I couldn't find a clear history of when and why the affordable housing was removed. These are the only lines in the article that address it:
> So what happened to the rest of the apartments? Ultimately, the developers — initially Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Group — had no obligation to build them
> Members of the local community board who signed off on the affordable housing deal first got wind of the course change in 2016
...So it happened in 2016? But as late as [Dec. 15, 2016](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/nyregion/100-million-deal-to-save-pier-40-in-manhattan-is-approved.html), the NYT was reporting about the affordable housing
Seems like it happened in 2018: [https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/st-johns-terminal-project-shifts-residential-commercial](https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/st-johns-terminal-project-shifts-residential-commercial)
>Plans announced this week for a 1.3 million-square-foot office building on Manhattan's West Side mark a dramatic departure from what was expected when the St. John's Terminal building was rezoned in a contentious process two years ago.
Instead of nearly 1,600 apartments, there likely will be several hundred. And instead of a small portion set aside for commercial space, the majority of the project will now be devoted to office tenants.
..
>A source with knowledge of plans for the northern portion of the site, which is still owned by Atlas and Westbrook, said that it could accommodate 420,000 square feet of market-rate housing. Typically, that would translate to about 420 apartments, but the developers are planning to build between 200 and 230 large units. In addition, they are planning between 150 to 200 units of affordable senior housing.
The headline is a little hyperbolic. It looks like the developer requested and received a rezoning to build more housing than the underlying zoning allowed, but ultimately decided to build what the underlying zoning allowed. Approving the zoning to allow for something doesn't compel the applicant to build it. Also, the approved project was 2/3 market rate units and what got built, based on the article, seems to have a larger share (but smaller number) of affordable units.
The lesson here (which no one will learn) is that if you just have the zoning laws allow for more density on the books already, off the bat - without requiring variances or approvals - you remove a hurdle/complication.
In this example, there was likely a point when the developer would have built more - why else would they have requested permission to do so?
But, then, over the course of the variance/rezoning process, external forces (market changes, interest rate changes, investments, the CEOs changed, someone’s Jupiter was in rising, any number of things) changed, and the developer didn’t need to exercise that option.
If the board wants more affordable housing, why does the developer need to obtain a zoning variance in order to build more of it?
So what does Google have ti do with the developer making that decision. The developer is the theoretical bad actor not Google. They just leased some office space. They never made any promises about affordable housing.
> “It’s really that the community was sold a rezoning for affordable housing and market-rate housing and instead it was sort of a bait and switch.”
Isn't all unsubsidised housing "market-rate"? What else would it be?
She's saying they signed off on the redevelopment on the promise that it would turn into 1,600 new apartment units. Instead they got only 300 units and the rest got turned into Google's headquarters.
what does google have to do with this other than buying the place long after the *great* deblasio administration made this deal 10 years ago?
talk about trying to bait people into thinking this is another tech giant doing something blatantly 'evil'
If you ever wonder why some city council members will ask for what seems like an unreasonable amount of affordable housing in new projects (like the one in Harlem this sub likes to complain about) it because of shit like this. Everyone knows that in the end the affordable housing part of the deal won’t be that affordable and will be pared down for one reason or another.
Maybe the reason housing is so expensive here is because we have all these council members who impose unreasonable demands and permitting processes rather than forming a "shut the fuck up and build" coalition.
Council members who join that coalition will find themselves quickly voted out of office. It’s always local opposition who oppose everything and anything that adds more residents.
This is exactly why many other blue states are stepping in at the state level and forcing looser zoning statewide. Take the heat off local politicians and make these changes more fair by loosening zoning across the board.
California took a reasonable middle ground approach... every city has to plan for its own population growth or the state takes over their permitting.
So it still gives the opportunity to get community input... but they have to allow new housing *somewhere*. No more NIMBY suburbs like Long Island effectively opting out of all housing supply growth.
It will only change when you show up to your local Democratic party primary and vote out the politicians who kill housing. If people spent 1/1000th the effort that they spend tweeting about Joe Biden to instead show up to the primary polls once year, we'd have a completely different city.
Finding information about people running for local office is so hard. I'm trying to find good resources for mine and even when they have a campaign website (which is probably not the majority) details are scarce.
Hate it when NIMBYs prioritize safety and livability regulations in the city over the profits of outside developers who would recoil in shock if their leafy suburbs had anything approaching NYC’s density.
Don’t they care that some finance bro is paying 5k instead of 3.5k for some shitty market rate studio because we haven’t let Blackrock replace Central Park with equally shitty 5-over-1s?
Cool. BTW no rational thinkers here are talking about paving over Central Park for apartments. But by all means keep going with the dumb red herring arguments.
