If Something Sounds Fishy, it Probably is
With the recent announcement of the sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to a mega real estate group, Tishman Speyer, middle income housing prospects in NYC look bleaker than ever. Some 27% of the village are already out of rent stabilization.

Today the NYTimes announces that Bloomie is swinging in to act the role of hero, planning the construction of 5,000 rental units on the Queens waterfront. Reality is the only downside to the grand plan:
Housing activists reacted mainly with praise, but also with measures of skepticism.
Some questioned the income limits, suggesting that they overshot the families in greatest need. But the larger issue seemed to be one of scope and emphasis.
Michael McKee, treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee, and Tom Waters, a housing analyst with the Community Service Society, repeated a longstanding complaint that new construction will never be enough to offset the loss of rental units that are rapidly moving from regulated to market rate.
A study in May by the Community Service Society found that between 1990 and 2005, nearly a quarter of the roughly 121,000 apartments built under federal and state subsidy programs dating from the 1960’s and 70’s left those programs. This year alone, by the authors’ count, New York City will lose more than 5,000 apartments for low- and middle-income families.
“This is a blind spot on the part of the mayor and the administration,” Mr. McKee said. “They are stubbornly refusing to recognize that they are taking one step forward, three steps back.”

And rent are rising sharply, as I've written about before. New York will never again be the city for everyone while a wealthy white male Republican is mayor.