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$1,900 Studios Coming to 'Affordable' Building in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens

 A lottery to fill 46 affordable apartments at this newly constructed building at 382 Lefferts Ave. in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens is now open, the city announced this week.
A lottery to fill 46 affordable apartments at this newly constructed building at 382 Lefferts Ave. in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens is now open, the city announced this week.
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DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — Dozens of studios that rent for $1,900 a month and one-bedrooms that will fetch more than $2,000 a month are about to be up for grabs at a Lefferts Avenue building touted by the city as affordable housing.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development sent out a notice on Tuesday that it's now taking applications to fill 46 newly constructed apartments in the former condo building.

The posting said the "affordable" units at 382 Lefferts Ave., between Nostrand and New York avenues, are available to tenants making between $67,406 and $138,080, depending on the size of the family, according to an advertisement of the units from NYC Housing Connect, the system used by the city to conduct lotteries to fill affordable housing spots.

The Lefferts Avenue building on the border of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Crown Heights has five studios, 28 one-bedrooms and 13 two-bedroom units with a fitness center and “party rooms,” according to the posting. Half of the available units will be given to residents of Brooklyn Community Board 9, where the building is located. Five percent of the units will be set aside for municipal employees.

Monthly rent for a studio in the building is $1,909. A one-bedroom will cost $2,047 per month and a two-bedroom costs $2,465 per month, the listing said.

By comparison, the average price of a market-rate studio apartment in the neighborhood was $1,334 in May, according to a report released last month by MNS Real Estate.

The average cost of a one-bedroom market rate apartment in the area was $1,659 in May, according to the same report. A market-rate two-bedroom was $2,094, according to the report.

The higher-than-market-rate rents are due to an agreement with the second developer to take on the project.

Construction on the building began in 2007 as a market-rate condominium building, according to a 2011 report by The New York Times, but stopped a year later due to financial trouble.

The project was reinvigorated four years later thanks to a $2.9 million subsidy from the Housing Asset Renewal Program, or HARP, meant to create middle-income housing from stalled condo developments, the report said.

In 2014, HPD said a new developer — The Marcal Group, according to building records — took over the project, paid back the HARP loans and financed the project privately, but agreed to honor an agreement made on the property previously to lock in rent prices for thirty years.

To make the project financially feasible for the new developer, the agency said rent at the building was set at 130 percent of the area median income, up from 100 percent at the time of the initial agreement.

Potential tenants of 382 Lefferts Ave. are encouraged to apply for an apartment through the NYC Housing Connect system by Sept. 22, 2015. The city said late applications will not be considered and follow-up interviews will be conducted between two and 10 months after the deadline.