City To Use Stimulus Funds For Affordable Housing

of course those 700 families aren't sprining out of nowhere.
the city has the highest amount of homeless families since 1983 thanks to bloomberg's "planning". the shortage of affordable housing is a symptom of bloomberg's (and amanda burden's) poor city planning. the stimulus money for affordable housing will help some families but this is just a tiny bandage on a serious problem. bloomberg hopes by throwing some struggling families a bone he'll look like a good guy and get some extra votes.

The shortage of affordable housing is the product of neglectful housing policies that have been going on since before the Reagan administration, long before Bloomberg was a candidate for mayor.

What do you expect the guy to do, *not* announce that the city has secured federal stimulus money for affordable housing under his watch? You don't just get that money thrown at you, you have to bargain for it. I'm not an ardent Bloomberg supporter myself, but anything remotely positive that brings attention to the city's housing crisis is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Especially since it's supposedly adding affordable housing for *700* families into the city's stock, as opposed to the 6-20 units of affordable housing that we so rarely see being tacked onto the bottom floors of high-rise luxury buildings (another product of the Bloomberg administration if I'm not mistaken).

Stadiums generate income, poor people drain resources. It's not rocket science why you plan for some projects and not others.

You're running roughshod over a lot of large concepts here. First of all, "Harlem" is a huge neighborhood, with considerable variation from one area to the next. The developments referenced in the article are in East Harlem, which could surely use a boost. And this announcement does represent a "boost."

Second, "gentrification" is a process that takes place over years and decades, and it does so inexorably. The process is continuing, even in this down cycle. In the context of Harlem, and East Harlem in particular, it is helped along -- not hurt -- by the construction or rehabilitation of buildings in the neighborhood.

Also note that these are not "projects" in the traditional (very low or no income, warehoused intergenerational poverty) sense. These appear to be some kind of public/private partnership that will provide "affordable" rentals to "middle" (below median) income families. Although other approaches such as "mixed-income" developments are better overall, the key is to get a greater diversity of incomes and economic conditions into the area. In the context of East Harlem, new middle-income developments will represent a contribution to that end.

Seriously. If you're underemployed, and you don't have satisfactory housing, move somewhere else that has a less challenging cost of living. Hard knocks.

Why exactly does the fact that people naturally bid up the prices of desirable assets over less desirable ones represent a "housing crisis" or crisis of any sort? Since when are people who don't own property or who can't afford rent entitled to live just anywhere they want to?

Do what the French do. Ship them out to the suburbs.