{"id":270833,"date":"2026-06-18T14:05:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/270833\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T14:05:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:05:52","slug":"from-city-limits-how-a-35-affordable-housing-pledge-in-brooklyn-was-torpedoed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/270833\/","title":{"rendered":"From City Limits: How a 35% Affordable Housing Pledge in Brooklyn Was Torpedoed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just east of Atlantic Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue, the eastern border of the Atlantic Yards site, a new, 19-story building, known as Eight80, has risen. Further east, another tower, known as Prosper Brooklyn, is visible.<\/p>\n

They result from the last spot rezoning\u2014special permission\u2014to build big in the area, preceding the area rezoning known as the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan (AAMUP), led by Council Member Crystal Hudson. Eventually, the scale along Atlantic Avenue should be similar.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Looking east along Atlantic Avenue past Vanderbilt Avenue. Photo: Norman Oder<\/p>\n

The two towers were supposed to include 35% affordable housing, exceeding the city\u2019s 25% standard, in exchange for getting ahead of other projects.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t happen, as I reported yesterday for the policy publication City Limits, How a 35% Affordable Housing Pledge in Brooklyn Was Torpedoed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The subheading: In 2022, developers behind two Atlantic Avenue projects committed to making a \u201crecord-setting\u201d 35 percent of the apartments affordable. But after interest rates shot up and the owner cited cost pressures, nonprofit partners recruited by Councilmember Hudson agreed to renegotiate, rather than pursue enforcement.<\/p>\n

The \u201cnews of a breached agreement is a disappointing development,\u201d Hudson observed, \u201cthat shows the limitations of existing legal mechanisms to secure additional affordable housing beyond current requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, accountability in the process was scarce, as my reporting suggests. The developer didn\u2019t tell the Council Member. The nonprofits didn\u2019t inform Community Board 8. The developer came before Community Board 8, but they didn\u2019t discuss the affordability promise.<\/p>\n

It also shows that we have too few journalists keeping track. I had covered these spot rezonings as an outgrowth of coverage of Community Board 8\u2019s M-CROWN initiative, a precursor to AAMUP.<\/p>\n

My previous coverage of the spot rezonings for City Limits, as cited in the latest article<\/a>, noted the difficulty in getting the names of the nonprofit counter-parties to the agreements Hudson negotiated, and then the actual documents.<\/p>\n

Was that coverage too negative, as some suggested? After all, the 35% affordability was an achievement.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t planning to follow up\u2014I\u2019ve got way too much else on my plate\u2014but, when I saw the Housing Connect ads for the buildings\u2019 affordable housing lotteries, I noticed a discrepancy between what had been promised and what was delivered. <\/p>\n

I then went to ACRIS, the city\u2019s property records database, and discovered that the agreement had been quietly revised, including the donation of the site below as a partial substitute.<\/p>\n

Will the obligation be fulfilled by having the developer donate the site below to the nonprofit Fifth Avenue Committee and IMPACCT Brooklyn, as the page<\/a> above suggests? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little more complicated, as my article explains<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I backed into covering this news. Ideally, more journalists would be keeping track. From 2012-2017, the publication DNAinfo<\/a>, focusing on neighborhood news, sent paid staff to cover community board meetings.<\/p>\n

Today, local news has withered. The daily newspapers have fewer metro reporters. DNAinfo is gone.<\/p>\n

The local chain Schneps, which owns the Brooklyn Paper, Brownstoner, amNY, and more, doesn\u2019t have the staff for comprehensive coverage and pays its existing staff so little that they\u2019ve just started a union drive<\/a>, seeking<\/a> living wages, better health care, and editorial integrity.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s note one positive but very much incomplete step. Brooklyn\u2014notably gentrified neighborhoods\u2014has recently seen a proliferation of hyperlocal newsletters, almost all on the Substack platform, which helps build audiences with recommendations.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re clearly filling a niche, gaining thousands of subscribers. (See coverage of the phenomenon<\/a> in The New Yorker.) They include, in alphabetical order:<\/p>\n

(Let\u2019s not forget existing neighborhood publications like the Red Hook Star-Revue<\/a>, Our Time Press<\/a> (Bed-Stuy, especially), and Greenpointers<\/a>, as well as publications that cover multiple neighborhoods, like the Brooklyn Paper<\/a>, Brooklyn Eagle<\/a>, Brooklyn Home Reporter<\/a>, and BKReader<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

These hyperlocal newsletters can alert readers to neighborhood changes and happenings, especially regarding retail, aggregate others\u2019 relevant reporting, and help build community. They can also offer service journalism, such as interviews with business owners. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s tougher for such newsletters\u2014mostly one-person enterprises, and presumably part-time\u2014to scale up to more significant reporting. <\/p>\n

Sustained attention in journalism isn\u2019t easy. Maybe we need some new funding models<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just east of Atlantic Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue, the eastern border of the Atlantic Yards site, a new,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-270833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}