Lawsuit: AY violates state constitution

The latest lawsuit to stop the Atlantic Yards project calls on a little-known and never-tested provision of the state constitution. The provision prevents an urban renewal project from receiving public subsidies if the project’s occupancy is not restricted to persons of low-income. Forest City Ratner’s development is supposed to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies and tax breaks, even though the proposed development includes thousands of market-rate housing units.