Affordable housing push

Affordable housing push

Rezoning plan under fire

BY HUGH SON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

If northern Brooklyn residents don't want thousands of luxury apartments in their neighborhood, they might end up with less desirable industrial plants, a top city official warned yesterday.
"The alternative is to allow power plants and waste stations to develop there," said City Planning Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden, as a public hearing began into the controversial plan to build 10,000 apartment units on the Williamsburg-Greenpoint waterfront.

"I think the [City Council] knows this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create parks and open spaces," Burden said.

City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn) told the Daily News he has the votes to defeat the project unless more affordable housing is included.

"If the plan is not improved, it will be defeated," Yassky warned. "I'm confident there will be a clear majority of Council members who will vote against this plan if it doesn't have a genuine affordable-housing component."

Hundreds of Williamsburg-Greenpoint residents jammed the Council hearing room at City Hall yesterday to voice their opposition to the project.

Chaos erupted on the steps of City Hall when about 200 people were not allowed inside for the hearing.

Opponents of the city's plan want guarantees that between 30% and 40% of the new housing will be set aside for lower-income residents - more than the 23% city officials project the current plan will create.

The Council is the last hurdle in a seven-month review process to approve the rezoning that would entice developers to build thousands of new apartments on 175 square blocks.

"This is not what democracy is all about," said civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, as he stood outside.

"I think it stinks," added Siri Wilson, a member of a grass-roots group called the Williamsburg Warriors.

"They should find a bigger room. There were a lot of people who were thinking they could speak here, but were turned away," Wilson said.

If voted down by the Council's Land Use Committee, the project would still likely go before the full Council for a vote - but the Council generally follows the recommendations of its committees.

Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Shaun Donovan warned that resistance to the plan could result in no development.

"The risk we take is we get no affordable housing at all," Donovan said. "The city added 700,000 people in the last decade. We must find places for these people to live."

"If the Bloomberg administration can't get the rezoning done right," Yassky replied, "we'll wait until the next mayor to get it done right."

Originally published on April 5, 2005