he added, would have been able to put in conditions for advisory approval for the project — though not without the ULURP process.

But Emily Mijatovic, an ESD spokesperson, told THE CITY that the local councilmember will be consulted on the plan, and that it would go before the Public Authorities Control Board — a state watchdog for public financing and borrowings for large development projects that lawmakers have leveraged to derail unfavorable plans in the past, including the controversial Amazon HQ2 proposal for western Queens.

Councilmember Linda Lee (D – District 23) declined to comment on the master plan, as her spokesperson Daniel Sparrow said the office is “still awaiting further information.”

Meanwhile, ESD will also be forming a body called the Creedmoor Community Advisory Committee to solicit input and guidance. The committee will be composed of local elected officials and their nominees, as well as ESD appointees and community board members, McPherson said.

But “I don’t know if the advisory board will have the same teeth as the ULURP process,” said Block. “That’s my concern.”

But Corey Bearak, acting president of the North Bellerose Civic Association and a member of Community Board 13’s land use committee, argued that it would nonetheless be a “drastic” change to the neighborhood. And, he added, it’s a change that’ll push away New Yorkers seeking a suburban lifestyle to Long Island, Westchester, or even Rockland County.

“Do we really want to lose those people?” said Bearak. “It’s not the first time that the government came in and said, ‘We have this beautiful puzzle, and we’re going to try to squeeze it into this box.’ But maybe this box doesn’t fit this puzzle.”

Mijatovic, the ESD spokesperson, said the state plan “reflects needs that ESD has heard from community members and the vast majority of requests from local civic groups” and added that “there will be continued opportunities for input from the public.”

But some who have been advocating for homeownership on the site saw the plan as a welcome commitment toward more affordable housing from the state — and a promising solution for Black and other non-white New Yorkers now leaving the city because they cannot find affordable places to live.

Among those advocates is Rev. Patrick O’Connor of the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, co-chair at Queens Power, a member organization of the community organizing coalition Metro-IAF that has built almost 5,000 affordable homes in places including East New York, Spring Creek and Brownsville.

“When you own, it gives you a chance, as you pay it, to be able to create equity and wealth for yourself,” O’Connor told THE CITY, noting the racial wealth gap in the city and elsewhere.

He applauds Hochul’s effort to allot 55% of Creedmoor’s units for homeownership rather than rentals — including the 200 affordable units of mixed-income co-ops financed by the state’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal that will be built in the project’s first phase.

But O’Connor is also looking for commitment from the state to make sure that the rest of the remaining 1,400 homeowner units will, too, be affordable, since the state has not yet announced affordability levels beyond the first 200 homes.

“Part of the Creedmoor story is that some of the neighbors have been antagonistic to development of that size, yet they benefited from the GI bill provision and from federal policy which allowed their developments to be created,” O’Connor told THE CITY. (The GI bill excluded Black veterans, and Glen Oaks Village, a 3,000-apartment complex sprawling 110 acres near Creedmoor, was built as affordable rentals for World War II veterans.)

He continued: “Creedmoor is just another example of what good government policy can do — and it should be done for all New Yorkers, not just a particular racial group.”

A better use for Creedmoor: Housing for New Yorkers in Eastern Queens

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 16:55:12 GMT

A better use for Creedmoor: Housing for New Yorkers in Eastern Queens

Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul, both of whom have popularity problems, are aligned on something fundamental: The long road to a more affordable city requires seizing ever more opportunities to produce housing, including housing that’s legally reserved for middle- and lower-income New Yorkers.

So give Hochul big credit for announcing plans to open up underutilized land at the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center for the construction of new homes. If this goes according to plan, on 58 acres where vacant buildings and lots and parking lots now sit will grow more than 2,800 places for people to live in Eastern Queens.

Included are more than 1,600 for-sale homes, townhomes and coops — and more than 1,200 rental units, including more than 800 units of supportive and senior housing. It’s not every last thing that the good folks at Queens Power , a coalition of residents that’s fighting to improve their neighborhoods, are asking for, but it’s pretty close.

