The Problem With Mamdani’s Harlem Affordable Housing Project

The groundbreaking on Wednesday for Timbale Terrace, a project by Emanuel Kokinakis’ Mega Group and Dan Kent’s Lantern Organization, was a perfect event for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to attend. It’s a model for what he wants to build: 100 percent affordable housing on city land.

But is it a perfect model? Far from it.

Mamdani’s goal is to build 200,000 units in 10 years. Don’t hold your breath. Because the city’s processes are so cumbersome, Timbale Terrace took 10 years just to break ground and won’t open until 2028.

It took five years for the city to pick a developer and another five years for the environmental review, rezoning and financing, “an incredibly slow pace that’s not appropriate to the urgency of this crisis,” said Annemarie Gray of pro-housing group Open New York.

If all projects took 13 years as this one will, for Mamdani to meet his deadline, he would have had to start the process for 200,000 units three years ago.

The mayor doesn’t even have a City Planning director yet, but maybe his new chief technology officer can build him a time machine.

Time is one problem. Another is money. Timbale Terrace is costing $255 million for 341 apartments, which is $750,000 per unit — typical for affordable housing, but 50 percent more than Mamdani aims to spend. (The price tag includes an NYPD garage and a 21,000-square-foot cultural space, but the land was free.)

A third issue is that city agencies are generally reluctant to give up their property for housing, as it did here. That, to me, is a greater concern than what Alicia Glen, the former deputy mayor, said at a TRD Salon Series interview, which is that the city no longer owns much buildable land.

It has some. CUNY has more than 80 acres of surface parking, and every NYCHA campus has underused or unusable space. Some public schools have staff parking — a perquisite, not a prerequisite. Timbale Terrace is replacing an NYPD lot.

Putting housing on such land always involves a fight. The Related Companies’ project at the Elliott-Chelsea Houses in Manhattan is a case in point.

The NYPD is already so desperate for its beloved parking that cops routinely plant their personal vehicles and patrol cars on sidewalks. The police don’t even like to give up their impound lots.

A fourth shortcoming of Timbale Terrace is something politicians avoid discussing: the downside of concentrating poverty.

Although Mamdani said at the groundbreaking that “by building deeply affordable homes across the five boroughs, we are making New York City a place families can afford to stay and thrive,” children in such homes typically don’t thrive.

When surrounded by poor role models and folks without social capital, it’s hard to see pathways to success.

As Eva Chan, who helped create the Harlem East Block Association and owns a three-unit rental building across from the Timbale Terrace site, told the New York Times, the city consistently places projects for low-income and homeless people in East Harlem. I’m no fan of NIMBYs, but she has a point.

Mamdani, like Chan, believes wealthier neighborhoods should get more affordable housing. But they almost never do.

It’s not just because the resistance would be severe. It’s that the economics of building affordable housing in rich areas rarely work. Where in Tribeca could Timbale Terrace conceivably go?

Unfortunately, project economics can’t factor in the long-term benefits that low-income children reap from growing up in high-opportunity neighborhoods, with peers who have high aspirations and lots of connections.

Harvard economist Raz Chetty just published another brilliant study about these gains. For details, check out this Planet Money podcast or this Atlantic story.

I emailed those links on Feb. 15 to Layla Law-Gisiko, a leading opponent of Related’s mixed-income project in West Chelsea, to see if they might change her opinion. She hasn’t replied. I’m not holding my breath.