Marc Altheim

Chief among them: that even though the apartments are expensive to build (a function of high construction costs and land prices, Atlantic has said), they are not taking money away from other low-income projects since they would use tax-exempt bonds--not grants--that the developers would pay back with interest.

We should remember that this subsidy is not entirely free to the U.S. taxpayer, however: the investors are paying no taxes on proceeds from the bonds, which means the I.R.S. has to go begging elsewhere--to ordinary folks, perhaps--to keep the federal budget balanced (or not balanced, as may be the case these days). But we've checked and the city's Housing Development Corporation backs up Atlantic's claim that there are plenty of tax-exempt bonds--authorized by Congress and doled out by the state--to finance qualified projects in New York.

Outright grants, administered by the city Housing Preservation and Development, may be another story.  read more »

His full response, which was posted as a comment to a previous post with some of the back story, is after the jump.