Hochul retreated on a major pro-housing policy plank, but with this stroke, she proves that she’s not backing off new housing production. Fifty-eight acres is an unthinkably large property in this city, an opportunity that must finally be seized after decade after decade of swings and misses.

If a wand could be waved and all the new bedrooms and kitchen and bathrooms could just appear, we’d be thrilled. It’s never that easy, of course, especially not in New York. While construction itself takes a long time, it’s the drawn-out period between hopeful blueprints and actual on-site work that can feel interminable.

The governor’s master plan speaks to the environmental review process, saying, “It is anticipated that the proposed Plan would require an Environmental Impact Statement, and environmental reviews of this scale tend to take about 18 months but may extend to 24 months.”

And that’s not all: “Concurrent with the environmental review, Empire State Development will draft a proposed General Project Plan (GPP), which will put forth the essential terms of the redevelopment. Both the GPP and DEIS would be subject to at least thirty (30) day of public review followed by a public hearing and at least thirty (30) days of public review and written comment.”

Translation: Hunker down, because this could take a while, with those who oppose more homes on the land having plenty of opportunities to throw wrenches in the gears.

Some potential opponents have already laid down markers, saying they’re wary of “high-density housing” — apparently defined as more than four stories, who knows why — and worried about traffic.

Much of Hochul’s proposed plan is in the 6-8 story range, which is just fine by city standards. Indeed, we count 17 stories in the bulky main Creedmoor building .

Albany ought to be, and supposedly is, systematically scouring all its vacant and underutilized holdings to see where it can invite new housing. New York City ought to be, and supposedly is, doing the same.

Some of the homes New York needs should arise by adding a building or two here or a floor or two there, or a granny flat in this or that garage or basement. Some of it will arise by finding large fertile plots like Creedmoor, Sunnyside Yards and Aqueduct .

Create more supply and rents will become more reasonable for longtime New Yorkers and those who aspire to come here.

Hochul unveils plan for more than 2,800 homes in Queens

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 01:25:09 GMT

Hochul unveils plan for more than 2,800 homes in Queens

Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled plans Wednesday to build more than 2,800 homes in eastern Queens.

The project will be built on 58 acres of underutilized land at the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, taking the place of vacant land, buildings and parking lots.

More than half of the homes — 1,633 — will be for-sale cooperative units, two-story homes and townhome triplexes. The first phase of the project will consist of co-op units reserved for shareholders earning up to 100 percent of the area median income.

The remaining 1,240 homes will be rental units, with 808 of the apartments reserved as supportive and senior housing, according to a master plan of the proposal released Wednesday night.

The state is expected to begin an environmental review of the plan next year and to draft a general project plan laying out the redevelopment. A request for proposals will be issued seeking developers to build the project out in phases.

The project is part of a series of actions taken by Hochul after her broader housing plan failed to move forward during the legislative session. The actions have included offering financial incentives to communities that show a commitment to housing growth and an alternative 421a program in Gowanus.

Her administration has also initiated housing projects on state-owned land. On Tuesday, the state tapped L+M Development Partners, Urbane and Lemor Development Group to build a 105-unit affordable housing project at the former Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem, according to Crain’s .

Creedmoor opened in 1912 as a satellite facility of Brooklyn State Hospital. It got its start as a psychiatric “farm colony” where patients took part in daily farm work as part of a therapy regimen.

The campus spans 125 acres. Most of its buildings, 19 out of 25, are vacant. If the governor’s plan moves forward, various state-led agencies will continue to provide services to patients on the remaining 67 acres at Creedmoor.

Metro Industrial Areas Foundation talks about push for Hochul to invest in more affordable housing

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 01:11:34 GMT

Metro Industrial Areas Foundation talks about push for Hochul to invest in more affordable housing

A report last month found that only slightly more than 1,600 affordable housing units were completed in the city in the first nine months of the year.

Only 45 of those units were started under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leadership.

