Funding for affordable housing in Lower Manhattan has disappeared in a quagmire of red tape, sources say. Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki announced last June $50 million in federal aid to build more than 300 housing units for families with incomes of $50,000 to $85,000 a year.

That money has yet to be allocated, awaiting review from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and approval from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Proposals that came later are further ahead in the process than the proposal for affordable housing, which has gone nowhere,” the project director for Good Jobs New York, Bettina Damiani, said.

Last summer there was great fanfare regarding the affordable-housing plan, including the symbolic presentation to Mayor Bloomberg by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez of a bowl filled with 300 keys representing the new housing units. In January, the project was presented to the public for review. In the intervening eight months, the proposal has “disappeared into the unknown,” Ms. Damiani said.

The city says it is working on the project and expects to have an answer to the community’s comments soon.

“We’re working closely with partners in the city to make an announcement in the very near future,” the president of the LMDC, Kevin Rampe, said of the plan. “Our commitment to affordable housing has not diminished.”

“We have been talking to the developers and the community to create and preserve even more units than we had originally anticipated,” said one deputy mayor, Daniel Doctoroff.

The New York Sun has learned the developers building the affordable housing units are Edward J. Minskoff Equities and Jack Resnick & Sons. Originally the units were to be concentrated on the Minskoff plot, bordered by Warren and Murray Streets on the north and south and Greenwich and West Streets on the east and west. The parcel across the street, bounded by Chambers, Warren, and West Streets, which Resnick is developing, would also include middle-income units.

As for discussing these plans with community groups, “I don’t know which community groups the city is talking to, but it certainly isn’t us,” said David Kallick, a fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute, which partners with Good Jobs New York to advocate for housing and jobs. “Other groups we work with that specialize in affordable housing have also not heard from the city.”