The housing authority is quietly selling off parking lots, green space and playgrounds to developers — a spree that will create more affordable housing and help ease NYCHA’s budget woes.
NYCHA has sold small parcels here and there over the years, but in 2011 began to ratchet up its sales effort, a Daily News review found. Since 2013, they’ve sold off 54 plots with 441,000 square feet of public land to private developers, records show.
Most of these parcels are related to 12 projects where NYCHA has sold vacant or what it deems “underutilized” land to developers to build affordable or senior housing. On some parcels, the housing is now up; on others it’s in the works.
Recently, tenants say, NYCHA officials have visited their developments in search of more potential land to sell, with plans for more “For Sale” signs later this year.
Agency officials wouldn’t discuss details, promising to lay out their plans in May when Chairwoman Shola Olatoye unveils her “Next Generation NYCHA” plan.
But at a City Council hearing last week, Olatoye made note of plans to “harness NYCHA’s real estate assets” to solve the authority’s mounting budget problems.
Some tenants are angry that the limited open space they enjoy will soon be displaced by towers of apartments. Others are ecstatic, hoping much-needed senior housing will rise on what they see as wasted space.
A quick look at the math makes clear why this is happening: NYCHA faces a $98 million budget gap this year that could expand to $400 million by 2025, and it’s got a waiting list of 250,000 people desperate for affordable housing.
In a statement to The News Friday, Olatoye made clear any land sale effort would be designed to remedy NYCHA’s fiscal ailments.
“Given this reality, we are exploring all options available to bring in additional revenue that will help us better serve residents. Our soon-to-be released NextGeneration NYCHA plan, which we developed with residents, community advocates, elected officials, and partners in government, will outline thoughtful strategies for preserving public housing and improving communities.”
Encouraging NYCHA to use every bit of land it owns, a major coalition of tenant and church groups, Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, recently identified 17 vacant NYCHA parcels in the Bronx and Brooklyn where they hope developers will put up senior housing.
“The mayor ought to use NYCHA’s underutilized parking lots to immediately build 15,000 units of affordable senior housing,” said Metro IAF member, the Rev. David Brawley. “It’s time for the mayor to stop talking about the problem and start doing something about it.
Tenants have long feared NYCHA was secretly selling off housing, though officials have repeatedly denied any effort to eliminate apartments.
The last attempt to turn over NYCHA land to developers stirred resentment and ended in failure.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed raising millions by giving 99-year leases to developers to build towers on NYCHA developments in Manhattan. The towers were to be 80% market rate; 20% affordable. Tenants and elected officials railed against this plan, arguing that it amplified the income gap and ate up open space.
On his arrival at City Hall, de Blasio killed that plan, but in the last few months, NYCHA has quietly begun moving forward with its own approach.
This time NYCHA is cultivating tenant support, promising to sell land exclusively for affordable housing and spreading the projects across the boroughs. In the last few months officials have visited developments, searching for viable vacant land to sell to affordable housing developers.
Two weeks ago Olatoye met with tenants of the Millbrook Houses in the Bronx and revealed plans to turn over to an affordable housing developer a leafy triangle that now provides both shade and parking.
Tenant association president Princella Jamerson, 53, said Olatoye told her “NYCHA is not selling the land. They’re just giving it away for someone to build on it. . . We want them to lease the property. That way we can get money in to fix the problems here.”
Other tenants are worried that their playgrounds and green space will disappear and want NYCHA to fix up what’s there instead of turning land over to developers.
At the Van Dyke Houses in Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYCHA last year sold off one parking lot to a developer for apartments for homeless families. Now they’re talking about selling off another huge lot that’s used for football, basketball and family days.
“This is where the kids learned to ride their bikes,” tenant leader Lisa Kenner said. “If you take that, where are they going to go?”
Some tenants want very much for NYCHA to sell off land. At the Howard Houses in Brownsville, Rose Whetstone, 71, sees senior housing rising on vacant green space outside her window. She’s raised four children and two granddaughters there, and has been told by NYCHA she needs to move to a smaller apartment now that all but one granddaughter has moved out.
Because NYCHA won’t commit to letting her stay in Howard, she hopes NYCHA will let a developer build senior housing on a big circle of raggedy grass hemmed in by rusting metal fence she says no one uses.
How quickly this happens remains to be seen. Some of the for sale projects now in the works have lingered for years.
At Prospect Plaza in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, NYCHA recently demolished all 240 units in five buildings to be replaced by affordable housing — 14 years after evicting the tenants.
And way back in 2003, NYCHA took ownership of an abandoned Far Rockaway shopping strip to create what it called a “town center site” across from the Ocean Bay Houses.
A decade later it sits empty, a sad collection of deteriorating storefronts. This year NYCHA vowed to sell it off to become a “neighborhood retail space inclusive of a grocery store.”
The project is scheduled for development through 2016 — 13 years after NYCHA first took the land.
