Lower East Side Housing: Plans and Conflict
The buildings, both vacant, stand side by side on East Ninth Street between Avenues C and D, symbols of the contrasts and complexities of housing on the Lower East Side.
At one, owned by a private developer, workers are busy rebuilding the interior. At the other, owned by New York City, the only sign of activity is the occasional furtive exit by a young man after a drug deal.
As the city's housing shortage continues, developers are showing increased interest in the Lower East Side, for generations a home to New York's immigrants and its poor. Today the neighborhood contains tracts of vacant land and abandoned buildings, much of it owned by the city. But the city has not acted on a plan, announced with fanfare four years ago by Mayor Koch, that would use the area's growing appeal to benefit its most impoverished residents. A Cross-Subsidy Plan
The plan called for a community-wide cross-subsidy, under which vacant city land would be given to private developers to build new housing that would then be rented or sold at market rates. In return for the property, the developers would rebuild abandoned, city-owned shells in the neighborhood. The rebuilt housing would be for poor and working-class families. In all, 2,000 new apartments were to be created.
Delays in the plan, conceived in 1982 by a coalition of local groups concerned about gentrification on the Lower East Side, illustrate some reasons why it so difficult to build housing in New York.
Negotiations were slowed by a debate over whether one low-income apartment would have to be produced for each new market-rate unit. (It will.) Municipal officials were also worried that the land might not be sufficiently valuable to encourage developers to build all the new low- and moderate-income housing the officials hoped to create. (That remains uncertain.) There has also been some of the finger pointing that characterizes many housing efforts in New York. Some city officials contend that the local community board is difficult to work with. And, city officials say, the Lower East Side, with its diverse ethnic mix and long tradition of political activism, is a difficult place in which to build the kind of community consensus needed for the creation of publicly-assisted housing. Charges of Stalling
In turn, community board members assert that city officials began to take the plan seriously only in the last two years. And some members suspect that municipal officials are deliberately stalling the cross-subsidy plan so they can first obtain approval for another proposal, under which the developer Samuel J. LeFrak would build 1,200 apartments on a vacant site south of Delancey Street.
Many community groups most supportive of the cross-subsidy plan oppose the LeFrak proposal, because it would produce publicly-subsidized apartments primarily for middle-income families.
Abraham Biderman, who became the city's Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development in January, declined to comment about assertions that the cross-subsidy plan is being held hostage to the LeFrak proposal.
Mr. Biderman said that the cross-subsidy would move forward, but that he did not know when. Crucial details must still be worked out, he said, including precisely how the city should link the timing of the rebuilding of the vacant structures to the new construction on empty land. Gentrification Continues
Many housing advocates on the Lower East Side, already concerned about changes in their neighborhood in recent years, question the city's commitment. While the planning continues, they say, more young professionals and artists move into their neighborhood.
Developers are rehabilitating buildings to be used for market-rate housing on sites that, just a few years ago, were overwhelmed by blight and drug trafficking. Some streets still are. The building under renovation on East Ninth Street, for example, is on a virtually empty strip. Nearby, at the corner of Avenue C and East Fourth Street, not far from vacant buildings where the drug trade is brisk, another developer is creating an apartment building out of an abandoned yeshiva.
''Every block here has its story, and the story is always the dichotomy between the wealth that's looking to come in and the poor who are being forced out,'' said Carol Watson, a member of the local planning board, Community Board 3, and the Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference, a coalition of church organizations.
The cross-subsidy plan was devised six years ago by the Joint Planning Council, a coalition of 35 groups on the Lower East Side, out of concern over gentrification that began in the early 1980's when, after several years in which buildings were abandoned and the population declined, rents began increasing, especially in the western part of the neighborhood, near First Avenue and Avenue A. Little Interest Until Last Year When it was first conceived, the cross-subsidy plan called for all city-owned property to be reserved for low-income households. In June 1984, the proposal was approved, in principle, by the local community board. The following month, the Mayor announced his own plan, under which some vacant city-owned sites would be sold to developers and the revenues used to renovate city-owned apartments.
Members of the community board and the Joint Planning Council said city officials demonstrated little interest in the proposal until January 1987, when Paul A. Crotty, then the Housing Commissioner, summoned them and said he wanted to negotiate final details within six months. ''Crotty was the first one who took it seriously,'' Ms. Watson said. Mr. Crotty resigned early this year to return to his private law practice.
On June 23, 1987, an agreement was reached. The city would give empty lots to developers, who would compete for the sites by offering to rebuild abandoned city-owned structures.
In all, 1,000 new market-rate apartments would be created on the vacant land, and another 1,000 renovated apartments would be created in the empty buildings. Half the renovated units would go to low-income households, defined as those with total annual incomes under $15,000, and half would be for moderate-income households, those earning between $15,000 and $23,000 a year.
The cross-subsidy involved sites in the area bounded by 14th Street, Delancey Street, Avenue A, Forsyth Street and the East River. City Late With Proposal Request
A first round of the program was formulated. Three vacant city properties would be sold, and 200 new apartments would be built on them. In turn, 200 other apartments would be created by completely rebuilding between 10 and 15 abandoned structures. The city would also pay a subsidy of as much as $5 million to help renovate the shells.
A draft request for proposals from developers was to be given to the community board for review in January, board members say. The city has not completed the draft.
''I believe that there will be nothing done until this LeFrak business is done,'' Ms. Watson said.
Critics of the LeFrak plan, which was made public in February, note that the city has offered a subsidy of $20 million for the 800 middle- and moderate-income apartments to be built by Mr. LeFrak, while it has offered only $5 million for the 1,000 low- and moderate-income units to be created through the cross-subsidy plan. City officials said that the $5 million applied only to the first round of the cross-subsidy, and that additional subsidies might be considered.
''We feel like we are the keepers of this neighborhood - the ethnic diversity, the low-income nature of the community,'' said Lisa Kaplan, a member of the community board and the Joint Planning Council.