85 Adams Makes Everyone's Brains Explode

1.

I read one of the flyers and I was very confused. The group seems to be against any real estate tax breaks given to the potential residential customers. If this is the case wouldn't they have to picket nearly every new building in brooklyn/queens and wall street? Also, they should probably look into picketing the entire swath known as Manhattan as every large business is receiving huge tax breaks to keep them from moving to a place known as New Jersey.

I agree that there should be more affordable housing for everyone, but I am not sure how it is this one developers fault? And I am even more perplexed as to how they think it will be acheived by removing tax breaks.

2.

I have always believed that the 421-A tax abatement program should end. In the 70s, when no one was developing, it was a wonderful plan. But now the incentive has been bastardized, used as a come on to entice prospective buyers of luxury units. The abatement is a crutch for developers that costs us millions in tax revenue, dollars badly needed to improve the city's increasingly overloaded infrastructure and fund affordable housing, schools, firehouses, ect.
The problem with any standard 421A is after the abatement expires the requirements for affordability usually go with it. Then you have the huge towers, it's important to look at the 80% luxury units that change the demographics of low and middle income communities and have the effect of forcing many longtime residents out .The 80% that move in put pressure on stores and small businesses to change and raise prices.In Williamsburg all we see are bars, expensive restaurants and chain stores moving in. Mom and Pop stores that sell lower priced goods can no longer pay rents of the gentrified neighborhood. Industrial businesses are displaced due to real estate speculation. A tower with 30% affordability that ACORN wants would not change this pattern.

In the end you have a net loss of affordable housing in the surrounding areas as real estate values(and rents) rise. With the loss of protections and enforcement of any meaningful rent regulation, surrounding affordable units are lost. Unless this changes even 30% affordability wont save affordable communities.
And remember in the Aspen the city's so called 50/30/20 housing unit in Harlem a family that grosses $45,000 a year pays $1900,00 a month in rent. Is that affordable?

3.

How come people dont protest the affordability of Beverly Hills or Malibu or Miami Beach or Nob Hill? I mean, I certainly dont like the fact that things are so expensive but at the same time, I dont feel that it is my right to live here. If I can afford it, fine but if i cant, then i look else where.... why do other people feel that this is a right and privildge rather than a sacrifice and financial decision...

4.

Maybe it's the high level of renters in New York? I think in other parts of the country you don't find people who expect to live their whole lives as renters the way you do here.

It's my guess that in other parts of the country people strongly expect to be homeowners someday, and since home buying is an easier, more affordable process in most other places (less money needed for a down payment, higher amount of entry level housing stock) that people just shrug off the more expensive neighborhoods. When you can afford a multi-bedroom house with a lawn and patio and two cars, I think the Beverly Hills envy is just less of an issue.

5.

Change is painful and comes at a price. Now that the waterfronts are no longer and never again to be commerical highways, the rich want to live there. It's precisely the opposite situation from a hundred years ago. Let's also keep in mind that in New York City at least, a substantial portion of our most valuable waterfront real estate -- particularly on Manhattan's East Side -- is populated by housing projects. In our city, the poor do indeed have some of what the rich now covet.

6.

ACORN is just looking for Boymelgreen to give them money to go away. They cut a sweetheart deal w. Bruce Ratner (they've been one of his major supporters in the whole Atlantic Yards debacle), whereby if the AY project doesn't create a certain number of new jobs or contain a certain amount of affordable housing he has to pay ACORN $500K -- not bad to get rid of those pesky social responsibilities(and receive a kiss from Bertha Lewis).

7.

I think the sentiment is that if tax breaks weren't as generous for luxury condos, some developers would find it more attractive to create regular buildings and cater to the middle class more. I imagine many of the protesters feel that since luxury condos have the highest profit margin, tax breaks on them only line the pockets of the developers or the wealthy, and don't have positive impact otherwise, encouraging the current trend of stratifying the city based on income, since so many new developments are luxury.

8.

The tax abatement doesn't only benefit the poor, it also benefits the middle class who more and more seem to be getting shut out the system... making too much for one thing and too little for another. If the law is changed I hope that it doesn't affect buildings that have already applied for the abatement and marketed the properties as such. As a new development purchaser in the middle class range, changing the law now might be devastating to me and those like me who are depending on the little breaks.

9.

babs,

Yes, I think ACORN's alterior motives are questionable. I think the authorities should investigate ACORN's organization to see if maybe bribes are lining up another set of pockets. Pockets of so-called activists in sheep's clothing. That could very well be a lucrative enterprise since they can use innocent Brooklynites with good intentions as pawns to promote ACORN's agenda to extort the developers.

10.

