Liberty Bonds Spur Mid-Price Condominiums
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With a booming residential market in Lower Manhattan, the city’s Housing Development Corporation has required for the first time that a developer set aside some of its condominiums for moderate-income residents in return for Liberty Bond financing.
The Manocherian Organization, which is developing the building at 15 William St., is the first residential developer to include affordable housing units in its city-financed Liberty Bond building. The developers, who received the financing last week, will also pay the requisite 3% fee for affordable housing to be built elsewhere in the city.
“Given how strong the market is downtown, we requested that there should be affordable housing units in the development, and this developer came back with the best plan,” the president of the Housing Development Corporation, Emily Youssouf, said. “Now not only will we receive the 3% fee to construct affordable housing elsewhere, but we will also have 15% of the apartments in the building set aside for affordable housing.”
The development, which costs $170 million, was financed with the help of $131.4 million from the Liberty Bond program created in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks to spur residential and commercial development in Lower Manhattan. The building, known as The William, consists of 386 apartments, with 58 of those set aside for middle-income families, or a family of four earning up to $81,640 a year. The studios will rent for $1,429 a month and two-bedrooms will rent for $1,837, compared with current market-rate rents in Lower Manhattan, which range from $2,100 for a studio to $4,550 for a two bedroom, according to the HDC.
While the city and state were each given $800 million in Liberty Bond financing, the HDC has enough funding left in its coffers to help finance one last development with Liberty Bonds. It is too early to tell whether the final Liberty Bond project will include additional affordable housing units, Ms. Youssouf said.
“It hasn’t been formulated yet, everything is still in discussion,” she said. The state, which requires that 5% of the units of Liberty Bond-financed projects are set aside for middle-income housing, has created affordable housing units in Lower Manhattan.
