NYC Construction STILL at all time high
From Metro New York
Housing permits up, but what’s the cost?
City becoming ‘gated community,’ advocates charge
by amy zimmer / metro new york
FEB 6, 2007
MANHATTAN. As if further proof was needed of the city’s construction boom, there’s new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2006, 30,927 residential housing construction permits were issued here, down slightly from the 31,599 permits issued in 2005. Those years represent the highest numbers of building permits for privately owned residential units issued here since 1972.
The city has seen the highest five-year total — 127,425 units — since the construction figures became available in 1965, city officials announced yesterday. They attribute the recent surge to the Bloomberg administration’s changes in the building and tax codes and its series of rezonings — transforming industrial or manufacturing areas, for example, into residential ones.
“The Buildings Department has been able to satisfy the demand for permits by making it easier to facilitate compliant housing development,” Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said in a statement. “By introducing technology to streamline our procedures, we have made the permit application process more transparent and efficient.”
The Dept. of Buildings, however, has come under fire by City Council, which voted last week to crack down on architects and engineers who falsely certify building application plans are compliant with building code and zoning restrictions. Residents from several neighborhoods had complained crooked architects have been able to skirt regulations by self-certifying their own plans.
But that’s not the only concern the boom has raised for many New Yorkers.
The city “is basically becoming a gated community — the only low-income people here are those who are clinging to rent-stabilized housing, and that rent-stabilized is endangered by this development ‘gold rush,’” said Rebecca Moore, an organizer for the Ludlow-Orchard Community Organization on the Lower East Side. “Landlords want to get longtime tenants out, knock a building down and build a luxury high-rise. Who would have ever thought any wealthy people would want to live on the Lower East Side? The hotel on Allen Street, and Blue building on Norfolk both mystify me.”