Meanwhile, Hochul announced earlier this week that the state has secured $1.15 billion for the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

This funding would provide more rental arrears assistance and support for public and subsidized housing residents.

But advocates argue the state is still not doing enough.

“Every single week, somebody in my congregation tells me they’re leaving this city because they can’t live here,” Reverend David Brawley of the St. Paul Community Baptist Church said.

He joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Wednesday to talk about the effort by faith leaders to push for more affordable housing investment.

He is also a leader of Affordable Housing for Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of multi-faith organizations that is participating in advocating for more housing.

Op-Ed | Governor Hochul: Affordable housing is needed, Creedmoor is an opportunity

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:15:26 GMT

Op-Ed | Governor Hochul: Affordable housing is needed, Creedmoor is an opportunity

My daughter and I lived in Corona, Queens, for 28 years. Over that time, our landlord repeatedly refused to repair essential appliances, from the fridge to the oven to the air conditioner during peak summer months.I personally fixed and paid money out of my pocket for all repairs. When our basement flooded, not only did he refuse to clean up the damage, but had the audacity to stand by his demand for a rent increase. My family had enough.

As many of my fellow New Yorkers are forced to do, I took time off of work and embarked on the search for a new home. This year, the average asking rent in Queens increased 12 percent year-over-year, surpassing the city-wide average of 10.7 percent.

When I finally found a place suitable for my family, a 15% broker’s fee soon followed along with moving costs upwards of $8,500 – rendering the dream of moving we had stalled until we could afford it. I felt relief and fear – relief I could stay in Queens, but fear set in knowing that may not be the reality for at least a full year’s time. But our story of displacement is sadly not unique, and is in fact a heartbreaking reality for countless Queens families, particularly in recent years.

When Queens Borough President Donovan Richards expressed that 100% affordable housing at the state-owned Creedmoor site in Eastern Queens was achievable, neighbors and I were encouraged, but eager to see real action taken. Our community’s optimism for the 55+ acre site only grew when Governor Hochul announced her housing plan that included utilizing state-owned land for housing. Additionally, earlier this year, the Governor promised to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Creedmoor site in particular.

Creedmoor became a symbol of hope and potential for our community.

However, as the months have gone by we have yet to see meaningful action from the Governor, and it increasingly appears as though her housing agenda is focused on creating small portions of barely affordable housing in wealthy areas designated for New Yorkers earning over 160% of area median income (AMI).

Creedmoor is acres of largely obsolete land holding unused state-owned facilities. Reflecting on my own experience, I can’t help but think how my life could have been changed had it already been developed when I was apartment hunting. It is a once-in-a-lifetime site that could transform the community with space for 3,000 housing units, parks, businesses, schools and churches. Yet, as the time passes, Queens residents like my daughter and I continue experiencing the repercussions of New York’s affordability crisis. In 2023, the median Queens home sale price was up 10% from a year ago, reaching a record high of $648,000 – well out of reach for typical Queens residents like myself.

Time is of the essence. Governor Hochul and Borough President Richards need to keep their promise, join forces, and develop Creedmoor into truly affordable housing — or our generation of Queens locals will be forced out of the borough we call home.

Alma Reyes works as an outreach worker for Queens Community House, an office assistant, and a house cleaner

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Behind the push for a Queens psychiatric center to become affordable housing

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 17:22:30 GMT

Behind the push for a Queens psychiatric center to become affordable housing

As New York continues to struggle with an affordable housing shortage, a coalition of activist groups says it has found the perfect location for the city's next major residential development: a psychiatric center campus in eastern Queens.

The advocates recently launched a campaign dubbed Public Land for Public Good, calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration to commit to building a completely affordable housing development on more than 50 acres of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. The groups are focused on this particular site given that it is state-owned land, meaning the administration would not have to negotiate with developers on affordability, and given its massive size, which has the potential for thousands of new homes.

