Affordable Housing in Harlem
Sheena Wright, President and CEO of Abyssinian Development
The city has often gotten flack for their affordable housing not being affordable for Harlem residents. Some of these developments have been seemingly out of reach, with income requirements in excess of $50,000 for singles, and $80,000 for families, way above the incomes of many Harlem residents. But, HPD along with the Abyssinian Development Corporation has a new lottery for a condominium building with ownership opportunities for individuals making as little as $27,000, with sales prices for a 1 bedroom starting at $122,000. Now THAT is affordable. And it’s good news that the man who helped make this kind of housing possible in NYC, former Commissioner of HPD Shaun Donovan, is now in Obama’s cabinet as director of HUD. Maybe there will be more developments like this one with some changes in funding and policy at the high levels of government.
Odell Clark Place will feature 13- one bedroom units, 17- two bedroom units and 16- three bedroom apartments with prices estimated from $122,000.00 to $970,800.00.
Odell Clark Place – NYC HPD
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Yes, I’s agree that 132nd did answer their own question… the same reason that anyone should be entitiled to RENT in Manhattan… there are thousands and thousands of rent-controlled/stabilized aparments in ALL of new york’s neighborhoods, uptown and down, eastside and west. By your logic, if people lived geographically purely based on economic means, then there would be no low or middle income people in the center city renting let alone owning… If you want to throw out government and ‘social enginnering’ as mechanisms then at some fundamental level you don’t ‘get’ New York, or any other place that out of necessity mixes the extremes of both capitalism and socialism… and understanding that along with that NO ONE is ‘entitled’ to anything, so to each his or her own!
you answered your own question. Instead of leaving I stayed “by any means necessary” even if it meant eating a bagel for dinner. Were you willing to make that type of sacrifice??/
Membership has its rewards.
why should anyone be entitled or socially engineered via gvt to OWN in Manhattan? if anyone can construct a valid reason, can we apply that rationale to Tribeca, Soho, or the Upper East Side? I got priced out of midtown and moved to the UWS. I then got priced out of the UWS and moved to Yonkers were I could afford to buy. why should anyone be immune to fiscal responsibility and the real world?
Having personally gone through the lottery process myself, I can vouch that HPD fully vets recipients to make sure that they are individuals that can afford ownership. Those who are selected for a unit must have a pre-approved mortgage and proof of funds to pay all of the costs. Monthly maintenance fees are factored into the dynamics, and only traditional 30-year fixed mortgages are used. Developments that provide affordable unites receive a 15-25 year tax abatement, so unexpected tax burdens are not a problem. The city maintains an ownership interest, via a enforcement note held by HPD, and they are not in the business of people losing their homes.
Ownership is not for everyone, and the city’s housing policies and initiatives and resources largely reflects that – with the majority of the city’s housing stock going toward rental buildings. Similarly, renting isn’t for everyone either… and the small number of ownership opportunities is a benefit for the diverse population of the city where indefinitely giving your money to someone else is not financially sustainable.
Long story short… out of the hundreds, sometimes thousands of people that apply for lottery units… not all of the people that make 27K will be able to afford a 122K mortgage, but some of them will. The ones that will… go through a process, and must show that they can afford the home, have necessary reserves… etc. They will need good credit, and in some cases, even need to take a homebuyer education class. The ones that don’t, they’ll simply be passed over. Just because your name gets drawn and you meet an income requirement doesn’t mean you get an apartment.
To boot, there are a lot of grant programs that will help first-time buyers with downpayment/closing costs, often in excess of 5K… that I wish I knew about when I bought my pace.. but c’est la vie!
http://www.us.hsbc.com/1/2/3/personal/home-loans/mortgage/mortgage-programs/first-time/first-home
https://www.naca.com/about_naca/purchaseOverview.jsp
I’m glad to hear about this. It always saddens me that because someone isn’t wealthy, that somehow they can’t have a good home. There’s something very wrong about that.
While this housing sounds good in theory, if you are making $27K per year, you cannot afford a $122K apartment! This is partly why we are in the housing crisis that we are experiencing. Owning a home is not a right, it is a privilege, and sometimes, you cannot afford it. I take it that a person making $27K a year has not saved any sort of substantial downpayment for that $122K home…They may, at most, have about having their salary saved, which would be tremendous. Given closing costs and other incidentals, how can they possibly afford $663/month, excluding taxes and maintenance fees (at least $2/300) when they are making ~$800 bi-weekly? I am assuming this wage-earner is single w/ no dependents, which, more than likely, they are not. What happens when there is an assessment? Or something breaks and needs to be repaired ASAP? They have no cushion and when something goes wrong (i.e., they lose their job), everything goes haywire.
Unfortunately, home ownership is not right for everyone. Someone who cannot make a mortgage payment should not be encouraged to buy a home and tak out a mortgage. Rentals make more sense. For housing in Manhattan – $50,000 income is very low for the risk an individual is taking by purchasing a condominium or coop.
More affordable rentals, not condos and coops should be encouraged for this income bracket.