Monday, March 24, 2008

Upzoning Chrystie Street

Sorry for that last dense zoning post. I wanted it on record that the Alternative Proposal, still supported by CB3, is a luxury upzoning of Chrystie with almost no additional affordable housing benefit over the DCP's plan.

Here's a simpler summary. You can see below that the DCP plan downzones luxury on Chrystie while the Alternative upzones luxury there:

Current luxury allowable: 6.0 FAR
DCP plan luxury with bonuses: 5.76 FAR
Alternative luxury with bonuses: 6.8 FAR


Below you can see that the DCP plan offers nearly as much affordable housing as the Alternative:

DCP plan affordable housing: 1.44 FAR
Alternative plan affordable housing: 1.7 FAR
Difference in affordable housing: only 0.26 FAR


The Alternative allows 1.04 more luxury FAR than the DCP proposal, but only 0.26 FAR more affordable housing.

Worse, inclusionary zoning allows off-site renovations to qualify for the bonus instead of new affordable housing. So there is no guarantee that any new affordable housing will be created under inclusionary zoning (IZ).

With the Alternative, we'll see 14-story luxury developments on Chrystie leading into Chinatown, with maybe a bit of "affordable" housing somewhere far away in the district, affordable in name only.

The CB's quest for every possible crumb of affordable housing has blinded them to the dangers of upscale upzoning.

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