Bill’s bold housing start

The struggling, striving Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York verges on a new lease on life with a development plan going to a City Council vote Wednesday after near-unanimous passage in committee. Kudos to the Council, and to Mayor de Blasio, for standing up to those who would prefer to freeze East New York in crumbling amber in false hopes of keeping down rising rents — and for embracing an affordable housing scheme that shines as a model for the whole city.

East New York is de Blasio’s first test of his signature mandatory inclusionary housing program: giving real estate developers the right to build larger residential buildings than previously allowed while requiring affordable apartments in the mix.

Near term, most if not all of the thousands of new units to be built in this poor and workingclass area will rent to tenants earning $50,000 a year and far less, aided by city subsidies.

Should the real estate market later gain steam, developers will have to set aside between 20% and 25% of their apartments for tenants of modest means at modest rents.

Three homeless shelters will close, while a new school, child-care facility and community center, plus spiffed-up parks, will serve the next generation of residents.

Pressed by local Councilman Rafael Espinal, de Blasio also agreed to boost employment opportunities for residents, including at a local industrial park. And an anti-harassment task force will make clear to landlords that illegally chasing out tenants to make way for development won’t stand.

The wins for East New York, and for New York City as a whole, will be many.

Developers’ power to build bigger buildings would unleash a flood of new housing supply for a part of the city overwhelmed by demand, with half of new affordable apartments to be reserved for existing area residents.

The mixing of higher incomes into the low, if and when that happens, would bring fresh diversity to the schools and streets of an area presently segregated to an extreme degree by race (90% black and Latino) and class.

Spines firm, de Blasio and Espinal stood their ground against activist demands. Fear-mongering about the imaginary threat of extreme gentrification, they goaded de Blasio to mandate more housing for the poorest.

Such a costly burden would have been sustainable by neither developers nor the city’s finite housing budget, which will have to stretch across more than a dozen more neighborhoods set to follow in East New York’s trail.

“The New York City Council just issued a death sentence,” railed rabble-rouser Bertha Lewis following last week’s committee vote.

Dead wrong. Newly empowered to grow to fullest potential, may East New York and its toolong-ignored people thrive.