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Five Shots (or $55 Million) and He’s Still Alive! Atlantic Yards Gets Another Subsidy For Make-Believe Affordable Housing.
November 4, 2009 by Neil · 2 Comments
The developer of the troubled Atlantic Yards project is getting a $55 million tax credit from Uncle Sam. According to the NY Daily News, “Forest City spokesman Joe DePlasco said Atlantic Yards was “not included in the application [for tax credits]” and “is not eligible for this money.” Mr. DePlasco was not quoted as saying the following:
Everyone knows that money is fungible. Every dollar we get from the government frees up a dollar we would use elsewhere. Even if the government put the money in a bag with weapons-grade plutonium and an exploding dye pack, and Daffy Duck opened the bag for us, Uncle Sam still wouldn’t know we used the money for Atlantic Yards.
The Atlantic Yards development is supposed to provide housing for low-income families. Atlantic Yards project was supposed to provide 2,250 units of affordable public housing. Records recently released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Forest City need only seek funding through subsidies for affordable housing. If the developer cannot secure this money, he is under no obligation to build the proposed number of units. There is no guarantee that the project will include any affordable housing.
Forest City Ratner has a full dance card until New Year’s: unload bonds to the tune of $650 million, win a lawsuit recently argued before the New York Court of Appeals, and break ground on a new arena for the NBA’s Nets. The arena is the linchpin of a project including 16 residential and commercial towers.
Perhaps the $55 million tax credit might go to a loftier purpose, like homebuyer credits for 6,875 strategic defaulters.
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] provide 2,250 units of affordable public housing — the crux of the basis for eminent domain. Records recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, however, reveal that Forest City need only seek funding through subsidies for affordable housing. [...]
[...] 2. Atlantic Yards moves forward: Multifamily Investor supports multifamily development, but also supports fair play. The project moves forward on an unseemly, unwieldy pile of bad and inconsistent law, a lack of transparency, and defiance of applicable regulatory policy. The New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the State of New York was well within its rights in invoking eminent domain doctrine on behalf of a private developer. Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London in 2005, the eminent domain doctrine has stretched the government’s power to confiscate land further than the Octomom’s uterus. “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have,” said Gerald Ford (not Thomas Jefferson). Even if you like that sort of thing (eminent domain or lack of uterine tensility), barely a month later, the Court of Appeals ruled that the State was not within its rights to invoke the same doctrine on behalf of Columbia University. The two cases are factually indistinguishable (though Columbia as an educational institution has a stronger case to advance for “public use”). The Court of Appeals held that the failure of owners in the Atlantic Yards area to build to maximum FAR showed that the property was blighted. Yet, this same “logic” was not applied in the Columbia decision. What else irks opponents of the project? The MTA, a city agency that owned the property, sold it to Forest City Ratner without an open bidding process. This defied the MTA’s own longstanding regulations on such matters, and deprived taxpayers of the maximum price for the property. Such a failure is especially frustrating when the MTA institutes further service cuts in light of budget shortfalls. The cherry on the sundae? The massive taxpayer benefits and downward renegotiaions of the sales price still do not require the developer to build even a single unit of affordable housing. Forest City Ratner i…. [...]