Members would like the affordability levels to top out at 100% of the area median income , meaning a family of three would need to earn $127,100 to spend no more than 35% of its income on rent. They also view it as a prime opportunity to provide housing for the homeless, whose population in the city reached a record high of more than 72,000 in January, according to a Coalition for the Homeless report.

Empire State Development, the state's economic development arm, launched a community engagement process to develop a master plan for the site in partnership with Queens Borough President Donovan Richards early this year, but the groups have criticized the state for showing a lack of urgency around coming up with a proposal.

"We know that Empire State Development, which is part of [Hochul's] purview, is looking at it," said the Rev. Patrick O'Connor, co-chair of the advocacy group Queens Power, "but it can't be five to seven years down the road. The crisis is now."Richards also wants to see affordable housing on the Creedmoor campus but pushed back strongly on the idea that officials are not moving quickly enough on a plan, especially given the scope of the project.

"This is not some 100-unit building," he said. "We're talking about 55 acres."

A lengthy process

Creedmoor's history as a mental health treatment center dates back to 1912, when an agricultural therapy program opened at the site as a satellite facility of Brooklyn State Hospital. The facility continued to expand in the ensuing decades, reaching a peak population of more than 7,000 patients in 1959. But the number of patients declined in the ensuing decades, as did the need for such a large campus, and neighborhood groups received many of the facility's land tracts from the state. A small portion of the site continues to be used as a mental health center.

Empire State Development and Richards announced on Jan. 31 that they were starting an effort to redevelop the site, with the first community workshop taking place Feb. 2. This process is ongoing, and two additional public forums are planned for later this year.

"ESD remains committed to a long-term strategy for the Creedmoor facility that takes the views of local residents seriously," agency spokeswoman Emily Mijatovic said in a statement. "Creedmoor's redevelopment represents a real opportunity to enhance and enliven eastern Queens with open space, infrastructure improvements, and new housing options for the area's current and future residents, and ESD will continue to work closely with residents and stakeholders to bring this new vision for the facility to life."

The groups pushing for Creedmoor to be home to a 100% affordable housing complex—Metro IAF New York, East Brooklyn Congregations, Queens Power, South Bronx Churches and Manhattan Together—argue that they are essentially just asking the governor to do something she has already said she supports. After the collapse of broader packages meant to help boost the state's housing supply during this year's budget and legislative sessions , Hochul announced a series of executive actions to this effect over the summer that included examining state-owned properties to see if they could be used for residential projects.

But her actions so far on Creedmoor have not yet matched up with her words, according to the advocates.

"The governor made a commitment, but she hasn't lived up to it yet," said Rob English of Metro IAF New York. "We see Creedmoor as an historic opportunity."

The coalition would like the project to include about 3,000 affordable housing units and opportunities for homeownership. O'Connor acknowledged that the master plan process is ongoing but said the lack of concrete details about what officials are thinking is concerning.

"We understand that most development projects take years," he said, "but if the governor were to put a stake in the ground around affordability—100% affordability—this piece of public land could be used for public good to get regular New Yorkers who keep the city moving a place to live."

Mental health matters

Multiple Creedmoor stakeholders stressed the importance of continuing to use at least some of the campus for mental health treatment, a move the Public Land for Public Good coalition would support as well.

Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who represents several Eastern Queens neighborhoods in the 19th district, said she would like to see some affordable housing on the site but does not think it should be the only type of development to go up there. Much of the campus should still be used for New Yorkers who need the type of psychiatric care Creedmoor has long been known for, she said.

"Long-term and permanent care for the severely ill, shorter-term care for those who just need help getting on their feet, onsite medical professionals and social workers, addiction treatment, transitional housing and much more can all be comfortably built into the Creedmoor campus," she said. "And, yes, some form of affordable housing can be part of the plan, but it would be a tragedy to give up this major asset to simply build housing alone."

Richards similarly stressed the importance of having space for those who need mental health services on the campus and said a mix of income levels was important as well. He maintained that the project should be a good fit for recent college graduates looking for a place to live and New Yorkers who have long struggled to find decent housing. However, he does not view a completely affordable residential project as aiming too high.

