3,300 Affordable Apartments Coming To Central Brooklyn: Governor

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — New York State officials plan to develop 3,300 affordable apartments at 11 sites in Central Brooklyn as part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's $1.4 billion economic development intiative for the area.

State agencies issued two requests for proposals Thursday for five sites where the state plans to develop more than 2,000 of the apartments, which Cuomo said will be affordable to tenants making $20,000 to $40,000 a year.

"We need affordable housing because our people are being displaced, gentrification is everywhere," Cuomo, a Democrat, said at the Beford-Stuyvesant YMCA.

The state plans to seek more proposals by this summer for the additional developments on sites owned by the state and hospitals, officials said. Each one will incorporate open space and spots for community groups, state officials said.

Proposals for the first five developments are due in July. The state plans to break ground on more than 2,300 affordable units by the end of 2019, according to a presentation Cuomo gave Thursday.

The state's Division of Human Rights will also send a team to Brooklyn dedicated to enforcing fair housing laws and tenant-protection laws, Cuomo said.

The $563 million housing plan is one piece of Cuomo's $1.4 billion "Vital Brooklyn" initiative to revitalize 10 Central Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Bed-Stuy, East New York, Brownsville, Crown Heights and Bushwick. Those areas far outpace the rest of the city and state in terms of poverty, unemployment, murders and physical inactivity, Cuomo said.

Cuomo announced the plan in March 2017. Officials then held meetings with the affected communities to plan how to move forward, he said.

Each of the five sites for which the state solicited housing proposals Thursday will be home to one of 32 ambulatory medical centers funded by Cuomo's $664 million community health care initiative, another piece of Vital Brooklyn.

Those centers are expected to handle about 500,000 visits a year, create 225 new jobs and recruit 300 primary care physicians to the area, state officials said.

The plan will also fund renovations and technology upgrades at several hospitals including Interfaith Medical Center in Bed-Stuy and Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brownsville. Four of the five housing plots are on sites affiliated with those hospitals.

One Brooklyn Health, a partnership formed by Interfaith, Brookdale and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in East Flatbush, will oversee the health care plan.

The entire Vital Brooklyn initiative contains a total of 8,800 projects that the state hopes to have up and running by 2020, Cuomo said.

Others include a plan to create 12 new youth-run farmers markets; upgrades for close to two dozen community gardens; a "mobile market" to reach areas that lack access to healthy food; a $200,000 oyster reef in the Jamaica Bay that students will help build; and $8.8 million in energy-effiency upgrades for 7,300 homes.

State officials plan to hold a workshop in the next couple weeks to help community-based organizations and faith-based groups get a piece of the $1.4 billion pie, Cuomo said.

"Change comes not from state government. Change comes community-up," he said.

(Lead image: Gov. Andrew Cuomo discusses the Vital Brooklyn initiative at the Bed-Stuy YMCA on Thursday. Photo by Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)