The Daily News does a really shoddy job covering the planned conversion of an industrial builing on Kent street in Williamsburg. The owner of building, which is not fully residential, and is situated in an area that is still overwhelmingly industrial (the recently closed Domino factory is nearby, and you have to get up really early in the morning to work up some sexy industrial chic love for that place; it’s the uber-eyesore), wants to convert the entire building to condominiums. The residents are being forced suddenly to stretch their legs and learn the language of socialism — which isn’t so much an anathema, since the state, in the form of their parents, has funded their pseudo artsist lifestyle all along anyway (I’ve been in this building and they are going to have a hell of time finding the li’l old lady paying $24 rent on a fixed income) — and are crying foul. Hey, kids, this is what being being at the center of hipness is all about. A local assemblyman is ticked because he expects an 80/20 ratio of affordable housing and the owner is offering $355,000 and a ‘renovated waterfront’ (the building sits tranverse to the water and there isn’t that much frontage to renovate), of which it is not clear how it would do much besides drive prices up. Instead of asking how many units (the building is massive and the conversion requires a variance, including new construction) the owner is proposing, and estimating just how paltry the $355K actually is, the News gets some canned bullshit quote from what I assume is the center for real estate shills at NYU, to the effect of ‘whoa, dude, making apartments in New York is hard‘ and that we shouldn’t pressure owners too much. There might be synergy to all this discontent, but I doubt the cadre of angry hipsters realize that they aren’t the people anyone has in mind when one says ‘affordable housing.’ But, you know, it’s true. The real estate market is brutal. That’s why there aren’t any apartments being constructed and it’s so hard to sell a place these days. Maybe we need some tax breaks or something, before New York becomes a real estate wasteland.
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Williamsburg really is the new Manhattan.
The Daily News does a really shoddy job covering the planned conversion of an industrial builing on Kent street in Williamsburg. The owner of building, which is not fully residential, and is situated in an area that is still overwhelmingly industrial (the recently closed Domino factory is nearby, and you have to get up really early in the morning to work up some sexy industrial chic love for that place; it’s the uber-eyesore), wants to convert the entire building to condominiums. The residents are being forced suddenly to stretch their legs and learn the language of socialism — which isn’t so much an anathema, since the state, in the form of their parents, has funded their pseudo artsist lifestyle all along anyway (I’ve been in this building and they are going to have a hell of time finding the li’l old lady paying $24 rent on a fixed income) — and are crying foul. Hey, kids, this is what being being at the center of hipness is all about. A local assemblyman is ticked because he expects an 80/20 ratio of affordable housing and the owner is offering $355,000 and a ‘renovated waterfront’ (the building sits tranverse to the water and there isn’t that much frontage to renovate), of which it is not clear how it would do much besides drive prices up. Instead of asking how many units (the building is massive and the conversion requires a variance, including new construction) the owner is proposing, and estimating just how paltry the $355K actually is, the News gets some canned bullshit quote from what I assume is the center for real estate shills at NYU, to the effect of ‘whoa, dude, making apartments in New York is hard‘ and that we shouldn’t pressure owners too much. There might be synergy to all this discontent, but I doubt the cadre of angry hipsters realize that they aren’t the people anyone has in mind when one says ‘affordable housing.’ But, you know, it’s true. The real estate market is brutal. That’s why there aren’t any apartments being constructed and it’s so hard to sell a place these days. Maybe we need some tax breaks or something, before New York becomes a real estate wasteland.