NYCHA Residents Worry, is ‘The Big Apple’ Becoming the 'The Rich Apple?’

In an effort to “revive” the agency, the New York City Housing Authority plans to lease out some its land in the middle of housing projects to make room for 3 million square feet of luxury apartments, reports The New York Daily News.

Spearheaded by NYCHA Chairman John B. Rhea, the first-time plan details a 99-year lease to private developers on some of NYCHA’s playgrounds, parking lots and in community centers to build eight developments with a total of 4,330 apartments in neighborhoods across Manhattan.

The new units will be rented at market rate. So, for example, across the street from the Baruch Houses on the lower East Side, where NYCHA seeks to lease 175,000 square feet of new housing, rent in a private building is $3,100 for a one-bedroom apartment.

The City will extend developers a huge tax break. In exchange, 20 percent of the units will be set aside as affordable housing for families of four that make $50,000 or less, reported the paper.

NYCHA’s calling the plan an experiment in which upper-income people will co-exist with working families. Julie Wood, the mayor’s spokeswoman, added that the plan also will help generate hundreds of millions of dollars for NYCHA where congressional funding has been cut.

However, the idea already has drawn sharp criticism from several tenant associations groups at the planned development sites.

They complain that the plan expands housing options for well-to-do residents well beyond the rate of affordable housing options, despite that fact the increase in the number of poor, struggling families in New York City far outpaces that of the wealthy. 

Also, they wonder how the City can subsidize funding for luxury developments while so many public housing developments remain in such disrepair.

“The people who already live in public housing are going to be resentful that you built this housing and left them in shambles,” said Madelyn Innocent, a tenant of the Douglass Houses on Columbus Ave, one of the sites for planned development.