PACC Keeps Busy, Breaks Ground on Quincy

Wow, I can’t believe that some of you really feel that only drug addicts or people on welfare and single,low class mothers are the types of people who are going to move into your neighborhoods. That comment about poor people warehouses, and the homeless, was really insulting and just goes to show what kind of class you really have if all you can do is insult other people. What about college students, new graduates who are classy and just looking to move out in something they can afford. Or Single women with a decent job who are saving to buy a house, or people like me.

I just graduated college w/my B.S. as a paralegal. Im just as hardworking, classy, and decent a person and looking for something affordable and have been looking to move into quincy st neighborhood.

Its whats affordable for hardworking peple like myself who are trying to come up and who take care of themselves and their property. Im not a drug addict, I’ve never done drugs in my life, no kids,I dont drink, I work everyday. I am 23 so I do go out sometimes, but I clean up after myself, I take care of myself, been independent since I was 15 and think I should be able to move into a nice neighborhood w/afforable rent as a recent college grad and not be looked down upon because I dont make $60k a year.

There are plenty of people like me who are looking at this neighborhood as a chance to be on their own at an affordable rent temporarily until they earn a higher income where they can pay a higher rent and will gladly do it. You shouldn’t be so damn closed minded, no one is perfect, we cant all make $60 and $80k a year, its not going to happen.

Thank you 2:25pm for articulating what I could not. In particular:

“Nonetheless, there are a lot of generalizations on this board to what under $26k is. That is the income of many folks in social work, single mothers working part-time, fixed-income people on social security, etc. as well as those on welfare”

The general tone of this board seems to be that if you make 26K, you are, as one poster so elegantly voiced, “dirty, loud and have five babies with five baby daddies” I’d like to know the precise income level that instantly makes you a better tenant, neighbor, homeowner or citizen?

Most of the problems here center around problems with subsidized housing. Since property rights supercede individuals’ needs for housing, it’s difficult for organizations to successfully distribute low-income housing throughout an area. There are still many board-ups in Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy while many people still need somewhere affordable to live. The end result is high-rises, ghettos, warehousing, etc.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of generalizations on this board to what under $26k is. That is the income of many folks in social work, single mothers working part-time, fixed-income people on social security, etc. as well as those on welfare.

As far as all the “there goes the neighborhood” opinions, Clinton Hill has rapidly gentrified in the past ten years. Not everyone can afford a $1M brownstone or the escalating rents. While I’m not judging this sort of trend, this also drastically changes community and has significant effects for “hard-working” families.

One poster states “as long as… the property value of my condo increases”… I’m sorry if your investment is impeded by people from Clinton Hill trying to find somewhere they can afford to live, as your property values rise.

This is an article from about a month ago: http://tinyurl.com/ynq5vq

Here are the parts most relevant to this discussion:

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Unlike at 180 Myrtle Avenue, however, the rest of the inclusionary housing planned for the Flatbush tower is, as Lawrence Whiteside presented, “the normal type of project where the low-income development goes up [somewhere else] and the air rights are transferred downtown.”

In this case, half of the affordable housing that will provide governmental kickbacks to the developer is off-site – about two miles off-site, at 15-21 Quincy Street between Classon Avenue and Downing Street, which is at the far eastern boundary of the CB2 area.

Nonetheless, 15-21 Quincy Street, will offer 48 total units, nine of which are for tenants at or below 30 percent AMI (about $22,500), with preference given to people transitioning out of homelessness, and 38 for tenants at or below 50 percent AMI (with one unit for the super).

The Quincy Street building will be managed and marketed by the Pratt Area Community Council (PACC), and is slated to be constructed within the next two years, according to Drew Kiriazides, PACC’s director of housing development.

To many observers, the Quincy Street project represents the unpleasant side of affordable housing incentives: the market-rate condo shoppers get to live in increased luxury in their glass tower without having to run into any unfortunate low-income tenants on the elevator – or in this case, within a one-mile radius.

Kiriazides, however, is a good deal more optimistic about the plan. “It’s not like we’re dumping people in Clinton Hill,” he told the Star, referring to the Quincy location which some pre-gentrification old-timers still think of as being firmly in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“The original plan was to develop a larger site that included going into Myrtle Avenue with all of the affordable housing built at the site of the Flatbush tower,” Kiriazides explained. Quincy Street is by no means a poor plan B, in his estimation.

“PACC is very excited about having this kind of project,” Kiriazides continued. 15-21 Quincy Street “is a stand-alone building that we’re allowed to manage and provide all services for,” as opposed to on-site affordable housing where it might fall to the developer to provide for the needs of lower-income and special-needs tenants.

With the off-site set-up of Quincy, however, Kiriazides said, PACC, a non-profit management agency that serves the underprivileged, “can provide services to the formerly homeless tenants [at 15-21 Quincy], job-readiness programs, food stamp assistance,” and a number of other services all under the same roof.

(PACC does also manage affordable housing units in on-site properties. Lawrence Whiteside mentioned that 180 Myrtle Avenue had applied to PACC to request that they manage their 20 on-site units.)

So what did CB2 think of 180 Myrtle Avenue and 15-21 Quincy Street and its Flatbush tower?

The end of the year board meeting was attended by Councilwoman Letitia James, as well as representatives from the offices of many borough luminaries. Nevertheless, the night was marked by little discussion aside from repeated holiday greetings to one and all.

The vote on 180 Myrtle Avenue met with no discussion whatsoever, and CB2 approved it unanimously.

***

If what this article says is still true, the majority of apartments would have an income cap of about $37,500, and there will be a live-in super.

I have a much bigger problem with the politicians and laws involved in this than in anything that PACC is trying to do. I think that PACC is at worse misguided but well meaning. The law, however, is ridiculous and once again lets private developers take advantage of loopholes large enough to drive a backhoe through.

Wow, 7:15-8:37, and EG, spot on! So sick of the entitled native losers bitching about how they have a RIGHT to insanely-cheap housing on top of a popular boulangerie subsidized by their immediate neighbors who work for a living. The projects are a DISASTER, they physically destroyed the neighborhoods they were built ON, and then like a cancer destroyed the neighborhoods they were built IN. Bulldoze em all and let us fix what Robert Moses destroyed.

PS: You should all show up at the Museum of the CIty of NY to boo and write nasty notes in the Moses exhibit guest book. haha!