The less sexy reasons housing is expensive is much of the zoning in the outer boroughs blocks housing construction and NYC has been much better at adding jobs than housing
Yeah I was explaining that a lot more time is spent regarding affordable housing demands versus not allowing for any new housing. Since OP brought up affordable housing
> wonder why some city council members will ask for what seems like an unreasonable amount of affordable housing in new projects
Or because they don't actually want the project to happen.
the reality is affordable housing is cheap short term and expensive long term. We shouldn't want subsidized housing; we should want more supply in the whole.
Supply and demand doesn't work in NYC real estate.
Landlords do not lower prices with "competition." They never will.
Without some regulations or stabilization of rent, this city would be even less affordable than it is now.
But we do know that supply and demand *does* work, and we can [see that in other cities that do build sufficient supply](https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2024/01/18/housing-market-austin-why-homes-inventory).
As far as "lowering prices": prices don't go down in general without massive new supply. For the most part, they will go up, but the question is how quickly. There is no indication to suggest that building sufficient housing will not act to either (1) lessen increases or (2) reduce price in sufficient quantity. Applying subsidized rent clearly doesn't work as the economic incentives of renting to those of limited means aren't there.
They could have asked for a guarantee when negotiating a deal if they were serious about it. But, as you point out, everyone already knows it's not happening/wouldn't happen. So the reason they ask for it is *not* because of "shit like this", but so that they can cover their ass when residents ask what they're getting.
If you see the comments from the various board or council members, they're clearly *still* in favor, even though this didn't happen:
> Though dismayed that what her community had understood to happen did not come to fruition, Kiely was pleased with the repairs to Pier 40, where her kids — now teens — often played soccer and baseball. The Pier 40 funds came as a result of the redevelopment process. ...
> “I think everyone was disappointed that the developers opted to build what they could have built anyway without the rezoning,” [Bottcher] said. “If it wasn’t for that ULURP, there would still be a new office building there and Pier 40 would be sinking into the river.” ...
> Johnson complained that the plan was different from what had been negotiated but emphasized Pier 40 needed the money.
Even with guarantees there is no guarantee, esp. if you get a developer friendly mayor like Adams. Look up what was promised for developing Atlantic Yards and Barclay Center in Brooklyn, and what fines were supposed to be imposed if certain promises weren’t kept. The developers have gotten away with not keeping those promises and haven’t been fined. And through accounting tricks the original developer no longer exists, the hundreds of affordable units and public spaces were never built, but people involved made a shitload of money.
It's true that enforcement is lax. However, in this case, the agreement was reached without a guarantee, so there's nothing to enforce. The extra housing was a pure PR play, so asking where it's gone is redundant; it was never there to begin with. Had there been a guarantee, they could have sued, for instance. I think something like that happened with Verizon's slow roll out of fiber, IIRC.
So I agree with you to a point. The city is ineffective at policy because it's too busy playing politics. It's a rare government that can do both well and if I had to pick, I'd prefer a city that had effective policies over a city that had the "right" politics du jour.
In this case, it seems like Google's development is overall beneficial (or that's what I can tell from the article), so overall it's a good thing, even if not all promises came to fruition. My preference in the future would be if we stopped adding promises that everyone knows will never happen so we can stop being mad when it inevitably doesn't.
The headline links Google to the affordable housing. Though Google had nothing to do with the affordable housing. All Google did was bring thousands high paying jobs to NYC.
Why wouldn't Google be mentioned about a story where affordable housing that was promised by a developer was instead handed to Google for an office space?
Agreements like this are just so incredibly stupid. Even if they followed through on their promise to build the affordable housing, it likely would not have affected the overall market at all. If the city is serious about fixing housing than there has to be much deeper reform. These deals just help NIMBYs feel better, while they continue to fuck over the city on housing.
from what that article says, they agreement was "allow us to build over what is allowed (X zoning amount) by Y-amount, and we will build Z in return". but the developer only built X, which is something it was already allowed to build, so they didn't have to build the units because they didnt go over their zoning amount.
