No More Affordable Housing?

In a surprise move, the City Council’s Land Use Committee is poised to vote down the One45 rezoning proposal on Tuesday without even submitting the usual recommendations for changes to City Planning.

With the future of any affordable-housing construction now in doubt as the Legislature’s set to let a key tax break expire, it’s a test of whether the council will return to its old habit of letting each member veto projects in his or her district — letting ideologues block developments that serve the whole city.

The latest version of the plan for a block on 145th street near the East River that now provides no housing at all would put up a 32-story mixed-use complex, with half its 915 housing units committed to below-market rents (more than a third for incomes at half or less of the neighborhood’s medium), along with 42,000 square feet of groundfloor retail space, up to 36,000 square feet of commercial space and 20,000 square feet of non-profit space, half for a new headquarters for the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.

But local Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan thinks that’s not enough, complaining that too many of the units are studios or 1-bedrooms and not enough are subsidized housing.

Industry insiders say she’s nuts — that if making half the units affordable isn’t enough, builders will just give up, and focus their efforts on all-luxury-construction projects. But the rest of the council may bow to her demand to kill One45, and many other members will similarly want to nix similar development in their districts — pleasing local activists who oppose new housing, even though the city as a whole desperately needs it as rents continue to soar.

This, as the Legislature is letting the 421-a tax break (which similarly fosters projects that mix of market-rate and subsidized units) expire with no replacement. If the City Council similarly gives up on reasonable compromises to allow for new affordable units, next to none will get built anywhere in the five boroughs.

That’s the reverse of what Richardson Jordan and her allies say they want, but it’s where the radicals are taking us.

The only question is whether the council majority is sane enough to put the public interest first, so New York City doesn’t become utterly unlivable for everyone except the rich.