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The Bear Stearns collapse seems to be raining hard on former Bloomberg administration officials Emily Youssouf and John Crotty, the former president and vice president, respectively, at the city’s Housing Development Corporation who left their municipal jobs last year to start an affordable housing finance division at JPMorgan Chase.

Bond Buyer today reports that Ms. Youssouf and Mr. Crotty are out at JPMorgan, as the banking giant is said to be bringing in Bear Stearns’ housing team. From the story:

JPMorgan this week axed its upstart affordable housing division and will replace it with Bear's more established housing unit as part of the merger, according to several market sources.

The two bankers who led JPMorgan's affordable housing unit, Emily Youssouf and John Crotty, were no longer working at the company as of yesterday. Several market sources said they had heard that Bear banker Kent Hiteshew would be bringing his housing team over to replace JPMorgan's. JPMorgan spokeswoman Tasha Pelio said the company would not confirm specific names of people who had been laid off. Pelio also said she was unable to confirm whether or not Hiteshew's group would be coming to JPMorgan.

JPMorgan had tapped Youssouf and Crotty to start up its affordable housing unit in October. Youssouf had served as president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. since 2003 and Crotty had been her chief of staff and an executive at the corporation. Youssouf came from the private sector and had worked for a number of investment banks. She had been credited with turning the scandal-ridden HDC agency around. Under her leadership, the corporation was the nation's top issuer of single- and multifamily housing bonds in 2006, selling $1.75 billion of bonds, according to Thomson Reuters data.

JPMorgan Chase's takeover of one-time investment giant Bear Stearns just got that much messier.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that 383 Madison LLC, the owner of the land on which Bear Stearns built its headquarters at 383 Madison Avenue, is suing Bear Stearns for violating a written agreement that allows the LLC to get first dibs on the building in the event of a sale:

"At no time did Bear Stearns even attempt to honor its contractual duties to plaintiff, which would have required providing plaintiff with notice of the potential agreement with JPMorgan and engaging in negotiations with plaintiff relating to the purchase of the building," the lawsuit said.

...383 Madison LLC says the fair market value of the building exceeds $1.1 billion and it should be able to purchase the building for the same price J.P. Morgan Chase would pay.

JPMorgan Chase is also named in the lawsuit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

A spokesman for JPMorgan said the suit had "no merit." A Bear Stearns spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

Read about the brouhaha here.

Governor Eliot Spitzer said the cantilever on the JPMorgan Chase building would let you play chess in the rain. Here’s another, um, "advantage": lighting a church from the heavens.

Anthony Shorris, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said today that the overhang would extend out over the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church that is supposed to be rebuilt at the southwest corner of Liberty and Greenwich streets. The Chase tower would be further south, on the far side of a proposed park.

“The church at this point does go under the cantilever and it actually offers some interesting opportunities in terms of lighting and to make the church an even more splendid contribution to the community,” Mr. Shorris told reporters after the Port Authority board approved the deal.

The seven cantilevered stories will house 60,000-square-foot trading floors, while the remainder of the 40-story building has 32,000-square-foot floor plates, which means that the cantilever will extend about 165 feet out over a new park, to be called Liberty Park, the northeast corner of which the church, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack, will be located.

The new deal does provide more than just overhead lighting for churchgoers, though. Chase has agreed to give $10 million to the church and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, with the exact amount for each to be worked out later. Mr. Shorris, however, said that the contribution was not meant to make up for blocking the church’s view toward the sky.

A spokesman for the church, Peter Drakoulias, would not comment on the building's design.

Above is a preliminary image of the building, as imagined by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox. Mr. Shorris said that the total square footage of the building would be the same as previously planned, and that by transferring seven stories on top for seven stories on the side, the tower would cast shorter shadows over the World Trade Center Memorial, which will be located north of Liberty Street.