Empty East Village Lot Will Get 45 Affordable Homes

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A 14-story, entirely below market rate apartment building broke ground at an empty lot on East Second Street Friday morning.

The new building, at 302 E. Second St. near Avenue D, will have 45 affordable apartments as soon as July 2021, project leaders said at a groundbreaking ceremony Friday. Asian Americans for Equality is developing the lot after Department of Housing Preservation and Development selected the organization in 2017.

"Almost all of our Manhattan projects are in the Lower East Side slash Chinatown area," said AAFE's co-executive director Thomas Yu, beginning when there was "major disinvestment and landlord abandonment in the 70s and 80s."

"Even though the neighborhood changed and became gentrified, the need is still there (for affordable housing)," Yu told Patch. For the housing non-profit, which is also redeveloping dilapidated buildings in Chelsea, it is important that with remaining lots in the neighborhood, "to the greatest extent possible, we have to create affordable housing."

There will be 13 studios, 19 one-bedroom apartments, 12 two-bedroom apartments and an apartment for a super at the building, dubbed East Village Homes.

Eight apartments will be for formerly homeless people under Section 8 for incomes up to 20 percent of area median income, seven apartments at 47 percent of AMI, 14 apartments at 77 percent of AMI and 15 apartments at 120 percent of AMI — which ranges from annual incomes less than $15,000 to about $90,000 for a single person. It will also have a 1,000-square-foot community facility, roof terrace, and green space.

"It is more difficult sometimes in Lower Manhattan to build this type of affordable housing and this project, and this just shows that with the right partners ... projects like this are possible," said Gigi Li, the chief of staff for Council Member Margaret Chin.

Added Council Member Carlina Rivera, "I am just really, really excited because I know what these apartments mean to our community."

"I know when people see what's happening here, they're going to know that we're looking at how to make sure we're keeping people here in this community," she said.

The lot was previously planned to be incorporated into a mostly luxury apartment building, The Adele, but later went through a request for proposals process with the city to be developed separately.

The financing structure involved HPD, the city's Housing Development Corporation, Enterprise Community Partners, and the Low Income Investment Funds, as well as a slew of banks for additional funding. Some $1.2 million was also provided by the local council members, Rivera and Chin.

The Second Street project is just the first phase of the plan.

A second building around the corner at a narrow empty lot on East Third Street is in the design phase, Yu said. At 276 E. Third St., ten studios set at about 120 percent of the AMI could break ground as soon as the end of next year, Yu said.

Community Board 3's chair Alysha Lewis-Coleman said the board is "grateful for the opportunity to support this much needed affordable housing."

"We are seeing many new luxury developments with few or no affordable housing components — and rarely with desperately needed very affordable units," Lewis-Coleman said in a statement.

The board's district has "the fourth highest gap in the city between our lower income residents and those with higher incomes, making the community especially vulnerable to losing affordable housing," she said.