Should Clinton Hill Townhome Have Been Affordable Rentals?

An unauthorized plaque slapped on an unsold two-family project in Clinton Hill gets high marks for creativity but a failing grade for economics.

At least, that was my first impression.

The plaque, affixed to the strikingly new building at 272 Greene Avenue, reads like something from an art museum:

New York City Housing Crisis, 2025

New apartment, fully furnished, warmly lit, no inhabitants

This piece asks us to consider the tension between NYC’s historically low apartment vacancy rate (1.6%) and the price of this vacant duplex ($5.25 million).

Initially, I thought the plaque attack was saying that affordable housing, rather than two overpriced luxury homes, should have been built. On reflection, I see that it merely asks us to think.

Okay. I’m game. (Thinking — except for wishful kind — is rare in New York housing politics.)

But first, a fact check: The Greene Avenue project is a duplex, triplex and parking spot, the New York Times reported, and its asking price is now $4.85 million. That’s the first economics lesson here: If no one bids, the price will fall. Ultimately, a buyer, not the seller (Swiss architect Inès Lamunière), will determine the sale price.

Five million bucks is plausible, given what people are paying for homes and parking spots in Brownstone Brooklyn. But that’s not the issue raised by the anonymous plaque creator.

Rather, it’s whether apartments should have been built at the site, which is at the southwest corner of Classon and Greene avenues.

My first step was to call Wilson Parry, CEO of PropertyScout, to ask if apartments were even possible.

“You could put four units there,” he said. But not when the project was built.

“This lot did not meet the minimum size for multifamily development until the City of Yes passed in December,” Parry said. “It was restricted to two units until then.”

So the developer could build no more than a two-family. That is still two more units than what was there: an empty lot (and before that, a gas station), purchased for $1,166,400 in 2016.

The bottom line: If the community really wanted to make a dent in the housing shortage, it would have rezoned the corner lot for at least eight units, two of which would have been affordable under city law. Or maybe 16, with four affordable.

Can someone put that on a plaque? The original one has disappeared.