Hell's Kitchen Board Says City Betrayed Affordable Housing Pledge

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — A Hell's Kitchen community board is incensed over the city's newest plan to develop low-income housing on a long-vacant site in the neighborhood, saying the current proposal betrays an earlier pledge to focus on middle-income housing.

Community Board 4 on Wednesday agreed to send a letter to the city's Housing Preservation & Development Department questioning its plans to redevelop the empty lot on the west side of 10th Avenue between 48th and 49th streets — known as the "DEP site" because it formerly belonged to the Department of Environmental Protection.

Current plans call for an 8-story building with 158 affordable units to be constructed atop an Amtrak rail cut that bisects the lot, as well as a new park that neighbors have long clamored for.

The city's promise dates to 2009, after the city's Hudson Yards rezoning created hundreds of new low-income housing units. City leaders and CB4 agreed to redevelop the DEP site into housing serving middle-income brackets, which the board said was especially lacking in Hell's Kitchen.

Last year, though, HPD officials told the board that a large chunk of the new units would instead serve low to extremely-low income residents, as well as 15 units reserved for the formerly homeless.

Just 40 percent of units would be for moderate to middle-income families making more than 100 percent of the area median income (AMI) — down from a majority of units in the initial deal. Of the remaining units, 25 percent will be reserved for families making between 47 and 50 percent of AMI, or up to $56,850 for a family of four. Twenty percent will serve those making between 77 and 80 percent AMI.

"What we were promised, what we agreed to has been completely turned upside down," CB4 land use committee chair JD Noland said during a meeting last week.

Perris Straughter, an assistant HPD Commissioner who joined the Nov. 24 meeting, said the new plan did not violate the terms of the original agreement but conceded that "we are not honoring the spirit of what was written in that agreement as it relates to this being a moderate and middle-income site."

Straughter argued, however, that the city revised its plans in an effort to meet the needs of those most affected by the city's affordable housing crisis, which has hit lower-income working families especially hard.

"We are responding to conditions that we're seeing on the ground," Straughter said. "Those are the people that are vulnerable, those are the people that have the least housing opportunity."

Before being built, the proposal will need to go through the city's Uniform Land Use Review Process, which the developer hopes to wrap up by spring 2021.

Most of the board was apparently unmoved by Straughter's defense: Wednesday's letter questioning the plan passed with only one member voting against it.