Yet Another Reason NY Real Estate Prices Are What They Are

The administration's proposal for the 175 blocks in Greenpoint and Williamsburg would transform a crumbling, disused manufacturing area into a new neighborhood, with residential towers soaring over a public waterfront esplanade and a 28-acre park roughly twice the size of Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side. But Council officials warned that they might try to block it.

"I think that this plan needs not just a tuneup or an oil change," said Councilman David Yassky at a hearing of the City Council's Zoning and Franchises Subcommittee. "I think we have to trade this in for a new model and get a rezoning that works for the neighborhood and is not simply designed to allow the builders to build with maximum profitability."

If city officials do not agree to significant changes in the plan, he continued, "I will be asking you, my colleagues, to join me in rejecting it and starting over."

City officials have emphasized that the proposal had been carefully drawn - "block by block," in the words of the city's planning commission chairwoman, Amanda M. Burden - to preserve the vibrant, mixed-use nature of the neighborhood while spurring the production of much-needed housing.

City officials say the new zoning would legalize loft conversions, preserve manufacturing in some areas, create mixed-use zones to allow light manufacturing to coexist with residences, and set height limits for new residential construction in some areas. At the same time, the zoning would allow developers to build larger buildings if they set aside up to a quarter of the apartments as low-cost units, half of them for residents of the community.

Let that sink in for a moment. These members of the City Council who are opposing this program are doing so because it means that real estate developers might build more housing than they think there should be. Have these members of the City Council actually looked at real estate prices lately. The reason the prices are what they are in NYC is because the amount of housing available is low. There is great demand for housing, but supply is tight. Prices are correspondingly high as a result (basic economic theory).

Yet, the City Council wants to study the problem further and perhaps spike the proposed zoning changes, which means that people will have to wait even longer to get housing. While the loss of manufacturing jobs might be something lamenting, the problem is that these jobs were few and far between, and there are higher and better uses for the properties in question at the present time. People are willing to move into these areas and are already undertaking illegal conversions of loft space because housing prices are insane (and only getting worse).

Real estate developers have sensed that the market needs housing and are more than willing to build, so the stumbling block is the City Council. One has to ask themselves what good is served by blocking the switch. Affordable housing vs. maintaining the status quo. Phony concerns about access to the waterfront when there hasn't been access to that same waterfront in the past because few, if any, people lived in the area and wanted to reach the waterfront?