Gold Dust

After Promises of 70 Percent Affordability, City Settles for 25 Percent

The Adams administration has designated a developer to build a massive residential building on a publicly owned, two-acre site at 100 Gold Street, in the Civic Center neighborhood. City Hall has named GFP Real Estate to develop the property, which is expected to contain more than 3,700 new homes, of which some 925 are slated to be affordable units.

The designation of GFP (which previously developed the office-to-residential conversion of 25 Water Street, containing 990 market-rate units and 320 affordable apartments) has drawn criticism based on that firm’s record as a major contributor to the various election campaigns of Mayor Adams. But almost no acknowledgement has been given to the contrast between the City’s terms for 100 Gold and a 2023 promise that the Adams administration would push for developments in Lower Manhattan containing at least 70 percent affordability.

Two years ago, Mr. Adams designated Lower Manhattan as one of 12 communities across the five boroughs where affordable housing is sufficiently scarce to qualify for a new program designed to jumpstart the creation of moderately priced homes. The program, called the Mixed Income Market Initiative (MIMI), aims to spur the development of multi-family rental projects that will be 30 percent market rate and 70 percent affordable, with the latter tranche allocated to a wide range of household incomes, from low and extremely-low to moderate, along with 15 percent set aside for formerly homeless individuals. These units would be aimed at working families, older adults, households with children, and recipients of supportive services.

MIMI would seek to entice private-sector developers with promises of taxpayer subsidies, but at the same time would almost entirely reverse the math used by housing builders in recent decades, when such government largesse (in the form of tax abatements) required only 20 percent affordable units in buildings that were 80 percent market rate. And by deliberately layering multiple bands of income within a single building, the program aims to avoid the segregated concentrations of affluence and poverty created by earlier public housing programs.

Since the December 2023 announcement that MIMI would prioritize Lower Manhattan for affordable development, however, there has been no further movement toward the 70 percent affordability paradigm. An inflection point might have arrived in January of this year, when Mayor Adams announced that the City-owned building at 100 Gold would be redeveloped as housing. In some ways, planning to create affordable housing on publicly owned land could give the City greater leverage and flexibility in pushing for a higher number of rent-restricted homes. But this turned out not to be the case, with City Hall demanding only one fourth of the apartments at the site be designated as affordable.

Tammy Meltzer, chair of Community Board 1 (CB1), responded, “this proposal is beyond a missed opportunity and almost a 180 degree turn from what the administration said Lower Manhattan needed under MIMI. On public land, New Yorkers deserve far better than 2,800 luxury units and only 900 units of yet-to-be-defined affordability. A project that is 75 percent luxury housing on a City-owned site is a direct departure from the current administration’s own stated mandates and goals, and it does not reflect what Lower Manhattan urgently needs. Given the severe shortage of affordable housing in CB1, which has lost more rent-restricted units in recent years than any other community in New York State, a site of this size should deliver significantly more affordability than the 25 percent currently proposed. Public land remains one of the few opportunities to ensure that New Yorkers across different income levels can continue to live in Lower Manhattan. A development of this scale must enhance also the public realm, support infrastructure, and contribute to long-term community stability – not simply maximize market-rate units and profits.”

“Our concerns are focused on City policy and stewardship of a public asset, not on the developer,” she continued. “We recognize that GFP has previously delivered affordable housing in Lower Manhattan and has engaged constructively with the community. With a new administration taking office, there is a meaningful opportunity to realign this project with the City’s own priorities by creating more affordable units, deeper affordability, and broader public benefits.”

Ms. Meltzer concluded, “CB1 remains committed to working collaboratively with GFP and the incoming Mamdani administration toward a more balanced, economically diverse plan that truly serves the public. But our position is firm: Lower Manhattan does not need 2,800 new luxury units. It needs more affordable units across multiple income tiers and development that strengthens the neighborhood for generations.”

Mariama James, a co-founder of the Coalition for a 100 Percent Affordable Five World Trade Center (a local grassroots organization that pushed for maximizing rent-protected housing at the last development parcel in the World Trade Center complex), said, “the principle for City-owned land must be absolute: In this severe affordable housing crisis, it must be leveraged for maximum public benefit – and that means 100 percent affordable housing. I believe all new residential development on public land should be entirely affordable, varying from deeply affordable to manageable for the upper-middle class.”

“The 100 Gold Street decision, with its 25 percent market-rate focus, is a profound policy misstep,” she continued. “It raises a fundamental question about the Adams administration’s MIMI project, which aimed for 70 percent affordability. If a prime, City-owned site can achieve only 25 percent, where are the sites suitable for MIMI projects? Was this program ever even a serious policy?”

“More importantly,” she said, “with more than 3,000 luxury, market-rate units proposed, and fewer than 1,000 affordable homes – about which affordability for whom is presently unclear – it’s a real missed opportunity to put a dent in our local affordable housing shortage and to restore some racial and socio-economic diversity to Lower Manhattan. While our Black, Latino, and Indigenous populations have diminished over the years, we also have some of the highest vacancy rates in existing luxury and market-rate housing, along with the greatest loss of affordable housing in the entirety of state of New York.”

A spokesman for the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which oversees the MIMI program, responds, “HPD did not select any projects through the MIMI [solicitation], but is looking forward to financing a MIMI under the Hunters Point South Parcel,” a 30-acre former industrial site in Queens. “In addition, the agency is open to exploring mixed-income development proposals that efficiently use public resources to create more affordable housing opportunities.”

City Council member Christopher Marte said, “when public land is transformed for new development, ensuring deep and lasting affordability must be the City’s first obligation. We look forward to working with the administration and the development team to make sure this project truly responds to New York’s affordability crisis and delivers housing that our neighbors can actually access.”

State Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assembly member Grace Lee said in a joint statement, “we welcome the City’s effort to redevelop 100 Gold Street to provide much-needed affordable housing, public open space, and senior services to Lower Manhattan. We appreciate the City’s commitment to including a minimum of 25 percent permanently affordable housing units in the project – consistent with the tax incentive program we enacted in State law – and we will work with the City and the community to maximize affordability and to ensure that any approved project is responsive to our community’s needs. Many aspects of this proposal still require more comprehensive evaluation, and we look forward to doing so during a thorough public review process.”