The Daily Dirt: Is it fair for Greenwich Village to get more housing?

Village Preservation is up to its old tricks.

The savvy anti-development group was called out this week by the Department of City Planning for a piece of propaganda that implicitly demands Greenwich Village be spared from new housing.

“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that simply building more housing, no matter what kind or how expensive, brings prices down for everyone,” the preservationist group posted on its website. “It’s worth considering then which parts of the city are in fact providing more, or less, than their fair share of housing for New Yorkers. The maps below show this quite clearly.”

The group then posted a graphic showing housing density for each of the city’s 59 community districts:

However, the only thing the map “quite clearly” shows is housing density. It does not show which neighborhoods provide their “fair share” of housing.

To gauge fairness, we must also consider mass-transit access and walkability. Greenwich Village is among the most transit-rich neighborhoods on the planet, and everything residents need is within walking distance. It can absorb more housing without damaging quality of life, save for the temporary inconvenience of construction.

The low-density districts on the map, by contrast, are transit deserts.

The people behind Village Preservation think of themselves as liberals, but in fact are quite conservative: They advocate for the built environment to remain as it is.

Their missive about density sounds a lot like conservatives’ argument about taxes — that because high earners pay more than poor people, they are contributing more than their fair share.

Lest anyone think of it as right-wing, the group says what New York really needs to build is not market-rate but affordable housing. It’s clever spin, but a cop-out. Most New Yorkers support building affordable housing, and the city and state already spend billions of dollars doing just that.

The real question is how best to improve affordability. Building affordable housing alone is not the answer. Undeniably, new housing for all income levels and all types of households is needed.

If housing is not created for people in a given demographic, they stay in their current homes (rather than free them up for others) or outbid lower earners for existing housing, fueling displacement and homelessness. The city’s vacancy rate is at a record low of 1.4 percent.

Could the government build more affordable housing than it does? Of course, by raising taxes or taking money from other programs.

But privately funded and government projects combined can produce more than government projects alone. And there is room in all neighborhoods for more housing. Especially in Greenwich Village.

The downside to increasing density in the Village is that Village Preservation members will have to crane their necks a degree or two more to look at the tops of buildings. That is something real New Yorkers never do anyway, lest they appear to be tourists.

What we’re thinking about: Will New Yorkers who were able to buy co-ops at huge discounts because of pending ground-lease rent hikes have their cake and eat it too? Email me at eengquist@therealdeal.com.

A thing we’ve learned: Check out “falcon cam” at 55 Water Street and you might see a peregrine falcon tending to her newly hatched chicks. The world’s fastest creatures, which at one point had disappeared from the eastern half of the U.S., have made a miraculous comeback since eggshell-thinning pesticide DDT was banned in 1972. The raptors now nest at the top of New York City bridges and skyscrapers, including Retirement Systems of Alabama’s 55 Water Street. The owner says the 52-story FiDi tower is the largest office building in the city at 4 million square feet. The property is debt-free, so the owner hasn’t been charging the falcon family rent.

Elsewhere…

— Google’s headquarters at the redeveloped St. John’s Terminal is opening with a small percentage of the affordable housing that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio said it would have, The City reported. But developers Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Group were not obligated to build the housing, and ultimately built what would have been allowed had the site not been rezoned, noted City Council member Erik Bottcher. The development did fund a major upgrade of Pier 40 and a subway station elevator.

— Lines outside housing court are routine again, City Limits reporter Emma Whitford tweeted from Brooklyn.

— Food prices in the New York metro area have increased only 1.6 percent in the past year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Nationwide, grocery prices relative to wages are back to where they were in 2019 and have gotten progressively cheaper since 1991.

Daily Dirt Data

Residential: The priciest residential sale Wednesday was $6.85 million for a 2,700-square-foot condominium unit at 515 West 18th Street in Chelsea. Corcoran Sunshine had the listing. 

Commercial: The largest commercial sale of the day was $13 million for two adjacent properties at 4040-4056 Third Avenue in the Claremont section of the Bronx. 

New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $24.5 million for Unit 6 of 66 Ninth Avenue. Jessica C. Cambell of NestSeekers has the listing. 

Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was for a 37,000-square-foot, 36-unit, multifamily building at 177-6 Wexford Terrace in Jamaica. Angelo Ng of Angelo Ng & Anthony Ng Architects filed the permit.

— Matthew Elo