A housing crisis in Sunset Park
New report outlines dire need for affordable housing in nabe
BY BEN VERDE
Sunset Park is experiencing
a dire housing crisis, and
new affordable housing is desperately
needed to offset further
strain on the neighborhood’s
housing supply, a new
report fi nds.
The report, released last
week by the nonprofi t Fifth Avenue
Committee, outlines the
state of Sunset Park’s aging
housing stock, which is taxed
by a growing population, and
a dearth of new units.
The report comes as concerns
about displacement in
the gentrifying neighborhood
are at a high point.
Existing housing in the
neighborhood suffers from
overcrowding, with Community
Board 7 listed as the
fourth-most crowded district in
the fi ve boroughs in the report.
The housing stock is one of the
oldest in the city, with over half
of the area’s units constructed
before 1939, the report found.
Michelle de la Uz of the
Fifth Avenue committee says
it’s likely that overcrowded
housing is the culprit for the
spike in coronavirus cases experienced
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the summer.
Worsening the crisis is a
lack of construction of new
affordable housing, with only
1,000 new housing units constructed
since 2014 — only 80
of which were designated “affordable”
through the city’s
voluntary inclusionary housing
program. Over 3,000 housing
units were lost over that
same time period, according to
de la Uz, due in part to brownstones
that used to house three
or four units being bought and
converted to large single-family
dwellings.
The neighborhood grew
considerably during the 2010s,
due in part to continued immigration
there, and the neighborhood’s
gentrifi cation. All
told, the neighborhood’s population
ballooned from 126,230
residents to 143,847 between
2010 and 2018, according to
the report — and during that
growth period, the neighborhood
has lost more housing
units than it has added.
“The neighborhood simply
does not have enough apartments
to support the infl ux of
new residents and recent immigrants
and to alleviate overcrowding,”
the report reads.
In order to prevent further
displacement, the Fifth Avenue
Committee feels signifi cant
steps must be taken, such as
preserving the areas existing
affordable housing, strengthening
tenant protections, developing
projects of 100 percent
affordable housing, and implementing
targeted rezonings of
specifi c sites to bring more affordability
and address other
community needs.
Some efforts are already
underway to create more affordable
housing in the neighborhood,
such as the Fifth
Avenue Committee’s effort to
reconstruct the Sunset Park
Library along with an all-affordable
development built
above it. The report recommends
redeveloping more
government-owned land, such
as police precincts and fi rehouses
as residential buildings
with municipal uses on
the ground fl oor.
To offset the possibility of hyper
gentrifi cation in the wake
of potential rezonings such as
the now-scrapped Industry City
proposal, the waterfront complex
should make an effort to
recruit and train locals, rather
than bring an onslaught of outsiders
onto the neighborhoods
overburdened housing stock,
the committee says.
Above all, now is the time
to invest in affordable housing,
de la Uz says.
“During economic downturns
is often the time that
we should be investing in the
long-term infrastructure that
communities need, and affordable
housing is certainly
one of them,” she said.
FAC is building affordable housing on top of the Sunset Park Library.
Magnusson Architecture and Planning
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