Inside de Blasio’s ‘land grab’ aimed at boosting affordable housing data
By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein February 26, 2017
Mayor de Blasio is attempting a Soviet-style takeover of 1,200
privately-owned co-op buildings in what critics charge is a blatant
effort to artificially boost his affordable-housing numbers.
The Stalinesque secrecy of the plot — developed over two years behind
closed doors — has alarmed some lawmakers, who wrote to the city last
week to put the plan on hold.The private co-ops were once derelict buildings in neighborhoods like Harlem, Washington Heights and the Lower East Side that the cash-strapped city sold to residents beginning in the 1980s for as little as $250 per unit. The city was happy to off-load the headache properties, which had been abandoned by absentee landlords or seized from tax deadbeats.
They resembled urban war zones, with blown-out windows, no doors, heat or running water and junkies overdosing in the hallways.
Over the years, the homesteaders banded together to create livable apartments, and at the same time revitalized blighted neighborhoods.
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