The Dillon, SDS Procida Development Group’s 83-unit condo at 425 West 53rd Street, between Ninth and 10th avenues, officially opens for sales this week, with occupancy slated for next month. Meanwhile, the city celebrated hitting the 100,000 milestone for affordable housing units created or preserved since 2003, and Meltzer/Mandl was tapped to design Westrock Development’s planned affordable housing rental development at 920 Westchester Avenue in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood. SDS Procida Development Group has also sold out and closed all apartments in its be@william condominium at 90 William Street in the Financial District. Click here for more. TRD [more]

The number of New York City apartments available to low-income families has decreased dramatically over the past decade, and affordable housing advocates are urging the city to use its plentiful failed luxury development projects to reverse that trend. After reporting that there are 601 troubled condos in the city last month, the New York chapter of Right to the City, which fights against displacement of the urban poor, is arguing that these troubled properties be turned into affording housing. In Downtown Brooklyn, for example, the 246 new be@schermerhorn condos are 90 percent vacant and priced at $436,000 on average, the report said. Turning abandoned projects like those into government-subsidized homes for families earning less than $37,000 would help fight back against the loss of 198,370 city apartments they would have been able to afford between 2002 and 2008, advocacy groups say. Through the Housing Asset Renewal Program, the city has already pledged $20 million to convert condos to moderately priced housing, but some say the program’s income cap of $69,000 per year for a single person means it will not help the poorest of the city’s residents. [NYT]