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A condo floorplan in a Crown Heights building that's now a homeless shelter.
Of course, some neighbors who go to work every day to pay obscene rent on their depressing dumps are livid; window salesman Desmond John gripes, "I'm a hardworking taxpayer, and I don't think homeless people should be living better than me. They said it's not for rent. It's a shelter. I was shocked." But developer Avi Shriki just had to go and interfere with the natural process of urban blight; he says that "when the market went south," he jumped at the chance to sign a 10-year contract with the Bushwick Economic Development Corp to turn the 67-unit building on East New York Ave into a shelter.
The city is paying about $2,700 a month for each apartment, which also covers social services like job counseling. Shriki says, "At least we still own the building and we are paying our mortgage, so that's good. The outcome is not as bad as some people I know who had to surrender the whole building to the bank." And as for the neighbors who now envy the homeless, one 18-year-old condo resident called "Boss" had this to say: "Just because a person fell out doesn't mean they don't deserve a place to stay." And it doesn't mean they don't deserve a master bedroom that extends into a ballroom, either!
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Gotta love this country. It's turning into an entitlement nightmare.
We wonder why housing costs so much, but it's because of all of this subsidization. Then people, if they lose their jobs, have to turn to public charity since they have no savings due to these artificially high prices.
We need to end this insanity.
"But developer Avi Shriki just had to go and interfere with the natural process of urban blight"
i think the city did that when it offered 2,700 per unit. just guessing here.
i think this is actually the right thing to do for everyone. i could see the city also investing in some remodeling to make the units small or somehow less luxurious, but even as is, it's a great solution to solve several problems. empty buildings, even fancy ones, are bad for neighborhoods.
No, it's actually great for those who can't afford rent prices or for sale prices in this city.
As condos will convert to rentals and the excess supply forces down prices, more people will be able to afford them.
True--unless they simply decide to keep giving them away as they are with this development.
This is shit luck, so it is what it is, but I'm not thrilled with the city paying $2700 a month
Social services like job counseling.... that made me laugh. What a fiasco. $181K a month for bums to live it up.
so because they are living in a brand new apt, this will also get them steak dinners at the Palms and free flowing champagne. No they are not living it up and the people in this apartment are families who will be in the streets and getting arrested and that will cost the city$121 a night to have one person in jail so maybe you prefer for them to live it up in jail instead...
yeah I prefer they were on the street-feel better asshole? Why don't you turn down their blankets at night and read them a fucking bedtime story while you're at it...
Love how John emphasized this quote.
I infer that you think everyone deserves shelter...no is entitled to a roof over their heads let alone a nice one.
If we, as New Yorkers, want our income tax to go toward a temporary, bare-bones shelter, there are more egregious expenditures I can rail against. But $2,700/month reeks of either some city politician's quid pro quo with a developer, or is just downright stupid to pay that much for a "shelter."
And as we grow the entitlement culture in the city as we face more strife from the recession, expect more of this. Can't wait. Should be exciting.
it's certainly a great deal for the owner.
"I'm a hardworking taxpayer, and I don't think homeless people should be living better than me."
ahhh the sweet boilerplate existence
The city pays the developer ~$2700/month for these apartments, which is more than market rate for this neighborhood.
Don't forget, when "the City" pays $2700 a month for these apartments, it means that taxpayers are paying it. Plus taxpayers get to pay the salaries (and pensions) of the idiots who make these decisions.
power to the (poor) people!
speaking of entitled attitudes, you brats are just precious with your "my precious tax dollars" BS.
this program could be very beneficial to getting people on the fringe of society back into the swing of things. hopefully, they are being kept on a short leash with this privelege as not to take advantage. of course, some will. yet others will have their lives profoundly affected.
cheers to an innovative program.
jeers to building new yankee stadium - a REAL waste of taxpayer money. how many years of the city paying for apartments at this rate would it take to match that cost?
the answer: decades!
Jeers to Yankee Stadium.
Double jeers to Atlantic Yards tho - now it looks like Bruce the Rat is taking away another $50 million from the MTA in his sweetheart deal that already allowed him to underbid for the property? In addition to the $250 million in taxpayer money already pledged to his ridiculous project?
The PUBLIC money already being wasted on Atlantic Yards would fund this homeless shelter until the year 3646.
We're talking about one building in one neighborhood. Multiply this by hundreds or thousands of building all over the city at these prices and we will have:
Billions spent per year
Rent inflation for all New Yorkers, including the working poor
Poor incentives for the homeless
yeah, because once the precedent has been set...
not to mention, at it's core, it is still a worthwhile waste of money, as opposed to forking over billions to the richest team in professional sports.
