Housing Bill Skips Queens
BY JOHN TOSCANO

Some of the new construction going up in the Queens West area of Long Island City.

City lawmakers from Queens and local housing activists, displeased that the borough was left out of a program that gives tax incentives to builders of affordable housing, are now directing their efforts at Albany to get improvements in the program.

The legislation, which amends what is called the 421-a partial property exemption program, was signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a Home Rule message on December 28. It must now be passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Under 421-a, builders must include some affordable housing units in any developments they build in specifically designated areas of the city.

According to published reports, Assemblymember Vito Lopez (D- Brooklyn), chairman of the Housing Committee, was quoted as saying, "I'd love to see it [the 421-a program] go citywide."

He amended that statement to say there were seven or eight neighborhoods that could benefit from the program, but didn't identify them. He also said he would like to add a statutory preference for local residents to give them a priority for units built in their communities.

The proposed bill includes only a small strip on the Long Island City waterfront.

"Queens got shut out," declared Monsignor Paul Sanchez, pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Roman Catholic Church in Astoria, which is part of a coalition seeking affordable housing in Queens.

Agreeing with the pastor's blunt assessment, Jaime Weisberg, another housing activist, stated, "We're completely left out, except for one small strip on the Long Island City waterfront."

Weisberg, a member of Queens Congregations United for Action, added, "The program has to be improved on the state level." She said her group and probably others will be lobbying state legislators from Queens to try to get other Queens areas included in the tax incentive program, such as Flushing, Corona and Elmhurst.

City Councilmemember John Liu (D- Flushing) also indicated, "There's plenty of hope that changes will be made in Albany."

Liu said he was disappointed that the legislation didn't do more for Queens. He noted that Bloomberg was strongly in favor of the bill,

which passed as a compromise with the City Council and, he added, "It would have been counterproductive to fight the mayor on this because other parts of the bill were very important. We got as much as we could out of it."

Liu also pointed out that there were promises made that other actions would be taken to get affordable housing built in Queens- which could yield more housing than 421-a. " 421-a is not the only way to build affordable housing," he said. He did not go into details.

Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. (D- Astoria) said the bill was passed after "lots of negotiating" between the council and the mayor. "All of us thought the compromise was the best we could get," he said.

Other councilmembers said that including other areas of Queens in the bill would not have been helpful because they were told by builders that no affordable housing would be built in these other locations because "there wouldn't be enough profit".

Under the bill signed by Bloomberg, 20,000 new units of affordable housing will be built citywide.

The 421-a tax incentive program was created in 1971 to encourage housing development at a time when the housing market was weak. The program helped spur construction of 110,000 apartments in the city, the mayor said.

Originally, the area where developers were required to provide affordable housing in exchange for tax benefits, called the Exclusion Area, included Manhattan from 14th to 96th Streets and the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

Under the compromise worked out by the mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Geographic Exclusion Zone was expanded to include several areas in Manhattan above 96th Street and all of Downtown Brooklyn, the neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Park Slope, most of Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Sunset Park, Bushwick, and the waterfront from Red Hook to the previously mentioned strip of waterfront in Long Island City in Queens.

New provisions in the 421-a bill would grant 25 years of benefits only to developments that provide affordable housing, ensuring for the first time that 421-a provides an incentive for low-income housing throughout the city.

In addition, the new program creates a $400 million Affordable Housing Trust Fund, targeted primarily to build in the 15 poorest neighborhoods in the city in areas outside the Geographic Exclusionary Zone.

In signing the bill, the mayor declared, "The passage of today's bill will strengthen the connection between the 421-a program and the development of affordable housing. This will add to our record of building for the city's future by providing $300 million in addition to the $400 million Affordable Housing Trust Fund for our $7.5 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan, which will provide affordable housing for 500,000 New Yorkers."