Chair Louis on unique opportunity for affordable housing on publicly owned Greenpoint waterfront
Louis explains the site's uniqueness: publicly owned MTA land in an area rezoned before MIH requirements, offering a rare chance to build affordable housing for low-income New Yorkers alongside waterfront green space.
Let me first address the affordable housing component of this project.
This is a unique project for two reasons.
The majority of the development site consists of a publicly owned land controlled by the MTA.
Although there has been a lot of housing development along Greenpoint Waterfront in the past decade, the area was rezoned prior to the city's mandatory inclusionary housing requirements.
As a result, the affordable housing built to date has been at income levels that are not affordable to low-income New Yorkers.
This large, publicly owned site is a unique opportunity to build hundreds of units of affordable housing that low-income New Yorkers can actually afford in an area that has an overwhelmingly...
amount of market rate housing.
This project is also unique because it provides the opportunity to pair affordable housing with green space.
Since I have been chair of the subcommittee, you have heard me state the importance of providing the needed infrastructure and services for the new housing units we approve.
The proposed project will have over one acre of open space and connect to a larger waterfront open space plan in Greenpoint and Williamsburg,
providing a unique opportunity to provide affordable housing with direct access to waterfront green space.
Where affordable housing can be paired with the community improvements, we should maximize the amount of affordable housings built.