No, that's the thing: You rationalize it and demonize those against it by claiming it's just one, small program.
Every huge entitlement program in this country began as
"one, small program" and due to these politicians who nanny the poor and inflate their egos---these programs just continue to grow.
no question that taxpayer funded sports stadiums are complete bullshit. sports fans can be some of the most delusional cosplayers out there.
that doesn't change the nature of this deal, however. both ideas can still be misuses of public funds. that you like the end result of one and not the other doesn't change that.
That's a non-sequitur. Those of us against public housing are probably firmly against tax-exempt bonds or flat-out financing for sports stadiums and convention centers.
you are against public housing, eh? some of us aren't as well off as you, to have a butler who removes the frozen orphans from the stoop before we head out for the day. so we made a collective decision to pool some of our money so that more civilians could have the benefits of a roof. that way our communities don't completely suck. we even decided to give it a name - "civilization"- so you folks could google it!
Now you're making strawman arguments.
Yes, if you don't believe in public housing it's because you're filthy rich and cause the recession due to your evil greed.
Chuzzlewit, are you for rent-control?
do you believe the urban housing situation in nyc prior to,say, 1925 would be preferable to today's?
Yes. Public housing has an awful track record. Anecdotally and numerically we've heard how hard it is to "get out of the projects" and the numbers reflect that.
Not to mention that public housing is infantilizing and dehumanizing.
well lucky for you, there are places that still reflect your grown up humane vision, and you can go live there! port au prince, or mumbai f'rinstance. that way you won't have to get all frothy and irritated every time we help our neighbors out back here in the USA.
I'd just like to remind you that for every dystopian viewpoint you have you also have a utopian ideal to go along with it.
Look, I know people will be left out in the cold if we get rid of public housing. However, we'll have fewer people living in those hell-holes and will finally get people out of the margins if we bite the bullet and do it.
Instead, we continue a failed policy to save face. It's ignorant, and as I said before infantilizing.
which hell hole? the luxury apartment building?
in this case the housing is making the inhabitants happy and proud, so you should be all for it by your own argument (the "infantalizing dehumanizing" bit which, by the way, is essentially that environment makes an impact on inhabitants' levels of self value, which is the core of many pro public housing arguments).
Pulls the building owner out of the drink, too - win/win; government kills two birds with one stone, and you want your stone back.
Why doesn't the city pay market rate to the developer?
When its time for the homeless person to leave they'll go to Housing Court and stall the eviction for 2 years. Good luck Avi.
Exactly.
Charles Barron to the rescue!!
"When its time for the homeless person to leave they'll go to Housing Court and stall the eviction for 2 years."
Nope. This is temporary shelter housing, not a residential rental. No housing court, and NYPD can toss them.
We need a better system. But if NYC wants to rent apartments for the homeless, it will have to pay far more than market prices as owners know these people are often the worst ones to rent to. The homeless often have mental, legal and addiction problems. The insurance alone makes the owners demand a lot more money.
Still, what sort of system is in place? Is competitive bidding just a fantasy? And let's not forget we are talking about Bushwick, not Soho.
looks like everything came out for the best.
remember it's Crown Heights. the homeless will still be homeless but the owner could have lost his building.
A brand new luxury apartment? It makes one want to be homeless. Boogie rights!!!
As usual, you don't have the whole story if you didn't bother to click through to the linked article. The developer is not being paid $2700/month for the units. The city is paying Bushwick Economic Development Corp. $90/night for homeless services, including housing. BEDC contracts with the developer. Neither that organization nor the building owner said how much is being paid to him.
"The city is paying Bushwick Economic Development Corp. $90 a night for each of the apartments, about $2,700 a month - a figure that also covers social services, housing help and job counseling designed to get families back on their feet."
90*30 = 2700.
You're missing his point. Not all of that $90 is going to the building owner. BEDC is keeping an unspecified portion of that for services it's providing or contracting with other companies for.
So your argument revolves around rationalizing skimming off the top/red tape/overhead?
No, the point is that based only on the information in the article we don't know whether housing them in a new, luxurious building is costing taxpayers more than housing them in a run-down would, or whether instead it's cutting into the non-profit's budget elsewhere. That is, would the city be paying $90/day regardless of where the organization managed to find space?
We also have no idea what's being paid to the developer, so don't know whether he's just letting them go for almost nothing in order to get some kind of cash flow out of the building, or whether he's profiting from his investment in the building.
All we do know is that homeless people are being sheltered in a nice building.
The city is paying Bushwick Economic Development Corp. $90 a night for each of the apartments, about $2,700 a month - a figure that also covers social services, housing help and job counseling designed to get families back on their feet.
