B’KLYN WEALTH OF APTS.
Cheap pads empty
These luxury apartments are the best deals in town — but people are either too rich or too poor to live in them.
Developers behind some of Brooklyn’s toniest new highrises are struggling to fill out their affordablehousing stock — which rents for $540 to $900 a month — because there aren’t enough qualified locals to take them, community members say.
Robert Perris, district manager of Community Board 2 — which comprises Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo and Downtown Brooklyn — said affordable apartments are sitting empty for lack of lower/middleincome people in the neighborhood to rent them.
“There has been so much gentrification in recent years that the pool of potential candidates who are eligible has just shrunk further and further over time,” Perris said.
There are only a small number of people who can meet the strict income criteria for the new affordable units, 50 percent of which are legally obligated to be given to lowincome local residents.
To qualify, renters must have a household income between $20,000 and $40,000, depending on family size, and already be from the neighborhood.
But that part of Brooklyn is so wealthy now, there just aren’t enough qualified locals.
“Of the people in the district who do meet the requirements, many of them are already dug into public housing or rentcontrolled apartments,” Perris said.
The developers of projects like 66 Rockwell Place in Fort Greene and 60 Water St. in Dumbo say they have barely found any eligible tenants from Community Board 2 to occupy units.
Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for a luxury property on Water Street, said that although demand for the building’s 68 affordable units was staggering, only a handful of the 5,000 applicants qualified.
“The developers are suffering because of this,” said Rob Solano, director or Churches United for Fair Housing, a group that provides financial tips for housing applicants.
“It’s hurting them because they can’t rent all of their market apartments until they rent all of their affordable apartments.”