I know what you mean, concerned; unfortunately, any authorities responsible for investigating ACORN (and even more ridiculous "community" organizations like BUILD, purely a creation of Bruce Ratner) are the same who should be investigating Ratner himself, which they won't be because they'd wind up indicting themselves -- they're all in bed together.

And I hear that Bertha Lewis has actually done some good things with ACORN, although lately it seems to me that she's decided it's much easier to play kissy-face with creeps like Ratner than actually try to fight for something.

11.

kissy-face.... hmmm a nice word for "sellout".

12.

Also literal -- the two exchanged smacks at a recent press conference.

13.

Am I missing something. Do people actually want to live in that building? How are sales there?

14.

From what I understand, sales have been good at the units with the best views. Those facing the bridge are not moving so well.

15.

ACORN should be protesting at City Hall, not a development. The tax-break law should be changed so that it encourages mid-range housing options. B/c of course, that is a major problem in the city, affordable housing. The problem with this and other theories is that the cost-factor to build anything in this city is great and therefore the cost-analysis of construction of new properties would indicate that the starting price of properties must be at XX level just to break even. Therefore the tax-abated program only could benefit a developer for mid-range rentals and not condos. In condos, the owner is the one that benefits from the tax-break (only works as a 'selling' point for the developer). The only way to make cheaper housing possible is if the cost of construction can be partially reimbursed for the developer thus lowering the break-even threshold and in theory allowing for a cheaper purchase price. However this opens up a chance for even larger corruption (inflating building costs) and is not a fully controllable factor. Therefore tax breaks are the only controllable factor that can be governed easily.

16.

People forget that less than 10 years ago, nobody was building any market rate housing in Dumbo, Williamsburg, or anywhere in Brooklyn, really. These tax abatements last about 10 years. That isn't terribly long. Why kill the goose that's laying golden eggs? Brooklyn is, in the long term, being helped by all this new housing. The money the city isn't getting in property taxes is going into the pockets of the new owners, and the developers, who are all paying the myriad of other taxes that New York City and state inflict on all of us.
I can't afford any of these places, but the solution to that is to actually build MORE housing, not to stifle it, by removing tax breaks, extreme downzoning, NIMBY-ism etc.

17.

Oh yeah, and one way we could make building cheaper here is by reforming the building codes...

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/email/crd_newsletter01-05.html

18.

It's funny how some people want to live in a particular place (in this case, Brooklyn) but pay less than the market price. If they need affordable housing so bad, why not move to North Carolina or Florida or Texas or any other place in this fine country where one can buy a spacious inexpensive house for the price of a small condo in Dumbo? No, they want to live in a socialist wonderland where the government should give them the same house someone else is getting for much more money at a huge discount because they scream louder than anyone else.

Abolishing the tax breaks for the new developments - like they did in Manhattan a few years back - is a fair discussion. After all, that money can be used elsewheere - possibly in the neighborhoods that are really struggling to regain footing. But those tax breaks don't cost the city that much money (as a percentage of the budget) and won't help much in terms of affordble housing.

19.

It is ironic that the location of ACORN's protest is in the neigbhorhood for those who are priced out of NYC -- DUMBO.

20.

#12 - The building is 75% sold. Other than the less than appealing exterior facade, the building is actually quite nice.

Funny... the fact that boymelgreen is being targeted by groups like acorn must mean that he has been certified as a major player in the NYC real estate game.

21.

BJ, DUMBO is in NYC. Did you mean Manhattan (which happens to be a borough in NYC?). I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn to get more bang for my buck, not because I was priced out. I too can live in a small 1 bedroom with high taxes in manhattan (I'm done competing in apt therapy's 'smallest' 'coolest' contest) or I can live in a large 2 bedroom in a great neighborhood in brooklyn with low taxes. I hope the abatement law isn't changed anytime soon, the brooklyn boom is wonderful and it's partially fueled by the abatement.

22.

Dude, when you cannot afford an apartment which is big enough for your purposes, you are priced out. "Getting a bigger bang for your buck" is the same as being priced out. Don't worry about it, you are one of many.

You are right. DUMBO is in NYC, and not in Manhattan. My bad.

23.

This just in.... If you want more affordable housing we must build more units

24.

#23 You have to realize that some people have this socialist mentality that they should get expensive housing for less. They would be yelling and screaming one day supporting downzoning (which actually contributes to higher prices and less suplly) and will be demanding more affordable housing the very next day.

25.

Brilliant Leo. Seriously, just like those that people that organize anti-corporate globilization protests with their Verizon cell phones and Gucci sunglasses!!

26.

#8 you have hit the nail on the head. This is not as black and white as Acorn makes it out to be. There are many people who are not wealthy and are already stretching to purchase such a place (with the tax abatement) in hopes of having a decent home in a decent area and maybe one day turn a profit when it is sold.

It is cetrainly not only millionaires who are purchasing these units.

27.