"Absolutely, it's achievable," he said. "There's a range of tools in the tool kit to make sure this project is 100% affordable. I have to see what the unit count is going to look like, but I think it's definitely achievable."

Clergy Join ‘Queens Power’ Group to Fight for Affordable Housing

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:30:58 GMT

Clergy Join ‘Queens Power’ Group to Fight for Affordable Housing

QUEENS VILLAGE — The fight for affordable housing at a Queens Village site slated for major redevelopment by New York state has the support of local Catholic priests who are working with a nonprofit organization seeking to get 3,000 apartments built there.

Father Patrick Longalong, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village; Father Daniel Kingsley, pastor of St. Clare Church in Rosedale; and Father Hugh Burns, OP, administrator of St. Teresa of Avila-St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Ozone Park, are all working with Queens Power, the organization leading the drive for affordable housing at the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus in Queens Village.

On Sunday, June 11, Queens Power held a rally in a park across from the Creedmoor campus attended by hundreds of people from across the borough to call on the state to ensure that any plan to redevelop the site includes affordable housing.

Queens Power’s goal is to get 3,000 housing units erected at Creedmoor — a combination of small private homes and apartment buildings, said Robert English, the organization’s lead organizer. “We would like to see something similar to what you see in the Gateway Mall at Spring Creek,” he said, referring to the Spring Creek Towers (also known as Starrett City), a housing development in East New York.

The New York State Empire Development Corporation (EDC) is the lead agency in planning to redevelop a 55-acre section of the sprawling campus, and as a first step is seeking community input. In February, EDC began hosting in-person and virtual workshops to gather input.

The next step in the process will be the creation of the Creedmoor Community Master Plan, the document that EDC will use as a framework for the redevelopment.

Creedmoor began housing mentally ill patients in 1912 and at its height in the 1950s housed 7,000 people. Starting in the 1960s, the state de-institutionalized people with mental health challenges and Creedmoor began to empty out. Currently, it houses only small inpatient and outpatient treatment centers.

“We want to make sure that whatever is done there includes housing. It’s badly needed,” said Father Longalong, a member of Queens Power’s executive team.

Father Burns, who called housing “the number one issue” facing New York City, said residents are finding it increasingly difficult to afford to live here. “Are we going to be a place only for billionaires to build luxury condos or are we going to build housing that people can afford?” he asked.

“What we are hoping to do is to hold Governor [Kathy] Hochul’s feet to the fire,” Father Kingsley said. “We’ve seen many politicians who have spoken about the need for government to be responsive to the concerns of the working poor. And what better way to do it?”

Father Kingsley recalled a recent encounter with a St. Clare’s parishioner who approached him after Mass and asked him for help finding an apartment.

According to the website RentCafe, the average apartment size in Queens is 710 square feet. The monthly rent depends on the neighborhood. In Hunter’s Point the average is $3,855. Long Island City residents pay an average of $3,788. Renters pay an average of $2,066 in Downtown Flushing, while people living in Jamaica pay an average of $2,041.

For people looking to buy a home in Ozone Park, the price tag is upwards of $700,000, Father Burns said. “That’s out of reach for a lot of people,” he added.

The Creedmoor redevelopment provides a golden opportunity to address the housing crisis, Father Longalong said. “We need affordable housing wherever we can build it. This is a big piece of land, so that presents us with a chance,” he explained.

The involvement of the clergy in Queens Power is significant, English said. “The Diocese of Brooklyn has always been very supportive of our efforts to get affordable housing in the form of home ownership built. Their voice is important,” he added. Rosemary Lopez, executive director of AIDS Center of Queens County and a member of Queens Power’s executive team, said the June 11 rally was a success because it helped the organization get its point across.

Lopez added that while new housing is being built in some neighborhoods, much of it is being constructed by private developers and is unaffordable. “It is driving people out of the borough,” she said.

