Developers' Affordable Housing Rhetoric Suggests Low-Income Units Not a Priority
Promised faster buildout would dampen increases in base rents, but skyrocketing Area Median Income has taken its toll. Lowest 1-BR rent: $2,430? Most "affordable" households earning $100K+?
Throughout the history of Atlantic Yards, the reality of promised “affordable housing”—better to say “income-targeted housing”— has not matched the rhetoric.
Today, the new developers, Cirrus Workforce Housing and LCOR, sound cautious. “We want to provide scaled housing across the affordability spectrum,” Cirrus Managing Partner Joseph McDonnell said at a Nov. 18 workshop on density and affordability, where the team outlined its principles and general plans.
As the slide below states, they aim to “prioritize housing options for various income levels.” That’s vague. “Affordable housing” simply means renters pay about 30% of their income.
The “feasible alternative” proposed by the new developers, as indicated in the slide below, offered more of a clue, suggesting a focus on “moderate to middle-income housing,” or from 80% to 130% of Area Median Income, or AMI. See AMI guidelines.
Indeed, when Cirrus emerged last year, Mayor Eric Adams announced a partnership—involving Cirrus and pension funds affiliated with the building trades unions—to build '“workforce housing… for essential workers.” The goals include: affordability at 80% to 140% of AMI, locations near transit, and union labor.
That contrasts with original developer Forest City Ratner plan, with a range of income categories, from 30%1 to 160% of AMI, or low-income to middle-income. Though low-income units were built, there’s a skew to middle-income apartments, as explained below.
Baseline incomes and rents
Were 80% of AMI the floor, that might mean that virtually all households in “affordable” units would earn at least $100,000. See the chart below, from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Given the rising baseline to calculate AMI, which includes prosperous suburban counties, it’s plausible that, by the time the next building opens, even those seeking studious would have to earn at least $100,000. (AMI is also inflated because of a factor called a High Housing Cost Adjustment.)
What might the rents be? According to 2025 numbers, which surely will rise, at 80% of AMI, a studio could cost $2,268, a one-bedroom $2,430, a two-bedroom $2,916, and a three-bedroom $3,370.
“We recognize that 80 percent AMI doesn’t meet the needs of New Yorkers who need affordable housing, especially as AMIs have risen dramatically in recent years,” Winnie Shen, a housing planner with the Department of City Planning, said at a February 2024 meeting, according to City Limits.
The meeting concerned Universal Affordability Preference (UAP), which the City Council later passed to allow 20% more bulk to deliver permanently affordable units to households at or below an average of 60% of AMI.
UAP doesn’t apply to Atlantic Yards, because the project involves a state override of city zoning. Could the developers ask for even more bulk in exchange for promising more deeply affordable units?
Looking at 1-BR units
Consider the potential rents for one-bedroom units, if delivered in 2025 (which is impossible), at various AMI levels, as shown in the graphic below.
At 130% of AMI, the maximum monthly rent would be $3,948; at 100% of AMI, it would be $3,037; at 80% of AMI, $2,430; at 60%, $1,822; at 30%, $911. If 80% of AMI were the floor, the cheapest unit—again, as of 2025—would be $2,430 a month.
Note that units at 100% of AMI, which is considered moderate-income, could have higher rents than apartments at 130% of AMI in the four most recent Atlantic Yards buildings.
This all deserves a few caveats. First, it’s unlikely they’d seek the rent ceiling for 130% AMI units, since that number approaches market-rate. Some recent Atlantic Yards towers sought rents well below the allowable ceiling.
Today, the cheapest market-rate one-bedroom apartment at 18 Sixth Ave. (B4, aka Brooklyn Crossing) is $4,050. Across the street at 662 Pacific St. (B15, aka Plank Road), the cheapest market-rate one-bedroom is $4,090. Both are pretty close to $3,948, the current rent ceiling for units at 130% of AMI.
The second caveat: again, the allowable rents would rise.
The question of time
LCOR’s Anthony Tortora, describing their plan to shift density to more easily developable sites, said that would reflect the development team’s core principles, including to “accelerate delivery of affordable housing.”
That, of course, also would accelerate delivery of more profitable housing. Still, he made an important point: timing of delivery is important, since a faster buildout could mitigate, at least in part, the continued rise of AMI.
130% AMI ceiling no sacrifice
As I wrote, setting the ceiling at 130% of AMI, rather than 160%, would be less a sacrifice than a concession to reality. (Same if the ceiling were 140% of AMI.)
Rising AMI means ever-rising baselines for income-linked housing. Consider, under 2025 guidelines from the city, units at 130% of AMI could rent at these monthly levels: Studio: $3,685; 1-BR: $3,948; 2-BR: $4,738; 3-BR: $5,476.
My collaborator Ben Keel had to significantly revise the chart above to accommodate the maximum 2025 rents for units at 130% of AMI.
Today, at the two-tower 595 Dean (B12/B13), the cheapest market-rate studio is listed at $3,590, below the $3,685 ceiling for a 130% AMI unit. An incentive of three months free brings the net effective rent down to $3,141. In other words, those numbers—at least for smaller units—are not realistic.
