![]() It’s up to the legislature to extend that deadline until 2030 prior to the end of legislative session in Albany on June 8. To ensure that the 421-a units needing the extension better align with housing need, requiring permanent and deeper affordability of the new units should be included in the extension. In Gowanus, 2,000 out of the 3,000 affordable units will be created through MIH and need more time because of delays resulting from challenges like site environmental cleanup requirements, preparation of infrastructure improvements, the need to secure financing in a tight market or lingering staffing and supply-chain issues as we recover from the pandemic. Here’s why: like much of the mixed-income rental housing built in New York City over the last decade, the rental housing planned for Gowanus is reliant on the use of a now-expired tax abatement called 421-a, which, when coupled with the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) requirements, provide developers with a tax abatement for the construction of permanently affordable housing. Units created through MIH and/or 421-a are also rent regulated, providing important protections to tenants.īut 421-a came with a 2026 deadline to complete the projects that utilized it. The state legislature, which talks often about wanting to address the housing crisis, can save them. Those plans, which also include space for local manufacturers and artists, infrastructure improvements, upland environmental cleanups and over 18 acres of new waterfront parks and open space along a cleaned-up Gowanus Canal, are now in serious jeopardy. ![]() The July 2021 Gowanus Neighborhood Plan: Racial Equity Report on Housing and Opportunity by the NYC Council Land Use Division, with support from Columbia University Professor Lance Freeman, found that the addition of these affordable homes, amid a deepening housing crisis, would affirmatively further fair housing and make the largely white and well-off area more diverse and less segregated. In 2021, after more than decade of community discussion about the future of Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood, the New York City Council approved a rezoning of the area through the public land-use process, paving the way for a planned 8,500 new apartments, including nearly 3,000 affordable homes. “Gowanus is a critical example, but there are other mixed-income projects with much needed affordable housing comprising thousands more apartments across the city-many in high opportunity communities, and all of which were duly approved through the city’s land-use process-that need the deadline extended in order to happen.”Īdi TalwarLooking South down 3rd Avenue near the Gowanus rezoning area.ĬityViews are readers’ opinions, not those of City Limits.
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