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From
DNA Info:
Within a week of Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration announcing record-breaking achievements in affordable housing, the top two officials responsible for his housing initiatives are stepping down.
Department of City Planning Director and City Planning Commission Chair Carl Weisbrod is stepping down to chair the Trust for Governors Island, and Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Vicki Been will return to her previous job teaching at New York University and directing NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.
Weisbrod will be replaced by Marisa Lago, currently the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Assistant Secretary for International Markets and Development.
Been will be replaced by Economic Development Corporation president and CEO Maria Torres-Springer, de Blasio announced Tuesday.
James Patchett, chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, will succeed Torres-Springer at EDC, an agency which Glen oversees.
From
Crains:
A top de Blasio official has been calling developers of affordable rental buildings about a new regulation that would require them to house homeless families—the administration's latest attempt to stem the city's record-setting shelter population.
Vicki Been, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, recently made the calls to a handful of developers who received a now-defunct tax exemption called 421-a, according to sources with knowledge of the calls. The tax exemption requires that at least 20% of a building's units be enrolled in the city's affordable housing program.
"This is the latest reform in our effort to address the homeless crisis we face," said an HPD spokeswoman in a statement. "Addressing homelessness is a moral imperative. These new marketing procedures are another new tool we are using to help reduce the burden for families who are being forced out of their homes."
The city has struggled with a surging homeless population that topped a record 60,000 this month, with families with children making up two-thirds of that total. And earlier this year, domestic violence surpassed eviction to become the No. 1 reason for being admitted to a shelter, according to Crain's.
While it is not unprecedented for the city's top affordable housing official to personally call developers to inform them of a new policy, Been's entreaties are a sign that the administration is serious about getting this one off the ground quickly and is willing to exert more pressure on companies to comply.
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| Vicki Been |
From
AM-NY:
Relaxing requirements to have parking lots at senior and affordable residences within reach of subways would free up space and money to build apartments, city officials testified Wednesday at a second day of hearings on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing plan.
“Three unnecessary parking spaces are the equivalent of two units of affordable housing,” Housing Commissioner Vicki Been said. Officials said spots in parking structures can cost $50,000 to build, taking into account design, materials and labor.
But City Council members from the outer reaches of Queens and Brooklyn challenged how so-called transit zones — where parking requirements for developers would be waived — were drawn. They said public transportation options and other amenities must be improved before the parking is taken away.
“Senior citizens and other residents are not sardines,” Mark Treyger, a Democrat representing parts of southern Brooklyn that have seen bus line cuts, told Newsday. “They need to be mobile, they need to get to doctors’ appointments, they need to live out the golden years of their lives.”
From
DNA Info:
The minimum size for a senior would be 275 square feet, which Queens Councilman Donovan Richards suggested is too small.
"I just know from my own grandmother, she couldn’t fit her hats in an apartment that size," he said.
Brooklyn Councilman David Greenfield flagged the issue of allowing senior developments up to 65 feet tall in low-density residential districts that currently have a maximum building height of 35 feet.
The residents of those neighborhoods "want their small little homes with their little driveways," Greenfield said. "They're not looking necessarily for that influx."
City Planning Commissioner Carl Weisbrod indicated he was open to negotiation, but Been balked.
"I completely understand the concern. I also just want to point out that seniors come from every neighborhood," both low rise and high rise, she said. "They want to stay in their neighborhoods but they don't want to be trapped in a building that doesn't have an elevator."
Greenfield suggested the administration require a special Board of Standards and Appeals permit for tall buildings in those low-slung neighborhoods so "there would be more review."
Been objected to adding in a community board review process.
"I feel very passionately about this, because I have to look seniors in the eye and say, 'I'm sorry, but we have a waiting list of seven years. That's probably longer than you'll be alive,'" she said.
From the
Observer:
A top de Blasio housing wonk warned critics of the mayor’s ambitious affordable housing plan that the dream of stopping new construction altogether is hopeless and that only building apartments for the poorest New Yorkers is economically unfeasible.
“We have to shape development rather than just react to it. And too much of the discourse is about stopping development,” said Vicki Been, the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “You don’t stop development in a city like New York. So our approach is, let’s work to shape it, to serve the interests of the neighborhoods across the city.”
With Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vision to build and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing encountering increasing criticism from some corners that it is insufficient, and might even accelerate gentrification in the outer boroughs, Ms. Been took the podium at New York Law School this morning to explain and defend the plan. Ms. Been argued that the city could use a toolkit of zoning, tax abatements and public financing to encourage the private market to accommodate more low-income people—but said efforts to stop the city’s shifting real estate landscape are futile.
From the
Daily News:
The City plans to attack economic segregation in its affordable housing plan — placing the poor in middle-class neighborhoods and the more affluent in high-poverty spots.
Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Vicki Been said the plan to build 80,000 new affordable apartments and preserve 120,000 units would create a more diverse city.
“We really have to make economic diversity a cornerstone of that plan,” she said at a City Council budget hearing Wednesday.
“That means that in some neighborhoods that have mostly middle or upper-income housing, that we would need to put affordable housing at the very lowest income,” she said.
“But in some communities where we have a great deal of poverty . . . we would try to bring more moderate (-income housing) into those neighborhoods, to try to achieve the kind of diversity that we want,” Been said.
