{"id":4931,"date":"2009-06-04T08:09:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T13:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=4931"},"modified":"2009-06-04T08:09:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T13:09:05","slug":"one_day_youve_been_gentrified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/06\/one_day_youve_been_gentrified.html","title":{"rendered":"One Day You’ve Been Gentrified . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . then they move in the homeless shelter. Buried lede — at $2700 a month, developers everywhere should be volunteering to convert their bad investments into shelters<\/a>:<\/p>\n

City officials said the condos — which couldn’t attract buyers in the fizzled housing market — are part of an effort to help an “unprecedented” number of homeless families who have ended up on the street because of the tough economy. <\/p>\n

Units priced at $350,000 <\/p>\n

It appears to be the first time a faltering upscale building has found a new purpose as a shelter, said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. <\/p>\n

Neighbors were furious the 67-unit building on East New York Ave., where apartments were supposed to sell for $250,000 to $350,000, has been turned into a shelter. <\/p>\n

“I’m a hardworking taxpayer, and I don’t think homeless people should be living better than me,” fumed Desmond John, 35, a window salesman who wanted to rent one of the fancy apartments. “They said it’s not for rent. It’s a shelter. I was shocked.” <\/p>\n

Luxury brokerage firm HQ Marketing Partners started promoting the condos last summer — with the hook that buyers could custom design the units. <\/p>\n

When the market started to tank in the fall — and his gamble on a fringe neighborhood didn’t pay off — developer Avi Shriki said he had to come up with a Plan B. <\/p>\n

“When the market went south, we knew we had to do something different,” said Shriki, 44. “With the market being the way it is you have to be creative.” <\/p>\n

This spring, Shriki signed a 10-year contract with the Bushwick Economic Development Group to turn the building into a homeless shelter. <\/p>\n

Shriki wouldn’t say how much he gets paid — but he said he jumped at the chance to get people in his building. <\/p>\n

“At least we still own the building and we are paying our mortgage, so that’s good,” said Shriki. “The outcome is not as bad as some people I know who had to surrender the whole building to the bank.” <\/p>\n

City pays $90 a night <\/p>\n

The city is paying Bushwick Economic Development Corp. $90 a night for each of the apartments, about $2,700 a month — a figure that also covers social services, housing help and job counseling designed to get families back on their feet.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The developers in similiarly overbuilt Long Island City should take notice — some of these rentals are way under $2700<\/a> . . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . then they move in the homeless shelter. Buried lede — at $2700 a month, developers everywhere should be volunteering to convert their bad investments into shelters: City officials said the condos — which couldn’t attract buyers in the fizzled housing market — are part of an effort to help an “unprecedented” number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,4,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follow_the_money","category-real_estate","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4932,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}