City Opens Affordable Housing Lottery for New Rental Tower in FiDi
Lower Manhattan’s meager inventory of affordable rental apartments will soon swell by 75 units, thanks to a new development nearing completion at 7 Platt Street, between Pearl and Gold Streets in the Financial District. The 38-story building, which will be known as the “Aria Platt 7,” will contain a total of 250 apartments (the remaining 175 units will be market-rate rentals), along with amenities such as a gymnasium, media room, party space, and a rooftop lounge with a terrace. In exchange for committing to affordability protections on the rent-restricted 75 units, developer Moinian received tax abatements worth many millions of dollars under the now-lapsed 421-a incentive program.
People wishing to live in an affordable unit at the Aria Platt 7 may enter the affordable housing lottery overseen by the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. These apartments are set aside for applicants making between 70 and 130 percent of the area median income (AMI), which qualifies them as low and middle income. (“Low income” is actually a demographic middle zone, situated above “very low income,” and “extremely low income.”)
To enter the lottery for affordable apartments at the Aria Platt 7 (the deadline for which is June 8, 2026), click here. There are 40 studios, 22 one-bedrooms, and 13 two-bedrooms. Applicants earning between $68,126 and $227,500—depending on the size of apartment desired and number of people in the household—will be considered.
Rents for these affordable units range from $1,819 for a studio for one person earning between $68,126 and $79,380 per year, to $4,484 for a two-bedroom for two to five people, earning a total of between $162,583 and $227,500. For comparison, a market-rate, two-bedroom unit at the Aria Platt 7 was recently listed with the online real estate database StreetEasy for $9,973.
This development comes against the backdrop of recent struggles to create affordable housing in Lower Manhattan, a community that has lost more rent-protected homes in recent years than any other in New York State. In one of his final acts as outgoing Manhattan Borough President, Mark Levine (who was sworn in as the new City Comptroller on January 1) issued a December update to his “Housing Manhattanites” report, which documented that while the borough as a whole saw the creation of 10,322 new affordable housing units since 2023, the Lower Manhattan district of Community Board 1 got just 63 of these, or roughly six-tenths of one percent. Mr. Levine’s final update to “Housing Manhattanites” noted, however, that 52 new affordable units are planned for a proposed residential tower at 22 Cliff Street, and another 37 rent-protected dwellings are slated for a new building at 14-26 South William Street.
In a parallel development, a statistical analysis compiled last year by urban planning expert George M. Janes indicated that CB1 ranked dead last in the number of affordable housing units created or preserved since 2014. That analysis found that of 61,087 income-restricted housing units preserved or created in Manhattan between 2014 and November, 2024, only 299 were located within CB1. These 299 units come to four tenths of one percent of all the affordable units in the borough.