"There are many people who are not wealthy and are already stretching to purchase such a place (with the tax abatement) in hopes of having a decent home in a decent area and maybe one day turn a profit when it is sold."

That's probably true, but isn't anyone buying a home anymore? It's all about profit, huh? Sad.

28.

#26, you are abosolutely right. I also bought in a new building but would not have been able to without the tax abatement.

29.

#26 im with you on the tax abatement, it was a deciding factor for me too..

30.

Sorry middle classers, I really don't want you to get any tax subsidies. It's not that I don't like you, it's just that I don't get subsidies, and I'd really rather have poorer people get them.

With you, I'm subsidizing your soaring ceilings, B&B Italia sofas and panoramic views of the Brooklyn Bridge. If you can't afford that without a tax subsidy, good. Buy something cheaper. Actually come to think of it, buy something like the apartments where poorer people live. Usually, they're not so nice.

31.

I was there yesterday checking out open houses. Those protesters need new megaphones. I could not understand what the hell they were saying. I honestly thought they were speaking Chinese. I finally read one of the zillion fliers they littered the hood with and kinda figured out what they were up to.....I think. Sort of. Almost.

32.

Hello Mr. bkborn,

If that is your outlook in life, then you deserve to be poor!

Middle class New Yorkers work hard for their wages and strive to improve our lives every opportunity that they can. This is at the cost of breaking our backs and having to deal with stress day in and day out. The tax subsidies that you abhor actually are the driving force behind New York's transformation from a crime infested wasteland to a modern metropolis that are the envy of cities worldwide.

Instead of dragging your fellow New Yorkers to your small little world, why not think positive and improve yourself. If you can't afford to live in the neighborhood that's changing, then move to a location that is more suited for you. Otherwise, if you want the same quality life you are used to, then strive to earn more. Now how do you do that.... go figure it out for yourself!

33.

Man, that was a great bar that used to be on that site!

34.

I heard all the protestors are from the projects down the block, they want to live in beacon tower for the better "feng shui".

35.

they're right. nobody should get subsidies. look at you filthy beggars scrapping for government subsidies! the shame!

36.

The subsidies are unnecessary and inequitable today. I do believe they had their time, but those days are past. I lived through the abandoned buildings of the 70s and the crack epidemic of the 80s in a single parent home in brooklyn, so please don't lecture me on transformation. This city has a tight budget and services are stretched to their limit in many areas because of the rapid pace of development. When a new condo goes up, those new residents need police, firefighters, teachers, subway cars, street cleaners, garbage collectors, etc. That's expensive. I object to subsidizing your fabulous dumbo life. I work hard for my middle class lifestyle and pay city income and property taxes. Why should you get a break?

37.

No. 33, what was the name of the bar? I noticed that the patch of crabgrass across the street is named "bar and grill park".

38.

it was called "between the bridges."

39.

Anybody notice all the protestor's were minorities?

40.

Hey anyone know whats up with beacon tower? Are they set to complete? why aren't there windows facing the waterfront?

41.

So I purchased at the Beacon Tower (no judgement please!)and today I called to check the status on their scheduled date of completion----a month ago they told me end of Sept. for the bottom 12 floors, mid-Oct. for the higher ones. Now it has been pushed back---BY 3 MONTHS!! This really messes up my schedule. I know this was a big problem for the other Boymelgreen project, 57 Front, and there were rumors it was due to lack of funds....does anyone have any info on this or what possibly is the delay?

I know construction is never on time, but I was told everything was going ahead of schedule, but then a month later, 3 month delay...I think they are basically stopping construction.

42.

Beacon Tower

The exterior is finished, and I see dented metal work, and chipped brick work.

Isn't there engineer and construction quality control?

If there careless with the exterior, what is going on inside?

43.

This is just a comment about the 421-tax abatement even it it's a little late to the party... All of the new brooklyn condo developments are generating tons of tax revenues for the city and state. When you convert an existing commerical or abandoned building into a residential one, or tear down and start fresh, there is a mortgage recording tax associated with each new housing unit in addition to NYS real estate transfer taxes and NYS real property transfer taxes.

The mortgage transfer tax is 2.175% of the full mortgage amount the buyer obtains. In older properties the seller ususally absorbes this fee, but in new construction these fees are added to the buyers closing costs. If you are buing an $800,000 apartment with 10% down (as many buyers are -- it's not unheard of for buyers with good credit to obtain 95% financing) -- then you are adding $15,000+ to your purchase price! The two NYS taxes combined will add approximately ANOTHER $15,000 to the buyer's closing costs. Multiply this by the amount of new apartments popping up all over Brooklyn and it is a huge influx of tax revenue where there previously was little or none.

All of the transfer taxes a buyer pays initially outweigh the amount of money these homeowners would pay annually back to the city in property taxes.