Building obstacles

Adeveloper seeking zoning approval to bring to Harlem 915 new housing units, fully half of which would be affordable, just got a big fat no from the City Council — because the project didn’t satisfy the district’s democratic socialist representative, who also happens to support prison and police abolition and spout Putinesque propaganda.

If that’s really that, and the Council decisively bends to Kirstin Richardson Jordan rather than approving the production of bushels of low-cost apartments on 145th St. near Lenox Ave., it’ll send a pernicious signal that local representatives still have veto power even over hugely worthy developments.

Some Harlemites don’t like how tall One45’s two, 350-foot-plus towers would be, but it is the height of hypocrisy for anyone to howl about a city housing crisis and simultaneously stand in the way of boatloads of new supply right atop a subway station, where a vacant lot, an abandoned gas station and a few retail storefronts now sit.

Twenty-seven of One45’s planned units would be reserved for people making 30% of the city’s Area Median Income, or about $40,020 for a family of four; 83, for those making 40% of AMI ($53,360 for a family of four); 41, 60% of AMI ($80,040 for a family of four), another 83, 80% of AMI ($106,720 for a family of four) — and another 70 for workforce housing. The balance would be market-rate — helping ease a supply crunch resulting from the fact that New York City upped its housing supply by just 4% between 2010 and 2018, while the number of jobs here rose 22%.

Richardson Jordan’s chief complaint is that just 112 of these units are affordable to the district, which has a lower average income than the wider city. So she’ll throw those poor people overboard, not to mention more than 350 others who are by no means rich, because a developer with a balance sheet won’t hit her arbitrary target. Instead, Bruce Teitelbaum will likely now build market-rate condos and a self-storage facility. That’s victory?