AIDS Center of Queens County, which serves 10,000 clients at five sites, joined Queens Power precisely because of the housing issue, Lopez explained. Queens Power, which was formed in 2019, is composed of 48 groups including churches, nonprofits, and unions.

“We’ve been advocating on this issue for years. It’s good to put ourselves together with other groups so that we could all work together,” Lopez said.

Queens Power’s portfolio covers the gamut from the push for affordable housing to the effort to get the city to install traffic lights at dangerous intersections.“No issue is too big for us, or too small,” Father Longalong said.

For example, Queens Power organized a walking tour of Ozone Park for city Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez last year so he could see traffic safety concerns up close. “The next day, the city was putting up stop signs,” Father Burns recalled.

Queens Power works on building relationships with city officials so they then can request action, the official can put a face together with a name, Father Longalong said.

Queens residents demand affordable housing on site of old psych hospital

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 16:02:01 GMT

Queens residents demand affordable housing on site of old psych hospital

Hundreds of Queens residents say the state-owned campus of an old psychiatric hospital presents a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build 3,000 new affordable homes — if New York officials allow it.

The residents are organizing with a coalition of church and nonprofit groups known as Queens Power to demand affordable housing on the grounds of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a swath of state-owned land best known for the towering hospital visible from the Grand Central Parkway. They rallied for the proposal near the Creedmoor campus on Sunday.

Queens Power Co-Chair Ben Thomases, who leads the nonprofit Queens Community House, said the state-owned land provides the perfect opportunity to build around 3,000 new income-restricted apartments, along with homes available to purchase, during a deepening housing crisis.

“Where are you gonna find something like that in Queens or anywhere in the five boroughs?” Thomases said. “We need 100% real affordability because this is a housing emergency and in an emergency, we need the state to use every tool at its disposal to respond.”

So far, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York’s quasi-governmental agency, Empire State Development, have resisted the 100% affordable housing idea, according to Queens Power members. State officials will hold two public forums on the project next month as part of a planning process on what to do with the 55 acres south of the main hospital, which would remain a psychiatric facility.

The call for new affordable housing comes as rents continue to rise in Queens, and throughout New York City. Median rents reached $2,700 in Queens in April, the highest number on record, according to prices analyzed by the real estate listings firm StreetEasy. The site is located in Queens Community District 13, where nearly half of low-income tenants spent at least 50% of their earnings on rent last year, an arrangement that leaves them “severely rent-burdened“ under federal guidelines, data from the Furman Center shows.

Empire State Development did not comment on the affordable housing proposal when contacted by email Monday.

Instead, Empire State Development spokesperson Emily Mijatovic said the agency is continuing to seek input from local residents and community groups, including over 600 participants at previous public meetings.

“Governor Hochul’s highest priority is increasing the state’s housing supply, and ESD will continue working with the community to incorporate their collective vision into the Creedmoor Masterplan,” Mijatovic said.

Hochul has set a goal of 800,000 new units of housing over the next decade to ease the statewide housing crisis, but her target was complicated by inaction during budget negotiations and the failure to pass any major housing measures during the recent legislative session.

New housing on the Creedmoor site would mark the latest evolution of the property, located between large Alley Pond Park and a collection of low-rise Northeast Queens neighborhoods like Bellerose and Glen Oaks.

The property was once home to a shooting range owned by the National Rifle Association before being turned into a psychiatric “farm colony” in 1912. It grew to become Creedmoor State Hospital in 1935, and housed roughly 7,000 people in its psychiatric inpatient facilities at its peak in 1959.

Many of the buildings emptied out as New York “deinstitutionalized” most people with mental health disorders in favor of outpatient treatment within communities. Today, some buildings on the grounds are still used for psychiatric inpatient treatment, but much of the property sits dormant.

Attendees at previous planning sessions have made their own recommendations for the grounds, with a collection of local civic groups calling for buildings to be no more than three stories high “in harmony with the surrounding area.”

