Construction Watch: 363 E. Ferry Street

I only like it because it's not fronted with drive-ways. Baby steps.

It is troubling that the price tags for relatively small low income units always seem to be in excess of $200,000. While a bargain price as compared to many other cities, here you can buy a brand new substantially larger suburban home with much more land for less money. Go to local builders' web sites and see what you can buy for under $200k. You can find quite a bit.

What are the factors which inflate the cost of subsidized homes?

I agree with an earlier comment on this forum--"follow the money."

I drive down that stretch of East Ferry everyday. Mark my words that no sooner will there be grass growing on those lawns than there will be litter accumulating on them.

For those of you looking out for your "tax dollars", you're looking in the wrong places.

The largest government (taxpayer) subsidy for housing is the Mortgage Interest Deduction that homeowners (more suburban than urban)take on their itemized federal tax returns. This subsidy costs the U.S. treasury hundreds of billion dollars a year. And many times larger than all the money HUD spends on housing each year.

Want to follow the money? Head to the suburbs. Those are the folks that are most heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

Once again, the whole topic has been sent off on a tangent…

Admittedly, I am one of the biggest opponents to any form of subsidized housing but this project is definitely for a good cause.

The occupants are probably battered woman with children, who have nowhere else to escape the violence in their lives so could we get back to the topic?

It's not an either/or thing, both can be changed.
In NYS welfare and benefits are vastly overfunded and abused, especially compared to other states (NYS spends the most on welfare per capita and nearly double the national average). When you have people moving here from other states and PR specifically to take advantage of the welfare and Medicare, that's a problem. That's a real drag on working people and businesses that leaves us at a huge disadvantage. This could be changed to a system more in line with the national average.

But make a sudden change to any sort of mortgage subsidy for middle class homeowners is going to be much more harmful - why not just limit it's use for the wealthy? You don't want to hurt a struggling middle and working class that contributes and owns their own homes - there's just too many of them.

Vacant Lot turned into homes... I think this is a net postive.

This project is done. I would suggest to some of the detractors to get involved and build the next group of homes. Most of the snark could be used haggling for cheaper rates so that these building go up in a more cost effective manner.

I think the cost is out of line as well, but the greater point is that homes are being built for people that need them.

I like the low density buildings. Having affordable housing peppered in and around the city instead of in heavely concentrated housing project is really the way to go.

The question most rational people have is not whether any housing should be subsidized, but why does it cost $225,000 to build a home that will only have a market value of half that (at best)? A large suburban home on a large lot in Amherst costs 225k... but these are city townhomes on shared lots which should cut some of the costs. Why are they so expensive to build? It's not a 'gotcha' question. Maybe there's a good explanation like soil remediation or something.

Anyway, I do like the design of these townhomes. They need to plant more trees though.

hamp>"Perhaps a football stadium with more luxury suites???"
hamp>"For those of you looking out for your "tax dollars", you're looking in the wrong places.The largest government (taxpayer) subsidy for housing is the Mortgage Interest Deduction..."
BRLIfer>"Exactly, the mortgage interest deduction is just another subsidy for the wealthy, "

Meh, again with this phony line of reasoning implying Bad Spending Ideas A and B (like the stadium or mortgage tax deductions) should in any way excuse Bad Spending Idea C like these houses at $225,000 each.

I see gtscout already said something like this, but I'll pile on. It isn't either-or.

stadium -
Upgrades on the (unfortunately) publicly-owned stadium should be funded only by user fees on tickets, parking, concessions, and so on, along with seat licenses for premium seats and suites. However, if unfortunately Poloncarz and/or Cuomo disagree with me and instead decide to use taxpayer $ for it, that decision won't justify any other unrelated spending item.

mortgage income tax deduction -
Yes, of course, fully end it for everybody everywhere.
I'd agree with Tim saying to end that along with as many other deductions and tax credits as possible. Ending every single one of them wouldn't be too many for my taste, but if ending one or a few at a time is the best we can do, those are steps in a good direction.

However, it's nonsense to pretend there's only one "direction" in which to "look".

There's no good reason to argue that until/unless the mortgage tax deduction is ended (or stadium $ ended, or anything else... I could add demands to end $ for B'way Market, N.F. air base, historic tax credits, on and on… not to mention reforming entitlement spending growth which drawfs everything), that each other spending thing shouldn't be independently considered yes-or-no based on if it's justified and if it's the smartest approach for a goal.

You two (hamp, BRL) wouldn't accept that kind of argument if somebody tried to justify or excuse a big dumb publicly funded new bigbox convention center on the basis that "Hey, it would cost much less than the mortgage income tax deduction costs - so go look in that direction instead of criticizing our new convention center idea!"

Also as others have said, there's ways to provide public assistance to the needy including for housing without these kinds of subsidized overpriced new builds.