By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
The Mamdani administration announced a plan to build 1,000 homes on a vacant city-owned lot in Long Island City earlier this week \u2013 but some community leaders say the project won\u2019t go far enough to make Queens’ most expensive neighborhood more affordable. <\/p>\n
While supporters say the project will help address the city\u2019s housing crisis, Councilmember Julie Won, a regular critic of the city\u2019s development plans in her district, and several other community members said they would have liked more affordability built into the plan. <\/p>\n
Called The Orion, the mixed-use development will bring 1,000 new homes to Hunters Point South on a long-vacant plot of land known as \u201cParcel E.\u201d <\/p>\n
It will include a daycare, development center and community pool operated by local nonprofit Commonpoint Queens. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs we face a citywide housing shortage, this long-vacant lot will be transformed into nearly 1,000 new homes, two-thirds of which will be affordable for extremely low to moderate income households,” said city Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy. \u201cThis project, which includes more than 145 supportive housing units, underscores our commitment to creating safe, affordable housing for all New Yorkers.\u201d <\/p>\n
Two-thirds of the development \u2013 just shy of 70 percent \u2013 will be labeled as affordable housing. <\/p>\n
Won and local advocates don\u2019t think that is enough. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe community advocated for 80-100 percent affordability like the neighboring public sites in Long Island City which have 75-100 percent,\u201d Won said in a statement. \u201cOur community advocated at workshops and petitioned for deeper affordability, higher unit count of affordable, as well as outdoor active sport space.\u201d <\/p>\n
Still, she said that the rate of affordable housing included at The Orion is \u201cpromising.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jenny Dubnau, a housing advocate at the Western Queens Community Land Trust, told the Eagle she also would have liked to see more affordable housing included. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are going to put housing on public land, shouldn\u2019t that be where Zohran Mamdani builds the social housing he campaigned on?\u201d she said. \u201cWhen are we going to stop doing this?\u201d <\/p>\n
Affordability rates in new housing projects have long been the biggest point of contention for new buildings in LIC, a neighborhood that has been inundated in the last decade with luxury development that locals say has priced them out. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe new Orion building on Hunter’s Point Parcel E seems very promising in addressing the critical housing shortage in LIC,\u201d chair of local Community Board 2, Anatole Ashraf, said in a text message. \u201cIt seems like we’re finally doing things different and really trying to address affordability issues. Two-thirds of the units permanently income-restricted and affordable, that’s the reverse of how it usually goes! That’s rare and to be celebrated!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s all in the execution now, and I’m looking forward to when shovels hit the ground for this project,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
City Hall said that The Orion has the most affordable housing of any proposal to build on the site. <\/p>\n
\u201cHPD conducted a competitive RFP process for this site, and selected this proposal based on a comprehensive review of all proposals,\u201d said a department spokesperson. \u201cThe Orion includes the deepest affordability of any proposal, supportive housing for formerly homeless New Yorkers, and delivers key community amenities that the Long Island City community advocated for in the RFP engagement process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach The Mamdani administration announced a plan to build 1,000 homes on a vacant city-owned lot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-310803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310803","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=310803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}