LOWER EAST SIDE — Local politicians say Mayor Bill de Blasio’s citywide rezoning and affordable housing plans are a step in the right direction of creating much-needed low-income and senior housing in a neighborhood failing to accommodate the elderly.
Councilwomen Rosie Mendez and Margaret Chin on Wednesday voiced their acceptance of the latest incarnation of de Blasio’s plan — recently passed by City Council with amendments restricting building height and encompassing lower income brackets than in the original proposal — expressing optimism that it could help solve the neighborhood’s senior housing crisis, despite not meeting deeper levels of affordability.
“There is the importance of opening up the opportunity to provide senior affordable housing,” said Margaret Chin at Community Board 3’s monthly land use subcommittee meeting. “Seniors should not be on waiting lists.”
READ MORE: Here's How City Council Changed De Blasio's Citywide Rezoning Plan
There are currently 5,000 seniors on the waitlist for housing in Chin’s district alone, said the councilwoman, who heads the council’s aging committee — and the new plans may help meet that need by mandating more below-market-rate units and cutting down on parking requirements at developments where the lots would go underused.
The City Council added a new option to the plan that will allow developers to reserve 20 percent of their units for households earning roughly $31,000, or 40 percent of the citywide median income.
The council also tweaked the rezoning plan to lower some building height requirements — bringing the maximum height on some side streets down to 95 feet from the original 105 feet, though Mendez has said she was pushing to cap it at 80 feet.
The amendments also bumped up the square footage required of senior apartments from 275 to 325 — also a compromise, said Chin, who had pushed for more room.
While the modifications did not go as far towards preserving the neighborhood’s integrity and creating housing for the area’s lowest earners, pols said they are happy to take what they can get from the city and use it as a baseline for future development.
“I felt this was a good step,” said Mendez. “It’s not as good as I wanted — it didn’t have all the affordability at the very deep levels that we wanted — but I felt we were in a better place and it was a start to do this at a citywide level.”
Using the citywide plan as a baseline, the councilwomen said they will continue to work with the mayor’s administration to get subsidies for individual developments that could lower the affordability levels to 30 percent of city median income.
Meanwhile, local seniors suffering in the dearth of truly affordable options said they are skeptical the new plan will meet their needs.
One elderly resident, living in a public housing complex with her adult daughter and 3-year-old granddaughter, has been unable to scrape together enough money to afford senior housing in the Lower East Side and fears her fixed income of $13,000 annually will not qualify her for the housing created under the mayor’s plan.
“They say this is affordable,” said Louise Velez, who lives in the Jacob Riis houses on the waterfront. “Affordable for who? It’s not affordable for us.”