Nicely twisted sentence. What they meant to say:
For each apartment, including social services, housing help and job counseling designed to get families back on their feet, the city is paying Bushwick Economic Development Corp. $90 a night (about $2,700 a month.)
Meanwhile in this corner:
New York Charges Rent for Working Homeless
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/nyregion/09shelters.html
I'm glad someone brought that times article up. By requesting rent from those staying in shelters, the city was simply living up to its end of a judicial ruling. Then all the homeless advocates start bitching about it. But do you think those modern-day saints give a shit that these people are living in luxury apartments off the taxpayers dime? I think not.
that sentence reads the same either way, unless i'm missing something.
we will probably only see the breakdowns from semi-private non-profs like BEDC when either a) public pressure or gadflyism via a nypost vendetta gets too heavy or b) someone leaks it. the payoff for the owner must be pretty good or else why sign a 10 year deal? (alternately, he may have just have been that fucked over, in which case you'd think the city might want to crow about the deal they got)
As taxpayers, we deserve to know how much the BEDC is paying that landlord in monthly rent per month. And $90 seems likes a lot even with social services and job counseling.
How long are these residents allowed to live in these units?
"As taxpayers, we deserve to know how much the BEDC is paying that landlord in monthly rent per month"
Actually, it's not that relevant if the $90/day figure is what the city pays any such organization for similar services. As long as that's the case, how much of it the organization passes on to a particular landlord doesn't matter much.
But, as a non-profit organization it has to file annual reports with the Secretary of State. They may not be so detailed as to reveal how much they're paying for these particular units, but some level of financial information is available for anyone who wants it.
"if the $90/day figure is what the city pays any such organization for similar services."
Which now has been clarified in later articles. $90 per day per family is the standard rate the city pays to neighborhood-based groups for homeless services, regardless of what types of buildings they're housed in.
I think I just saw Charlie Rangel sleeping in a cardboard box...
Like another commenter said, power to the (poor) people. I'm not mad if homeless FAMILIES are off the street and living safely and TOGETHER, especially if it helps get the kids safely to summer school or some other sort of program that helps them out. As a person who's had family members on the street and heard about the horrors they can face, I'm glad the city is looking out for their welfare.
And it makes me especially happy that they're in those ridiculously priced luxury condos... IMHO, those gauche condos are much more of a blight on the city than the homeless!
While I have no problem with the city providing shelter for those in need, I do have a problem with them providing luxury apartments at the expense of citizens who couldn't afford such housing themselves. What's the motivation for these families to move out when they'll never be able to live in housing as luxurious as that which they have been provided with for free?
"And it makes me especially happy that they're in those ridiculously priced luxury condos... IMHO, those gauche condos are much more of a blight on the city than the homeless!"
Uhhhhh WHAT!?
"But, as a non-profit organization it has to file annual reports with the Secretary of State. They may not be so detailed as to reveal how much they're paying for these particular units, but some level of financial information is available for anyone who wants it."
i presume they have a 990 and an annual report available [login required, "Registration and Membership is restricted to not-for-profit organizations and government agencies"]:
http://www.revitalizenyc.com/resource-guide
"IMHO, those gauche condos are much more of a blight on the city than the homeless!"
for starters, that's one hell of a non sequitur.
Luxury condos + homeless shelters = Bloomberg third term.
2700 for Crown Heights - Avi Shriki has some connections - fck nyc goverment
"2700 for Crown Heights - Avi Shriki has some connections"
One more time: Avi Shriki is not being paid $2700/month for these units.
No, he's not, but $350,000 for a condo in Crown Heights? That's a little exorbitant for what isn't a great neighborhood. If I had that kind of money, I'd look elsewhere in the outer boroughs.
This is sickening.
The renters who rented luxury did not sign the lease to live next to a homeless shelter, they are being betrayed by the landlord. The worst is, all of this is payed by these tenants taxes. That's right, they are forced to pay for the rent of the homeless living next to them.
If you're a bleeding heart who think this is great, how about *you* host homeless people in your apartment every night? I didn't think so. Shame on you, shame on you, your moral approval makes you all but an accomplice.
Most people are mad about this issue because a big percentage of homeless people are drug addicts.
Not everyone that is in a shelter has drug addiction nor criminal records.These placement are also for children that don't have where to stay. Being in a shelter does not mean that you don't have a job so they pay taxes too and everyone has there ups and downs in life.
it's WONDERFUL that the city is housing homeless people in luxury housing!
This should be a model for how to deal with the homelessness problem here (which will only grow with the current depression). The City of New York should take over ALL of the underutilized/abandoned luxury housing units, and give them to the poor!
second.
That's it. I'm quitting my job. Is there parking for my Escalade?