Other participants have called for larger structures in the interior of the grounds, while several people recommended the creation of affordable homeownership opportunities for first-time buyers.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards has embraced the planning process. He said the site is critical for meeting the borough’s housing needs and that a “new, mixed-income community at Creedmoor will be a blueprint for the rest of the city to follow.”

“Queens and New York City are in the throes of a housing crisis,” Richards said. “We must move with the urgency of now to build our way out of it, and the approximately 50 vacant acres of land on the Creedmoor campus represent a massive opportunity to not only do just that, but to invest in Eastern Queens as a whole.”

Clarification: This story was updated to note that the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center hospital building will remain a psychiatric facility. Any housing will be built on undeveloped parts of the hospital campus.

Former New York psychiatric center considered for affordable housing

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 16:13:36 GMT

QUEENS, N.Y. (PIX11)– Can crumbling parts of the former Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens become a thriving community of affordable homes?

The New York Empire State Development held a meeting Thursday night in Bellerose to get community input on design plans to rebuild 55 acres of the more than 100-acre campus in Queens Village. Renderings show green spaces, walkways, senior living, single-family homes and townhouses.

NYC plans to build affordable housing complex in the West Village

June Forde, who attended the meeting, told PIX11 News she’s hoping for plenty of affordable homes so her 31-year-old son, who is a city firefighter can move out of her South Ozone home.

“It’s awful that you love this city and you want to be here, and we have nothing,” Forde said.

Members of the community advocacy group Queens Power also weighed in.

“New York City and people in my congregation are moving out of town because young professionals can’t afford to live here,” Rev. Patrick O’Connor, the leader of the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, said.

The project is still in its initial stages. An environmental impact study will need to be done, and a request for proposal approved before development can begin.

A spokesman for the Empire State Development told PIX11 News the earliest construction date would start would be 2025, adding 2026 was more realistic.

OPINION | Hiding in plain sight, a housing solution

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 16:25:32 GMT

Delving into the media coverage of the Public Land For Public Good campaign.

OPINION | Hiding in plain sight, a housing solution

The conventional wisdom declares that, after four decades of renovation and new construction, the only way to increase the number of affordable housing homes and apartments in New York is to maximize density. The same conventional wisdom asserts that the best way to expand this pool of desperately needed housing is to make developers include a percentage of affordable units in their high-priced market plan.

As usual, the conventional wisdom is, for the most part, wrong.

Hiding in plain sight are almost unlimited numbers of sites where 100% affordable homes and apartments could be built. For instance, the city is loaded with hundreds of unused parcels and vacant buildings owned by religious institutions that have dwindled in size or even closed. Some enterprising private developers have begun to snap these sites up, largely for market-rate housing

The city needs a streamlined process of analysis, financial assistance and subsidies to unlock these sites — which exist in every community, no matter the income level or racial make-up. These sites present an unprecedented opportunity for achieving manageable increases in affordable housing in areas that are otherwise too expensive for the vast majority of regular New Yorkers.

In other words, this is possibly the last, best chance for the city to remain economically and racially integrated — a chance that decreases with every day that passes without a robust and focused strategy to repurpose these sites and facilities for the New Yorkers who need housing most.

In addition, there are scores of sites within NYCHA developments that would be ideal locations for an increase in affordable senior housing — essential because it would free up existing NYCHA apartments for larger families now stuck in the city’s shelter system and because the senior population continues to grow in the city. Metro IAF pushed for this strategy during the previous administration, without success.

The current administration seemed more open to this approach, but NYCHA’s limited development team is incapable of implementing an aggressive expansion of this approach. Three or four such developments are built each year — all eagerly filled — but a yearly total of 20 or more developments of 80-to-100 units each would be a more robust response.

We have said it before, but it bears repeating: This is by far the most affordable and most effective way to pop the cork that keeps seniors stuck in apartments they now struggle to maintain and prevents families from moving from shelters and other substandard housing into NYCHA units freed up by seniors who move into buildings with the services and support that they need.

