More and more rental buildings going with 80/20 program


Gary Jacob, executive vice president of Glennwood Management and the Emerald Green

Developers are increasingly including affordable units within luxury
rental buildings as part of the 80/20 program, the New York Times reported.


Steven Spinola
, the president of the Real Estate
Board of New York, says at least six 80/20 projects are being planned
in Manhattan that will add some 1,500 affordable and rent-stabilized
apartments.

Previously, when
developers of market-rate residential buildings included affordable
housing in exchange for tax incentives, the affordable units were
often in another complex or even in another borough altogether. But in
2008, the city changed regulations in a way that made it almost
impossible for developers to include the affordable units outside the
luxury buildings.

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Newer buildings that are part of the 80/20 program include Emerald Green at 320 West 38th
Street, the Tribeca Green downtown, MiMA and Silver Towers on West 42nd
Street, and the Legacy on the Upper East Side.

To qualify for the program, developers must spread the affordable
units throughout the building so as not to segregate low-income
renters. “We find that there is a very good
social and economic mix,” said Gary Jacob, executive vice president of
Glenwood Management, the developer behind Emerald Green. “If you are
standing in the lobby watching people come in and out, I would
challenge you to tell who is who.”

Under the program, more than 80 percent of the apartments are rented
for market-rate prices and then are subject to rent stabilization
guidelines, and 20 percent are reserved for those making less than 50
percent of the area’s median income, which is usually around $80,000.
More than 20,000 rental apartments have been built under this program
over the years, 4,200 of them reserved for affordable housing.

Without
the program, it would be all but impossible to build new large-scale
rental buildings, developers say. “I do not believe you can build a
100 percent rental building in Manhattan where you do not do an
80/20,” Jacob said. [NYT]