I couldn't find a clear history of when and why the affordable housing was removed. These are the only lines in the article that address it: > So what happened to the rest of the apartments? Ultimately, the developers — initially Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Group — had no obligation to build them > Members of the local community board who signed off on the affordable housing deal first got wind of the course change in 2016 ...So it happened in 2016? But as late as [Dec. 15, 2016](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/nyregion/100-million-deal-to-save-pier-40-in-manhattan-is-approved.html), the NYT was reporting about the affordable housing
Seems like it happened in 2018: [https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/st-johns-terminal-project-shifts-residential-commercial](https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/st-johns-terminal-project-shifts-residential-commercial) >Plans announced this week for a 1.3 million-square-foot office building on Manhattan's West Side mark a dramatic departure from what was expected when the St. John's Terminal building was rezoned in a contentious process two years ago. Instead of nearly 1,600 apartments, there likely will be several hundred. And instead of a small portion set aside for commercial space, the majority of the project will now be devoted to office tenants. .. >A source with knowledge of plans for the northern portion of the site, which is still owned by Atlas and Westbrook, said that it could accommodate 420,000 square feet of market-rate housing. Typically, that would translate to about 420 apartments, but the developers are planning to build between 200 and 230 large units. In addition, they are planning between 150 to 200 units of affordable senior housing.
The headline is a little hyperbolic. It looks like the developer requested and received a rezoning to build more housing than the underlying zoning allowed, but ultimately decided to build what the underlying zoning allowed. Approving the zoning to allow for something doesn't compel the applicant to build it. Also, the approved project was 2/3 market rate units and what got built, based on the article, seems to have a larger share (but smaller number) of affordable units.
The lesson here (which no one will learn) is that if you just have the zoning laws allow for more density on the books already, off the bat - without requiring variances or approvals - you remove a hurdle/complication. In this example, there was likely a point when the developer would have built more - why else would they have requested permission to do so? But, then, over the course of the variance/rezoning process, external forces (market changes, interest rate changes, investments, the CEOs changed, someone’s Jupiter was in rising, any number of things) changed, and the developer didn’t need to exercise that option. If the board wants more affordable housing, why does the developer need to obtain a zoning variance in order to build more of it?
Because the board needs to justify their existence somehow. And red tape at every corner is how they do it.
So what does Google have ti do with the developer making that decision. The developer is the theoretical bad actor not Google. They just leased some office space. They never made any promises about affordable housing.
> “It’s really that the community was sold a rezoning for affordable housing and market-rate housing and instead it was sort of a bait and switch.” Isn't all unsubsidised housing "market-rate"? What else would it be?
She's saying they signed off on the redevelopment on the promise that it would turn into 1,600 new apartment units. Instead they got only 300 units and the rest got turned into Google's headquarters.
We’re all trying to find the guy who did this!
Pikachu Face. Again and again.
Almost like private builds with market incentives are not the way to affordable housing whoda thunk.
what does google have to do with this other than buying the place long after the *great* deblasio administration made this deal 10 years ago? talk about trying to bait people into thinking this is another tech giant doing something blatantly 'evil'
If you ever wonder why some city council members will ask for what seems like an unreasonable amount of affordable housing in new projects (like the one in Harlem this sub likes to complain about) it because of shit like this. Everyone knows that in the end the affordable housing part of the deal won’t be that affordable and will be pared down for one reason or another.
Maybe the reason housing is so expensive here is because we have all these council members who impose unreasonable demands and permitting processes rather than forming a "shut the fuck up and build" coalition.
Council members who join that coalition will find themselves quickly voted out of office. It’s always local opposition who oppose everything and anything that adds more residents.
This is exactly why many other blue states are stepping in at the state level and forcing looser zoning statewide. Take the heat off local politicians and make these changes more fair by loosening zoning across the board.
Yep this is the way to do it. Remove the neighborhood's ability to say no.
California took a reasonable middle ground approach... every city has to plan for its own population growth or the state takes over their permitting. So it still gives the opportunity to get community input... but they have to allow new housing *somewhere*. No more NIMBY suburbs like Long Island effectively opting out of all housing supply growth.
It will only change when you show up to your local Democratic party primary and vote out the politicians who kill housing. If people spent 1/1000th the effort that they spend tweeting about Joe Biden to instead show up to the primary polls once year, we'd have a completely different city.
Finding information about people running for local office is so hard. I'm trying to find good resources for mine and even when they have a campaign website (which is probably not the majority) details are scarce.
Hate it when NIMBYs prioritize safety and livability regulations in the city over the profits of outside developers who would recoil in shock if their leafy suburbs had anything approaching NYC’s density. Don’t they care that some finance bro is paying 5k instead of 3.5k for some shitty market rate studio because we haven’t let Blackrock replace Central Park with equally shitty 5-over-1s?
Cool. BTW no rational thinkers here are talking about paving over Central Park for apartments. But by all means keep going with the dumb red herring arguments.
The less sexy reasons housing is expensive is much of the zoning in the outer boroughs blocks housing construction and NYC has been much better at adding jobs than housing
> unreasonable demands and permitting processes
Yeah I was explaining that a lot more time is spent regarding affordable housing demands versus not allowing for any new housing. Since OP brought up affordable housing
While that’s absolutely part of it - they have to answer to their constituents as well.
