Riley details Monitor Point affordable housing and open space benefits
Riley emphasizes the unique opportunity to build affordable housing on predominantly publicly owned MTA land in an area dominated by market-rate housing, noting the project provides over one acre of open space and, with Council modifications, 662 total affordable units including 202 additional permanently affordable apartments.
I want to take a moment to reiterate some of the points made earlier at the subcommittee vote.
This is a one-of-a-kind project providing the opportunity for predominantly publicly owned land to provide much needed affordable housing
with the council's leadership to also incorporate neighborhood infrastructure and services to support this new housing, which is extremely important.
The majority of the development site consists of publicly owned land controlled by the MTA, which presents a unique opportunity to build hundreds of units of affordable housing that low-income New Yorkers can actually afford
in an area that has overwhelmingly amount of market race.
Excuse me, market rate housing.
This site also provides the opportunity to pair this affordable housing with much needed open space.
The proposed project will provide over one acre of open space while directly connecting to the larger waterfront open space in the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
Where affordable housing can be paired with community improvements, we should maximize the opportunity and amount of affordable housing built.
And this project with the council's modification does just that.
With our proposed modification, this project will provide an additional 202 permanently affordable apartments for a total of 662 affordable units.
The Council's modifications will maintain the inclusion of over one acre of open space on site and the creation of a museum facility for USS Monitor.
As Chair Lewis noted earlier, the proposal initially involved five land use action.