Luxury Developer Refuses New City Policy of Allotting Affordable Units to Homeless

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — The CEO of Extell Development, the developers behind the One Manhattan Square monstrosity currently rising over the Two Bridges' mostly low-income neighborhood, made it very clear last week he was against allowing homeless people to live in his buildings.

In a meeting with city advisors and building developers, Extell CEO Gary Barnett told the New York Times he thought including homeless people in the tax break would be "unfair," and it would "put the entire 421-a program at risk..."

"It's unfair to change the rules of the game overnight for very little public benefit," Barnett said to the Times.

The controversial new city policy is to allow the city to allot a certain portion of new buildings' units to homeless shelter residents. It would apply to buildings developed earlier this year that follow the policy in which the builder gets a 421-a tax break. This deal is Barnett gets tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for allotting roughly 25 percent of a building's apartments to low- and moderate-income tenants.

The apartments referred for the homeless are called "community preference units."

But the community preference unit policy was somehow buried last month under other promotional materials from the city's Housing Preservation and Development department, the Real Deal reported. And now the city is working with developers to figure out where it fits in, if at all.

The HPD commissioner Vicki Been argued in the meeting last week for the policy, saying the homeless were "the working poor, not that different from households already served by the 421-a program," the Times reported.

It is not clear whether the policy would affect One Manhattan Square housing, although it would dictate housing at 555Ten, one of Barnett's buildings in the Meatpacking District, according to the Times.

Lower East Side community members have told Patch they believed luxury high-rises like One Manhattan Square were displacing low-income people and making the homelessness epidemic worse in the neighborhood.

"We're going to all be all driven out, the whole community, that's what's gonna happen with Extell coming in with One Manhattan Square," JoAnn Lum of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown & the Lower East Side told Patch. "It's really racist because it means the destruction, displacement of this community of color."

You might remember Barnett for creating multiple "poor doors" to affordable units to separate them from the luxury units. The city subsequently banned the "poor door."

Photo credit: Extell