Finally, there are sites owned by the city, state and federal government that have languished, in some cases for decades, waiting for a bold strategy of new construction.

The city alone, according to a 2018 study done by then-Comptroller Scott Stringer, has 1,000 sites of varying sizes. That was a follow-up to a 2016 study that found more than 1,100 such properties. In other words, in two years, despite a historic housing crunch, 90% of the vacant lots in the municipal government’s inventory remained undeveloped. These sat woefully unutilized, said Stringer’s audit, for at least 20 years, some “up to a half-century.”

The state controls many such sites too, but it isn’t doing the kind of urgent review necessary to release them for development or build affordable housing on its own.

One huge case in point: the largely abandoned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center site, totaling around 100 acres, in eastern Queens. Metro IAF has proposed building more than 3,000 high-quality affordable homes and apartments there. The state has promised to issue a Request for Proposals, but not, according to a state official, until “sometime in 2023.” This tentative, slow pace reflects the anxiety elected officials feel when several local civic groups, adept at NIMBY tactics, scream bloody murder about the erroneous assumption that local property values would plummet.

There’s no evidence that this would be the case and every sign that property values would remain stable or even increase, as they have done in the communities adjacent to the Spring Creek development that Metro IAF affiliate East Brooklyn Congregations and Monadnock Construction are now completing.

In addition, the city should contact the General Services Administration and see if any large federal sites, like downsized military locations, would be available for affordable home construction. The Kingsbridge Armory has sat vacant for decades. Plan after plan to revitalize it has come and gone. Does no one have the imagination and wherewithal to transform it into housing?

All of these opportunities and more depend on well-staffed housing teams at the city and state levels, as well as an expanded commitment of subsidy dollars to make these developments possible. While these costs would be significant, they pale in comparison to the current dynamic — exorbitant spending on hotels and shelters, all made necessary by the unwillingness to create the next generation of permanent, stable, affordable housing for regular New Yorkers.

This is yet another area where there is no outside person or institution — no Texas governor, no federal regulator, no private sector monopoly of available land — that can be blamed. This is another home-grown crisis that calls for a home-grown solution.

The mayor and governor need to invest the time, energy, resources and creativity necessary to unclog the affordable housing pipeline and to unleash a strong new flow of affordable homes and apartments. Until they do, regular New Yorkers of all races, but particularly African-American and Hispanic residents in places like Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Mott Haven and a dozen neighborhoods like them, will continue to head for the suburbs or other states because they simply can’t afford the costs of housing in the city.

The existential crisis faced by our school system — a steady loss of students — is in our view directly linked to the lack of affordable housing options for families with school-aged children. We faced and reversed a version of this same crisis in the 1980s and 1990s when our East Brooklyn and South Bronx affiliates first built thousands of new Nehemiah homes, attracting families and filling local schools threatened with closure with new students. We recall the principal of a shrinking DOE school on Mother Gaston Blvd. in Brownsville moved to tears when EBC built 700 homes in the blocks near her school — stabilizing and then increasing the student population.

Build them, and working families of all races will come, or remain. Don’t build them, and the developers eager to build luxury housing at impossibly high rents will fill the vacuum and reconfigure the city in ways that will be impossible to reverse.

Peter Goldmark once wisely said that New York has a tendency to take its successes for granted. It took visionary leadership and unprecedented investment by then-Mayor Koch, a generation of extraordinary government housing professionals attracted to that vision and investment, along with the dedication and persistence of a wide range of non-profits organizations focused on production, to stop the bleeding and bring New York’s struggling neighborhoods and schools back to life. That often contentious and argumentative team spurred an unprecedented period of new and renovated housing work — in some years outspending and outbuilding the next 50 American cities combined.

We need those same qualities from both the mayor and governor now.

Brawley is the senior pastor of St. Paul Community Baptist Church and Co-Chair of East Brooklyn Congregations. Cruz is the pastor of Monte Sion Christian Church and Co-Chair of Manhattan Together. Both organizations are affiliates of Metro Industrial Areas Foundation.

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