Affordable Housing Lottery Opens For Massive Forest Hills Co-Op

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS -- Nearly all 430 apartments inside a massive Forest Hills co-op are now fair game on the New York City Housing Lottery, but only the first few applicants are likely to get in right away, developers said.

Phipps Houses, one of the city's largest nonprofit housing developers, will open up a wait list Thursday for 428 rent-stabilized apartments inside the four-building complex at 62-27 108th Street, city records show. The co-op recently left New York City Housing Authority to become its own entity as Forest Hills Hills Mutual Housing.

"The tenants who now own the property as a nonprofit agreed to do a lottery for all the vacant units instead of renting them," said Douglas Hanau, area manager for Phipps Houses, which now runs the co-op.

The co-op listed all but two units reserved for superintendents on NYC Housing Connect, city records show. That includes 35 studio, 142 one-bedrooms, 179 two-bedrooms and 72 three-bedrooms.

People with an annual income between $50,126 and $121,000 can apply, but most of them will be put on a waiting list, according to the listing.

The co-op has only about six or seven open apartments now, with just a handful more being renovated for future use, Hanau said. The rest will only become available as others in the complex move out.

"We're going to rent out all the units that are vacant now," he said. "If people apply and don't get in, there will be new units in the future."

Despite the slim openings, Hanau encouraged everyone to apply for the housing lottery, calling it "a great opportunity" to snag a rent-stabilized apartment. Monthly rent - including gas and utilities - ranges from $1,462 for a studio to $2,170 for a three-bedroom apartment, according to the NYC Housing Connect listing.

"We think they're really filling a niche in the Forest Hills/Rego Park area," Hanau said of the co-op. "There's not a lot of units available in the area for that income."

After 40 years as a public housing complex, residents of the Forest Hills Co-Op Houses voted to split from the city housing authority in December and hired Phipps Houses to manage the property. The deed for the property transferred NYCHA to the co-op's residents on Jan. 1.

As part of that deal, Phipps Houses bought a portion of the site for $8.5 million with plans to build more apartments, and agreed to pay the co-op's board $130,000 a year once they're built.

"That money will go into renovating the co-op," Hanau said. "New roofs, solar panels, it's getting a whole bunch of work."

The developer filed plans with the Department of Buildings in April to build three new buildings on the land, which will create 298 additional apartments, city records show.

One 200,000-square-foot building will rise 17 stories and hold 183 units, while the other 132,000-square-foot building will go up 13 stories and hold 115 apartments, according to the DOB filings. The third building will be a four-story parking garage.

Hanau estimated the apartment complexes will take anywhere from two to four years to complete.

"Those buildings will eventually have their own lotteries based on their income levels, " he said. "But we can't start that lottery until they're built."

Lead photo via Google Maps/November 2017