AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Manhattan Community Board No. 4's Housing, Health, and Human Services Committee oversees the development of affordable housing that is occurring as a result of the West Chelsea and Hudson Yards rezonings. The HHHS Committee will review regular progress reports issued by the City and will help formulate CB4 policy on affordable housing. The Committee meets on the third Tuesday of each month at the Community Board office at 6:30pm.

Most recently, the City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New York City Housing Authority have released a Request for Proposals relating to development of affordable housing on several NYCHA-owned parking lots located in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. The lots are at: 1) Fulton Houses, 18th Street btwn. Ninth and Tenth Avenues; 2) Elliot Chelsea Houses, Ninth Avenue, corner of 25th Street; and 3) Harborview, 55th to 56th Street btwn. 10th and 11th Avenues.

The task of monitoring affordable housing development was assigned for 18 months to a special Housing Development Task Force. The HHHS Committee has now taken on the responsibilities for the Task Force. Following is a letter from Board Chair J. Lee Compton regarding the change:

Letter from the Chair re Dissolution of Housing Development Task Force

At the September 2005 CB4 meeting I announced the creation of the Housing Development Task Force. Led by Joe Restuccia and including the chairs of the Board's two land use committees and the housing committee, as well as two public members from each of Clinton and Chelsea, the purpose of the HDTF was to monitor the fulfillment of the City's affordable housing promises made during the Hudson Yards and West Chelsea rezonings.

My intention was not to create a permanent committee, but rather a temporary body composed of Board members with experience with affordable housing and charged with developing the tools and yardsticks necessary to measure progress, and with working with the housing agencies to make them aware of the City's commitments and to help them develop the programs they would need to fulfill them.

Through the work of the HDTF over the last eighteen months we now have the clearest picture we have ever had of the state of affordable housing in our district. Unfortunately, this picture only serves to underscore the importance of working for more. But we also have agencies that are better informed and better positioned to work with us effectively, better working relations with these agencies, and a Board office that is ready and able to support us in all aspects of this work and with a growing box of tools to do so.

As anticipated, there has been a growing overlap between the work of the HDTF and that of the three committees. I have concluded that it is time to dissolve the Task Force and distribute its responsibilities among the Board office and the committees. I am pleased to announce that as part of this reorganization Joe Restuccia will become the co-chair of the Housing, Health & Human Services committee as of May 1. The public members of the Task Force will be invited to join the HH&HS committee as public members.

Finally, I want to thank the Board members who served on the HDTF, effectively assuming responsibility for a fourth committee, the public members who so ably represented their communities, and the members of the public who attended HDTF meetings and actively participated in its success