The city will produce 500 affordable apartments across 87 hard-to-fill vacant lots
Image: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
An announcement Tuesday by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) gave lower-income New Yorkers lots to look forward to–literally. HPD Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer announced that nine development teams would be creating 490 affordable apartments and homeownership opportunities on 87 vacant lots through the department’s New Infill Homeownership Opportunities Program (NIHOP) and Neighborhood Construction Program (NCP). The programs were designed specifically to unlock the potential of vacant lots long considered too small or irregular for traditional housing with innovative smaller homes, and develop more affordable housing on lots long used for parking at existing housing complexes. This latest round of development is the third and final in a series: The program has already seen the construction of over 600 affordable homes on 81 lots.
Earlier rounds of designations in the program were announced in March and July of 2017. NIHOP/NCP RFQ encourages capacity development among smaller developers, particularly local non-profits.
The newest sites to be identified are located in Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and Weeksville in Brooklyn, Morrisania, East Tremont, Morris Heights and Melrose in the Bronx, South Jamaica in Queens and East Harlem in Manhattan.
The newly-created homes are part of the “Housing New York 2.0,” road map announced by Mayor Bill De Blasio in November, which accelerates and expands the production of new housing, fights tenant displacement, creates more housing for seniors and working families and provides new home ownership tools. In addition to plans to build homes on vacant lots, the plan includes the expansion of modular buildings and micro-units.
“No site has gone overlooked, and we are pursuing innovative new programs and initiatives to put even the hardest to develop lots to use as affordable housing,” said Torres-Springer. “With this latest designation, these remaining 87 small, scattered lots are on the road to becoming nearly 500 affordable rental and homeownership opportunities.”
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