As a Times editorial reports, at a Community Board meeting in Harlem, city retained consultants tried to sell the plan to get profit motivated developers to build higher denser apartment buildings and have those who can pay exploding market rate apartments share with those who less and less can afford even “affordable” rents. But the catch is they have to apply for these “affordable” apartments via a lottery and as the Times reports one Harlem resident complained – “you have to have spotless credit, no criminal record, citizenship and yes political connections”.
A contributor to West View was exhilarated when she opened her mail to find that she had won an affordable apartment but when she revealed that she had once filed for bankruptcy they denied her.
Yes, well, government is a blunt instrument for social change and the admission and acceptance by the city that they have no money to build affordable housing but have to make deals with developers to abate real estate taxes for years and years in order to induce them to build both for those who can pay the ever exploding market rents and those who have to continuously prove each year that they are indeed poor and should be allowed to keep their apartment is a prescription for induced poverty or fraud.
—George Capsis