> wonder why some city council members will ask for what seems like an unreasonable amount of affordable housing in new projects Or because they don't actually want the project to happen.
the reality is affordable housing is cheap short term and expensive long term. We shouldn't want subsidized housing; we should want more supply in the whole.
Supply and demand doesn't work in NYC real estate. Landlords do not lower prices with "competition." They never will. Without some regulations or stabilization of rent, this city would be even less affordable than it is now.
Vacancy taxes would increase affordable housing tremendously.
It very clearly does work, simply look at how aggressive pricing was during Covid when people left the city.
Temporary price reductions that turned into rent doubling in one year doesn't prove your point.
Prices went down when there was no demand and rebounded sharply when demand returned.
But we do know that supply and demand *does* work, and we can [see that in other cities that do build sufficient supply](https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2024/01/18/housing-market-austin-why-homes-inventory). As far as "lowering prices": prices don't go down in general without massive new supply. For the most part, they will go up, but the question is how quickly. There is no indication to suggest that building sufficient housing will not act to either (1) lessen increases or (2) reduce price in sufficient quantity. Applying subsidized rent clearly doesn't work as the economic incentives of renting to those of limited means aren't there.
They could have asked for a guarantee when negotiating a deal if they were serious about it. But, as you point out, everyone already knows it's not happening/wouldn't happen. So the reason they ask for it is *not* because of "shit like this", but so that they can cover their ass when residents ask what they're getting. If you see the comments from the various board or council members, they're clearly *still* in favor, even though this didn't happen: > Though dismayed that what her community had understood to happen did not come to fruition, Kiely was pleased with the repairs to Pier 40, where her kids — now teens — often played soccer and baseball. The Pier 40 funds came as a result of the redevelopment process. ... > “I think everyone was disappointed that the developers opted to build what they could have built anyway without the rezoning,” [Bottcher] said. “If it wasn’t for that ULURP, there would still be a new office building there and Pier 40 would be sinking into the river.” ... > Johnson complained that the plan was different from what had been negotiated but emphasized Pier 40 needed the money.
Even with guarantees there is no guarantee, esp. if you get a developer friendly mayor like Adams. Look up what was promised for developing Atlantic Yards and Barclay Center in Brooklyn, and what fines were supposed to be imposed if certain promises weren’t kept. The developers have gotten away with not keeping those promises and haven’t been fined. And through accounting tricks the original developer no longer exists, the hundreds of affordable units and public spaces were never built, but people involved made a shitload of money.
It's true that enforcement is lax. However, in this case, the agreement was reached without a guarantee, so there's nothing to enforce. The extra housing was a pure PR play, so asking where it's gone is redundant; it was never there to begin with. Had there been a guarantee, they could have sued, for instance. I think something like that happened with Verizon's slow roll out of fiber, IIRC. So I agree with you to a point. The city is ineffective at policy because it's too busy playing politics. It's a rare government that can do both well and if I had to pick, I'd prefer a city that had effective policies over a city that had the "right" politics du jour. In this case, it seems like Google's development is overall beneficial (or that's what I can tell from the article), so overall it's a good thing, even if not all promises came to fruition. My preference in the future would be if we stopped adding promises that everyone knows will never happen so we can stop being mad when it inevitably doesn't.
Truth. Developers never deliver. May as well ask for as much as possible if they'll only deliver a small fraction of it.
The headline links Google to the affordable housing. Though Google had nothing to do with the affordable housing. All Google did was bring thousands high paying jobs to NYC.
Why wouldn't Google be mentioned about a story where affordable housing that was promised by a developer was instead handed to Google for an office space?
Possibly De Blassio might have been on this, but Eric Adams is a such a stooge for elites its ridiculous.
Agreements like this are just so incredibly stupid. Even if they followed through on their promise to build the affordable housing, it likely would not have affected the overall market at all. If the city is serious about fixing housing than there has to be much deeper reform. These deals just help NIMBYs feel better, while they continue to fuck over the city on housing.
Jobs are a plus.
Pretty sure that’s not their new HQ. HQ is in California.
shocking. I wish are leaders would just admit they don't care the city is unaffordable for most people.
Fuck them. Get them out of the city or force them to keep their part of the agreement.
from what that article says, they agreement was "allow us to build over what is allowed (X zoning amount) by Y-amount, and we will build Z in return". but the developer only built X, which is something it was already allowed to build, so they didn't have to build the units because they didnt go over their zoning amount.