Misplaced focus
After the workshop last week, Gib Veconi, a key organizer of the BrooklynSpeaks coalition, observed that the “stated focus on 80-130% AMI does not align” with the affordability level of private rezonings nearby or the recent Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, ”which I regard as a barometer for what the public and its elected representatives could be expected to support.”
Or, for that matter, what was originally promised with Atlantic Yards, which was supposed to have as many units below 60% of AMI as above 100% of AMI.
That didn’t happen. BrooklynSpeaks has advocated that the developer “provide the missing 1,031 moderate, low- and very low-income apartments from the existing approved project density.”
That goal didn’t come up at the meeting last week. If 80% of AMI becomes the floor, perhaps none of 646 “missing” low-income units, below 80% of AMI, might get built.
What next?
As of now, 1,374 of the current required 2,250 affordable housing units have been delivered. Beyond the 876 required—a smaller number than the “units owed” on the chart above—the new developers surely would promise more affordable units.
I estimated 900, for a total of 3,150, leaving 1,776 to be built. That said, a request for deeper affordability might mean fewer below-market units, given the additional costs.
The end game
Of course, all this is political. Cirrus and LCOR might build more deeply affortable housing if they get public concessions on density (free land!), infrastructure support, and housing subsidies.
Perhaps this is all part of a strategy, in which they later “concede” to deliver more deeply affordable units, and/or they get public agencies to commit more subsidies.
Still, it’s notable that Cirrus/LCOR do not (yet) appear to have allied with affordable housing advocates like ACORN’s successor groups New York Communities for Change and Mutual Housing Association of New York (MHANY).
Perhaps the developers recognize that the need to complete Atlantic Yards, and the need to build more housing, in general, are sufficient headwinds to get their proposals approved by ESD and for Gov. Kathy Hochul, who’s running for re-election, to claim a win.
Then again, they’ll likely also need help from incoming Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has made affordability a priority.
The back story
Atlantic Yards was proposed to have an even distribution of affordable and market-rate rents, in ”50/50” buildings. It turned out very differently.
An Affordable Housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed in May 2005 by Forest City and the housing advocacy group ACORN “publicly commits [developer Bruce Ratner] to an unusually large allotment of subsidized housing for a private development project,” as the New York Times put it.
That commitment, though, was contingent on public subsidies and the project’s overall economic health.
The MOU was incorporated into a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signed with ACORN and seven other groups. The CBA stated, “The Developer and the Coalition will cooperate to include long-term affordable housing in the residential portion of the Project in order to stem the growing trend of displacement through gentrification in Brooklyn.”
The MOU promised 2,250 units—40% low-income, 20% moderate-income, and 40% middle-income—in five income “bands,” with households earning from 30% to 160% of Area Median Income, or AMI, a standard but controversial benchmark.
Those promises, however, were not matched in the governing Development Agreement signed by Empire State Development, the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project. Rather, the project’s “affordable housing” was generously defined merely as participating in a city, state, or federal governmental program, with an income cap of 160% of AMI.
So the 1,374 apartments built so far, mapped out in the chart below, have been skewed to middle-income households, in part because of reliance on available subsidies and tax breaks—and, likely, a mayoral desire to count larger numbers of affordable units.
Only the first tower, 461 Dean St. (aka B2), reflected the original pledge to build “50/50” towers. The next two, 535 Carlton Ave. (aka B14) and 38 Sixth Ave. (aka B3) were 100% affordable, but with 65% middle-income units.
Promises, promises
At the Dec. 18, 2012 groundbreaking for B2, the modular building later designated 461 Dean Street, developer Bruce Ratner declared, “This type of construction is very exciting, but what is most important and what I care most about is that it is affordable.”
At the Dec. 15, 2016 groundbreaking for the “100% affordable” 535 Carlton Ave. tower, Ratner declared, “The housing, and the most important part of this project, has been the affordable housing.”
That was questionable, given the departure from the long-promised configuration.
It would have 65% middle-income apartments, a departure from a promised configuration. That hardly served the greatest need. No wonder far more people sought the low-income units in the city’s housing lottery than sought middle-income ones.
That building, at least, had 30% low-income units, though not the 40% expected. (It also had 5% moderate-income units, not the 20% expected.)
Accountability, and affordability
In May 2024, interviewed by Brian Lehrer, Ratner deflected criticism of broken Atlantic Yards promises, saying successor Greenland USA “wasn’t able to finish it. And that’s a shame. It’s not the end of the world, though.”
“The problem we have in this city is just not enough low income housing, period,” Ratner said. “That’s really where the focus ought to be, instead of worrying about whether the units got finished.”
“We’re getting fooled, frankly,” he said, forgetting the MOU and CBA he signed, and his public statements. “It’s got to be the government and it always has been.”
Today, perhaps the new developers would say: it’s up to the government to provide additional subsidies. The question, of course, is what other concessions the government provides, and whether the public has the information to assess the deal.
The chart sets 40% of AMI as a baseline, but the original plan was for 30% to 40% of AMI.