Brad Lander

Brownstoner has an interview with Brad Lander, the director since 2003 of the Pratt Center for Community Development who is now running for City Council in District 39, which includes Carroll Gardens and Park Slope.

Mr. Lander praises much of current Brooklyn life, but has some sobering warnings on development and what he calls "growing inequality."  read more »

The downside of all this idealistic talk about building “workforce housing” for the middle class is that there is no easy way to finance them. The Bloomberg administration has used tax-exempt bonds to fuel much of its housing program so far, but those, because of legal restrictions, only work when there is some low-income housing being built.

So, in seeking to finance 3,000 new apartments for middle income families at Hunters Point South (which was originally part of the Queens West site), the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has had to look for another way. It is considering setting up a new nonprofit corporation to issue them instead of funnelling them through the city. But that, according to one leading housing advocate, is a "back-door" way of doing things.  read more »

A heated debate is taking place at City Hall today as two competing factions--one led by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the other by Bronx Democrat Annabel Palma and Brooklyn Democrat David Yassky--fight to bring as many City Council members as they can to their sides of the 421-a residential tax break debate. (A source says that Quinn is winning, but that Palma and Yassky still have loyalists.)

As part of the lobbying effort by the affordable housing coalition that supports the Palma-Yassky bill, Brad Lander, the director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, produced, virtually overnight, a 15-page color report (PDF) showing 54 recently built or under-construction buildings located outside of Quinn's exclusion zone with condos selling for between $350,000 and $2 million, with most in the high six figures.

Since 421-a applies to new buildings, these will be grandfathered into the program no matter what happens. Lander's point: neighborhoods like Borough Park, Forest Hills and Hamilton Heights, which are well outside Quinn's zone, are well-established by now, and Quinn's bill would still reward developers even when they build market-rate apartments in more gentrified places like these.

- Matthew Schuerman

Governor George Pataki today issued a blow to Manhattan real-estate developer Peter Fine, one of his campaign donors, when he put on hold the developer's application for $41 million in tax-exempt bonds and $13.3 million in tax credits.

The application, from Mr. Fine's Atlantic Development Group, was going to allow him to break ground on two apartment towers on Manhattan's East Side that qualified for the bonds because the apartments fit affordable-housing development program requirements.  read more »

But critics, as well as a group of Democratic elected officials, have claimed Mr. Fine's cost-estimate for building 91 apartments on the Upper East Side and in Murray Hill was inflated, and that Mr. Fine stood to benefit by acting as the builder and absorbing the excess fees.

Community benefits agreements—contracts between real estate developers and grassroots organizations to provide jobs or housing for local residents—are popping up all over without anyone much agreeing what they are and what they should and can do. Aside from a handbook published last May by some of the people who created the first C.B.A.’s in California (PDF), there has not been much, and yet these agreements are becoming part of the fabric of real estate development in this city.

In March, the New York City Bar will hold a panel discussion on the topic March 13 at the association’s headquarters, 42 W. 44th St. Entitled “Community Benefits Agreements: Who is the Community and What is the Benefit?” and sponsored by the association’s land use, planning and zoning committee, the panel will include City Council Member Melinda Katz; Joshua Sirefman, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s chief of staff; Carl Weisbrod, former president of the city Economic Development Corporation; and Brad Lander, executive director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development.

It turns out that the bar association tackled C.B.A.’s once before. In a report to Mayor Ed Koch in June 1988, the bar association recommended the developers only be required to provide improvements that were included in the zoning code (such as building a subway entrance in order to get a density bonus) or that would mitigate environmental disruption that the project would cause (such as traffic).

The report concentrated on the role of government, and less on community groups striking their own deals with developers. And back then these improvements were called “amenities” and had less to do with jobs—today’s hot topic in Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, the Gateway Mall in the Bronx, and Columbia University's expansion in Harlem—and more to do with parks or senior housing. But throughout the 44-page report (included in “The Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York,” Vol. 43, No. 6), the bar association committee strikes notes that resonate today. Here's a sample:  read more »

The ad hoc payment of money or services in return for favorable governmental action also adversely affects the decision-making process. In egregious cases, the decision maker is corrupted. In less egregious cases, satisfying the wish list for a borough president, community board or a mayor enhances the recipient’s political power. The decision-maker may accept the project in order to get the unrelated amenities, when perhaps it should be voted down. Thus integrity is eroded, of the government in general and of the zoning laws and land use regulations in particular.

-Matthew Schuerman