Friday Atlantic Yards #2: Smoke and Mirrors on Affordable Housing?

As it turns out, the "affordable housing" promise of Atlantic Yards that ACORN and other supporters trumpet loudly, may be more smoke and mirrors than reality for at least a decade, if not more. Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards Report analysis of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement contains the following startling conclusion: The Atlantic Yards project would include a relatively small amount of affordable housing--some 17%--in the first phase and just 162 low-income rentals over four years.

Let us repeat: 83 percent of the housing in Phase I of Atlantic Yards--which would include five towers and the arena and be completed (if the current schedule holds) in 2010--would be luxury and market rate units.

This is because the developer is front-loading the high-profit luxury and market-rate condos and rentals into the project. Oder writes:

Forest City Ratner and its partner ACORN have offered no specifics regarding how much affordable housing would be built in Phase I...The DEIS, however, provides strong hints. In attempting to estimate the effect on community facilities such as schools, the DEIS in Chapter 5 offers these projections (above; click on all graphics to enlarge):
--1946 market-rate units, both rentals and condos
--162 moderate- to high-income rentals
--80 low-to-moderate income rentals
--162 low-income rentals

That makes for nearly 83% luxury, market-rate units. If you add the 162 moderate-to high-income rentals, which would easily rent for more than $2000 a unit for a four-person family, that makes 2108 units, or nearly 90% of 2350 total units.

The entire picture is far, far bleaker overall for those who think Atlantic Yards will produce affordable housing for low-income Brooklynites. So, no problem if you are comfortable with affordable housing by 2016 in a phase of the project that is the most speculative. But, if you were thinking that there would be significant affordable housing as part of the mix by 2010, think again. Mr. Oder's full analysis is absolutely worth a read in its entirety.