By Gus Saltonstall
At the end of February, West Side Rag first reported that the Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corporation was planning to transform the Saint Agnes Residence building at 237 West 74th Street, between West End Avenue and Broadway, into 50 affordable and supportive units.
The proposal, which the Sisters of Charity presented to Community Board 7 on February 18, would have turned the 90 existing Single Room Occupancy (SRO) and short-term rental units for working women that already exist within the building into 50 studio apartments for low-income individuals and formerly homeless adults.
WSR can now report that the plan is no longer moving forward, as confirmed in an email to the Rag by Matthew Janeczko, the CEO and President of the Sisters of Charity Housing & Affiliates.
“Based on its due diligence, Sisters of Charity Housing determined that St. Agnes Residence was rent stabilized housing,” Janeczko wrote. “Based on this, we have decided to halt our development plans. We look forward to working with ownership, the City, and local stakeholders to ensure that this property remains rent stabilized into the future and ensures the current tenants can remain in place.”
When the Sisters of Charity presented the redevelopment proposal in February, which was planned to be completed in 2030, multiple members of the CB7 Housing and Preservation Committee brought up concerns about the current residents and whether every tenant would leave at the end of their lease, especially if the units were already rent-stabilized.
“This is at its core a displacement issue. St. Agnes is more than just a building,” a woman who currently lives at the Saint Agnes Residence said during a CB7 meeting in April about the issue. “It’s the proposed casualty of a future project. If you solve one policy problem by displacing the women who already live in a functioning home, you aren’t preserving housing. You are destroying current housing to build something new.”
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Next we can destroy earth as the expense for moving to mars. Great ideas folks!
It seems the right thing was done. Why would it ever have made sense to take a 90 unit building and eliminate 40 apartments? That’s less housing!
Maybe there is a legitimate need for low cost housing arrangements for people, like women who are employed or students? Maybe it doesn’t have to always be about housing what they like to call “formerly homeless people” but also about serving people who just need lower rent housing arrangements- like the SRO model. And preventing new people from becoming homeless? I admit there may be more to this story than is apparent to any of us but for a change it seems like the decision makers did the right thing. Using govt subsidies to displace one group for the purpose of housing another group in under market housing. And housing fewer people. SMH.
They were changing 90 temporary rooms into 50 permanent apartments.
If they were rent stabilized then they weren’t temporary
Except it turns out those were homes for people who weren’t necessarily living “temporarily”
Your headline is shockingly misleading.
Great news! It made no sense from the get-go. Was no one thinking of the women who already live there?
There is no money in developing rent stabilized housing.
Somehow, Mitchell-Lama managed to fill the bill for a while. A secure, affordable solution for middle-class professionals and working tenants.
If I am not mistaken, Mitchell-Lama required massive subsidies from taxpayers to be built and a continual annual subsidy from the taxpayers via reduced property taxes to function as a Mitchell-Lama property.
So?
I am not huge fan of landlords and developers as a general matter (though I understand their necessity and even agree that SOME development must be done). However, I agree that the headline here reads as unnecessarily anti-landlord/developer, since the issue is NOT as the headline suggests.
That said, that only thing that really matters is that “the right thing” was done here. To simply assume that rent-stabilized tenants would automatically leave at the end of their current leases, or suggest that the landlord should not offer further leases to them at that time, would be morally and ethically bankrupt.
Rent-stabilized tenants may not have an “absolute” right to new leases, but the (proper) “standard practice” is that new leases be offered when the current ones expire.
I am glad that these tenants will be able to remain in their units.
“It’s the proposed casualty of a future project. If you solve one policy problem by displacing the women who already live in a functioning home, you aren’t preserving housing. You are destroying current housing to build something new.”
Absolutely. Well said. Where were these individuals supposed to go? It seems to me people simply do not think things through anymore.
Displace people who are already living somewhere and don’t likely have the means to move anywhere else to create affordable housing that already exists?
Geez. And you wonder why there is a housing shortage when common sense doesn’t even prevail.
Please renovate and convert to market rate apartments.