The megaproject Atlantic Yards (aka Pacific Park) in Brooklyn was announced in 2003 under the slogan “Jobs, Housing, and Hoops.” Of 4,500 rental apartments, half would be below-market “affordable housing,” memorialized—so it seemed—in a 2005 agreement that original developer Forest City Ratner signed with the grassroots group ACORN. That was incorporated into a much-hyped Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), a private contract the developer signed with eight groups (most of them with no track record). The CBA purported to fight gentrification, encouraging “systemic changes in the traditional ways of doing business on large urban development projects.”

That housing promise, to be fulfilled in 10 years, was key to gaining political and community support for the 16-tower project, despite concern about subsidies, scale, eminent domain for a basketball arena, and an end-run around democracy. Atlantic Yards, though, faced delays and revisions. As condemnations finally loomed in 2010, a lawyer for targeted property owners argued that a newly extended project deadline, to 2035, vitiated promised benefits. That argument failed. “Whatever the pace may be for the delivery” of such benefits, a state court judge wrote, “the nature of those benefits remains the same.”

That observation has proved hollow, as has the unenforceable CBA. Yes, the Barclays Center arena opened in 2012, hugely boosting the value of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets (formerly the New Jersey Nets) and providing new entertainment options. But delays in delivering income-targeted apartments—a more precise synonym for “affordable”—did change the “nature of those benefits.” It allowed far higher rents than expected.

Last year, the only “affordable” one-bedroom apartments available in a new, two-building complex rented for $2,690—below market-rate, yes, but mostly for six-figure earners, hardly ACORN’s constituency. That track record has prompted the scornful question, “Affordable for whom?” (After all, “affordable” merely means tenants pay 30% of their income.) “This whole Pacific Park development has broken my heart,” commented one apartment seeker on the City-Data forum.

What’s Been Built

Consider the chart below that I commissioned from graphic designer Ben Keel, which shows the quantity, unit size, and cost of apartments delivered in seven towers. (Another building contains condominiums.)

Notably, only the first building, 461 Dean Street, adheres (more or less) to the original promise, with equal numbers of both low-income (below 60% of Area Median Income, or AMI) and middle-income apartments (above 100% of AMI), respectively. It does lack three-bedroom units, however, despite promises of family-sized apartments.

The next two buildings, 535 Carlton Avenue and 38 Sixth Avenue, are “100% affordable,” but, as the chart shows, disproportionately skewed to middle-income households. While the city’s Housing Connect lottery system is typically swamped with low-income applicants, in this case 535 Carlton couldn’t fill the more expensive units, prompting a derisive November 2017 New York Times headline: “At $3,700 a Month, ‘Affordable’ Apartments Go Begging.”

How did this happen? Well, rather than requiring Forest City and its successors to adhere to the promised income ranges, New York State allowed a loose definition of “affordable”: participating in a government regulatory or subsidy program. Naturally, the developers took the most financially advantageous option. In the four most recent towers, all “affordable” units were reserved for middle-income households, thanks to a provision in a state tax break known as 421-a. Out of 1,374 below-market units built so far, 76% are geared to middle-income households, while only 18.5% house low-income ones, despite initial promises of 40% each. (The remainder house moderate-income households.) Today, 876 income-linked apartments remain to be built, but their affordability is in question.

Another Cost to Delay

The most important thing to point out is that delays in development translate into higher rents for all income categories, lowering their civic value. That’s because rents reflect the federal AMI calculation, which has more than doubled since Atlantic Yards was first approved in 2006. A four-person household earning 100% of the AMI in 2006, $70,900, qualified as moderate-income, with rent set at 30% of income. Today, that income level is below 50% of AMI, translating to low-income.

Of course, if struggling Brooklynites had seen their incomes double in that interval, the rent increase would mean less. But the AMI calculation is deeply flawed. Not only does the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) add three suburban counties to New York City, suggesting a wealthier “area,” it adjusts upward for the city’s high rental burdens. So “low-income” under HUD guidelines doesn’t match our colloquial understanding. That’s compounded by city policy choices, as the city’s Independent Budget Office explained, lifting the low-income ceiling to 80% of AMI. (For Atlantic Yards, it was supposed to be 60%.) Astonishingly, a “low-income” individual today could, under city guidelines, earn nearly $87,000 and pay $2,330 for a one-bedroom.

Delays, and Numbers, Matter

The slow pace of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park raises a question: Would a smaller, less-complex project have been easier to build, delivering less costly “affordable” units faster, helping more of the needy? That question is obscured if you consult Empire State Development (ESD), the New York State authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards. In April, responding to a request from a monitoring body called the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, ESD produced the chart shown below. It lists the number of affordable units in each building, segmented by unit size, within each of the five AMI categories. 

While the chart is helpful, it omits key information, such as the timing for each unit and the monthly rental cost. That leaves the impression that similar units require similar rent, and thus the “nature of [the] benefits remains the same.” (It also ignores the promise of affordable homeownership, once a priority for Hakeem Jeffries, a state legislator from Brooklyn who has since become the Democrats’ Minority Leader of the House of Representatives.)

By contrast, Keel’s earlier graphic shows the impact of rising costs. Notably, in the most recent buildings constructed, the two-tower 595 Dean Street, apartments in the second-highest income category (or “band”) cost more than similarly sized apartments built earlier in the top “band.”

Even that obscures the problems with AMI. Though the 595 Dean developers could have charged $3,443 for one-bedroom “affordable” units at 130% of AMI, they chose $2,690, recognizing that the allowable ceiling was unrealistic, given competing market-rate units. No wonder Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke, among others, has proposed legislation to reform the AMI formula.

What’s Next?

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park is far from finished, with eight remaining tower sites and more than 3,200 apartments to be built, including those 876 “affordable” units. If the latter don’t open by May 2025—impossible!—the project’s master developer, for now Greenland USA, faces fines of $2,000/month for each missing unit. Last year, Greenland, an arm of a Shanghai-based firm, proposed extending that deadline while promising 600 more below-market units (of unspecified affordability), at least if New York State gave them 1 million more square feet in development rights. That’s the equivalent of three substantial new buildings.

While that plan didn’t fly, it’s likely not dead. Greenland has lost control of six crucial development (B5-B10) sites in a foreclosure process. An emerging joint venture, involving Hudson Yards developer Related Companies, is expected to take the reins. For now, Related’s negotiations with Empire State Development, surely over deadlines, density, and affordability, remain murky.

Anticipating a revision of the project, the community coalition BrooklynSpeaks, citing continued displacement of Black residents, has asked local elected officials to ensure that all future affordable units reach households averaging 60% of AMI.

That might, as I’ve suggested, create a tension over scale, with advocates accepting a super-sizing of the remaining towers in exchange for affordability. But the lesson is clear. Merely promising “affordable housing,” without performance guarantees, risks delivering more below-market units that surf gentrification. Time has taken its toll, especially for lower-income households. The nature of the benefits, alas, does not “remain the same.”

Featured image: Looking west from Vanderbilt Avenue toward the sites for six towers over the MTA’s Vanderbilt Yard. Photo by the author. Note: A version of Keel’s graphic, limited to two-bedroom units, was published in May in Urban Omnibus, as part of my history of Atlantic Yards, “Watch This Space.”