Two Minority Communities Vying For Brooklyn Affordable Housing

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The New York Sun

On the south side of Williamsburg, tens of thousands of people from the neighborhood’s large Latino and chasidic communities are all set to scramble for 140 low-income riverfront units.


“Our office probably receives 50 calls a week from people asking when they can apply,” the chief of staff for Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Samuel Schaeffer, said. He estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 people would apply for the lottery being held for the new development.


With the first residents scheduled to move to the site, Schaefer Landing, this summer, leaders from the two communities said they have overcome bitter differences regarding housing needs and are pleased with the development – so long as there is a favorable distribution of apartments.


Tensions flared between leaders of the two communities three years ago when the city granted site control to the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, with vocal complaints by advocates and politicians that the city had given away a public benefit without requiring the developers to consider the neighborhood’s non-Jewish residents.


“It caused an uproar,” the executive director of UJO, Rabbi David Niederman, conceded. The rapid growth of the Satmar chasidic community, where the average woman has 8 to 10 children, paired with endemic poverty, explains their great need for affordable housing, according to Mr. Niederman.


Williamsburg’s 57,000 Jews make up the poorest Jewish community in New York, said Mr. Niederman, with about 46% of the population living below the poverty line, according to the “2004 Report on Jewish Poverty,” issued by the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and the UJA Federation of New York.


The Latino community maintains that the housing crunch has affected it just as heavily.


“We just want to make sure we’re not excluded,” David Pagan, the executive director of Los Sures United Housing, said. Los Sures was one of the most outspoken groups at community meetings after the decision on site control. Since then, Mr. Pagan has sat on a joint committee on the project.


The 140 low-income units are part of an innovative waterfront development by BFC Partners, a Staten Island based contractor owned by Donald Capoccia, that will also house what is arguably Williamsburg’s most luxurious development yet: 210 condominium units, many with skyline views and on the market at prices of more than $1 million. Advertisements for the condos, for which a special water-taxi stop has been created linking Williamsburg and Lower Manhattan, are popping up in the Manhattan listings of real-estate sections. The condos will no doubt bring a new dynamic to the neighborhood, as suggested by the sleek executives and young Wall Street types who attended a recent open house.


The subsidized units, which face the street side in a separate 15-story building, will include special accoutrements required by the Chasidic community: master bedrooms with enough space for separate beds, pairs of sinks for compliance with Kashrut laws, and an outdoor space for a sukkah, the temporary shelter erected for an autumn holiday.


Ordinarily critics of fancy units marketed to outsiders, Brooklyn housing activists said they were pleased with the development, mainly because of the large proportion of apartments reserved for low-income occupants, 40 percent – double that allotted in most mixed-income projects.


A spokesman for BFC Partners, Michael Woloz, said the unusually high allotment “made the most sense to get the project off the ground in regard to a whole host of things, from financing the project to working with the various agencies.” He noted the company would receive millions of dollars in federal tax credits each year. “BFC is accustomed and very sensitive to various communities living side by side in different neighborhoods throughout the city and that is why we had the right people advising us,” Mr. Woloz added, “I think everybody is excited by this.”


Still, on the streets of the south side of Williamsburg, various Latino residents expressed doubt they would receive access to the new apartments.


“It was a Latino community, now it is more a community of Jews and whites,” Roberto Rodriguez, a native of the Dominican Republic and owner of a deli near the Schaefer development, said.


The Hispanic population of the district covered by Community Board 1, which includes the Schaefer site, decreased by 11% from 1990 to 2000, according to the Department of City Planning, while the white population increased by 7%.


Jercy Bautista, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1985, said no development was being created to keep Latino people from leaving the area. He complained that his mother had recently been forced out of her apartment by a rent hike. “The Jews want to control the whole area,” he said. “It used to be divided between the Jews and Latinos. Now you have the Jews, the Latinos, and people from Manhattan. We cannot all be in the same space.”


The chasidic community, of which the Satmars are the largest group, have been vocal in complaining that they, too, are being squeezed out, particularly by another recent high-end development, and by the young artists and hipsters in Williamsburg who have gradually drifted south of Broadway.


“There is a critical mass that is needed to support that lifestyle,” Mr. Niederman said of the Satmar community and its practice of living in many ways as their grandparents did in Eastern Europe. “That’s what this is all about.”


The New York Sun

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