Fair housing settlement

On March 16, Empire State Development (ESD) released its draft findings from an online survey and three community engagement meetings intended to gather public input on proposed changes to the Atlantic Yards project. The findings will be presented at a final online public workshop to be held this Thursday, March 19 from 6:30-8:00PM. We encourage you to attend and let your voice be heard.

Here are our take-aways from the draft report:

The median annual income of most participants and respondents was more than $150K.

That’s important, because the report purports to show a large majority of the public favors affordable housing for moderate and middle income earners. It’s true the median income of participants tracks with the median income of Prospect Heights, which has risen over 40% from gentrification during the years since Atlantic Yards was approved. However, moderate and middle income levels make up only about 7% of the more than one million rent-burdened households in New York City.

• Shouldn’t Atlantic Yards’ housing address the much larger population of low- and very low-income households struggling to pay their rent, including those displaced from the neighborhoods surrounding the project since its approval?

Last Friday afternoon at four o’clock, the first meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AYCDC) took place in a conference room at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.

In the eleven-year history of the Atlantic Yards project, no meeting like this had ever happened before. Fourteen board members appointed by the Governor, the Mayor, the Brooklyn Borough President, the New York State Senate, the New York State Assembly, and the City Council met to formally organize a new State agency charged with ensuring the public benefits for which the Atlantic Yards project was approved would in fact be delivered as promised, and that the project would comply with all commitments and regulation intended to mitigate the impact of its construction on neighboring residents and businesses.

Not only had the members of the AYCDC board each been recommended by a local elected official with a unique perspective on the challenges of accountability at Atlantic Yards, the appointees themselves represented a diverse cross-section of project stakeholders, including affordable housing advocates, signatories of the Community Benefits Agreement, and residents living at the edge of the footprint. At past Atlantic Yards meetings, members of these groups had often sharply disagreed. On Friday, for the first time, their representatives gathered at a single table, and committed to the goal of making the Atlantic Yards project work for Brooklyn.

Rezonings and large-scale redevelopment projects, even those with affordable housing components, tend to accelerate gentrification. That's why it's critical to ensure that affordable housing promised by developers in exchange for overrides and special approvals is delivered on a timely basis to meet the needs of populations now threatened with displacement.

In this video, advocates, attorneys and community members explain how the 25-year build out agreed by the State of New York in 2009 for Atlantic Yards' affordable apartments would have had a disparate impact on African American residents eligible for preference in the lotteries through which those apartments are to be awarded—and why a coalition was ready to fight to hold the project accountable to its original commitments. BrooklynSpeaks organizers talk about what was achieved through the recent settlement with the Empire State Development Corporation and Forest City Ratner, and what to expect next.