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COURIER LIFE, APRIL 22-28, 2022
Affordable housing lotto opens in Dumbo
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
Starting this summer, a renovated
Dumbo hotel will be home
to hundreds of people and families
as 90 Sands Street reopens
with 490 affordable and supportive
housing units — and the lottery
for nearly 200 affordable
units is open now.
Until June 2, New Yorkers
earning between $18,000 and
$128,000 per year can apply for
one of 185 studio and one-bedroom
apartments in the 29-story
building, which used to house
long-term volunteers with the
Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Breaking Ground, a nonprofit
who operate thousands
of units of supportive and affordable
housing and a number
of shelters across the city, purchased
the building in 2018 with
the intent to transform the highrise
into one of their signature
developments.
Expected to open to tenants
this summer 90 Sands will house
both the 185 affordable apartments
and 305 supportive units
reserved for formerly homeless
people. Unlike a shelter, support-
When it opens to tenants this summer, 90
Sands Street in Dumbo will bring nearly 500
affordable and supportive housing units to
the neighborhood. Breaking Ground
ive housing is a permanent, affordable
home, with social services
meant to help keep each
person or family in their home.
“Our first four buildings
we opened were all conversion
projects,” said Amie Pospisil,
Breaking Ground’s Chief Operating
Officer. “All in Manhattan,
which account for more
than 1,200 units, so we’re certainly
familiar.”
The city’s Department of
Housing Preservation and Development,
alongside the New
York City Council, financed a
significant chunk of the $170
million building purchase,
while the renovations were
funded through HPD’s Supportive
Housing Loan Project and
the New York City Housing Development
Corporation.
Generally, Pospisil said,
60 percent of units in Breaking
Ground’s housing development
are supportive units for
formerly homeless people, and
40 percent are earmarked “affordable”
per the Area Median
Income — at 90 Sands, apartments
rent for anywhere between
30 and 120 percent of
AMI, with the least-expensive
studio available for just $537
per month.
“It really feels like a once
in a generation opportunity
to be able to open a building of
this size and in this location,”
Pospisil said. “This is not something
that comes up often. So
being able to bring the volume
of units into this space is really
quite remarkable.”
According to census data
compiled by the city, the median
household income in Community
Board 2, which includes
Dumbo, was $100,000 from 2015-
19, with 24,000 households making
more than 165 percent of the
AMI, or more than $137,000 per
year for an individual.
But the neighborhood’s
wealth disparity is large, with
10,000 households considered
“extremely low-income” by federal
standards, and 39 percent
of all households paying more
than 30 percent of their annual
income in rent. According
to the Furman Center at New
York University, average rent
in CB2 was $2,260 in 2019.
At 90 Sands, the least-expensive
units will rent to single
tenants making between
$18,412 and $25,080 per year
and the most-expensive ones to
those making between $73,098 –
$100,320.
According to data from the
city’s Department of Homeless
Services, more than 400 people
living in the city’s shelter system
had last lived within CB2 in
2020. When someone enters the
shelter system, they don’t get to
choose which shelter they’ll enter,
often being sent to different
neighborhoods or boroughs —
wherever a bed is available.
In March, Mayor Eric Adams
announced that a special
“task force” would clean up
150 homeless encampments
throughout the city by the end
of the month. Those cleanups
would include outreach workers
who would offer people
places to stay in city shelters.
This story has been edited for
brevity. For more on 90 Sands,
visit BrooklynPaper.com.
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care provider.
$70 million in grants
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Find planning resources
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