Fighting Overcrowding in Sunset Park

A Brief Overview of the Issue

Overcrowding has been an issue in NYC since the dumbbell tenements were marketed to working-class immigrants. Sunset Park’s brand is not much different. The neighborhood on the west end of Brooklyn contains 126,000 people and 38,000 available housing units. 34,000 children live in Sunset Park, but the neighborhood only has about seven schools (District 15 has more, but they lie outside the neighborhood boundaries). [1] The student-teacher ratio for the district is 14:1, higher than the NYC Metro area ratio of 13:1; the district also has only 27,000 students attending schools, meaning many Sunset Park children must be leaving the neighborhood to attend school. [2] According to the Furman Center, it’s the second most overcrowded neighborhood in the city, and the issue does not show any signs of halting.

Niche’s map reports seven schools in Sunset Park; NYC DoE reports five.
https://k12.niche.com/d/new-york-city-geographic-district-no-15-ny/

Solutions for Housing

Sunset Park is in need of more affordable housing to help maintain its large working class population, and the consideration and implementation of many techniques to help add this to the community must be considered in order to effectively plot out a strategy to make such a resource available. Much in line with the ambitious Affordable Housing Plan, our group believes that in conjunction with other techniques, the city must allow for rezoning of neighborhood sectors in order to allow for the construction of taller building than are currently built. Developers may then freely add stories to existing constructions without restriction.

A lot of De Blasio’s plan to make sure that these new units be reserved for affordable housing revolves around the implementation of a Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning policy, which forces developers to reserve a certain percentage of their units specifically for affordable housing. Developers, however, are incentivized to reserve these and other newly constructed units for the purpose of affordable housing via tax breaks, as well as the proposed government subsidized building optimization of energy systems which would in effect make the buildings more environmentally friendly but also cut energy costs by an estimated 30 percent. Financial awards as well as government subsidized construction would be further facilitated by the city wide budget increase of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development up to $2.5 billion.

The success of this approach relies on the city’s ability to negotiate the construction of new stories with developers aggressively, in a way which proves to be financially sustainable for landowners and a solution to the current populations needs. In order to supplement this rezoning, known as upzoning, can come in the shape of abandoned area repurposement. By using government funding to convert underutilized and unused constructions and land for the sake of affordable housing development. In order to further support and finance the development of space into potential housing, the support of non-for profit organization can and should be called upon in order to work in conjunction with community efforts to facilitate government expansion of affordable housing. Organizations such as New Destiny Housing, who are responsible for the independent development of several affordable housing constructions, whose purpose is not only to provide affordable housing but to also support developing and struggling families through direct access to support programs, can be called upon to consult, oversee, or take on the neighborhoods expansion in conjunction with the government in order to expand on the resources and expertise available to combat the problem .

Possible Issues and Solutions: Housing

Upzoning seems like the perfect solution, build more stories on top of existing buildings, creating more space for people to live in and solving overcrowding. However, it is not that simple. Rezoning takes time since: the process begins with proposing the idea to Community Board 7 and ends with the government’s approval, which is not guaranteed. Furthermore, some buildings cannot be rezoned. Making them taller would block the famous view of the city, from which Sunset Park obtained its name. Most importantly, there have been issues that arose in the past when Sunset Park was rezoned back in 2009. The city sought to upzone streets and downzone side streets. Naturally, more supply leads to lower prices directly making more affordable housing. However, this was proved to be wrong. While the city funded the creation of 94,000 units in 100 neighborhoods (72,000 of them being low income), almost double that amount of affordable and low income housing deceased. This is so because affordability is issued to households making 80% or less of the area income of the metropolitan area and not the neighborhood or entire city. This results in the program becoming affordable only for those with relatively high incomes. Therefore, newly constructed affordable housing would not be beneficial for lower-income families. Of course, the residents have argued against the city’s plans but have failed to change their mind. In April of 2009, it was confirmed that the Department of City Planning made no changes to the plan they proposed. While community members made their arguments and stated their concerns about rezoning, as it pertains to affordable housing, the City did not take it into consideration. This shows that attempting to rezone Sunset Park once again would be a tedious process and is not guaranteed to be successful.

Fortunately, there is a solution to promote affordable housing with upzoning; inclusionary zoning. This technique uses land use regulation to link development of market-rate housing units to the creation of affordable housing [1]. However, this only works if the market-rate units produce enough income to make the entire development financially attractive. Under a voluntary inclusionary zoning policy, a developer receives a density bonus for participating. But, a developer elects to participate only if the benefit received from the bonus outweighs the cost of rent, as a result, restricting the required number of affordable units. Furthermore, according to the 421-a tax exemption, developers and owners of rental and condominium buildings with at least four units in New York City are qualified for tax exemption. But,only if he/she provides 20 percent of those units as on site affordable housing (affordable at 60 percent of area median income if no other government subsidies are used).

http://furmancenter.org/files/NYUFurmanCenter_CreatingAffHousing_March2015.pdf

Solutions for Schools

Currently, there are plans to build around seven new schools in the Sunset Park area, with the most immediate being a 676-seat K-8 school on Third Avenue in Sunset Park. [1] The building of new schools is, however, a lacking solution to the issue of overcrowding. Currently, the Third Avenue school is planned to open some time in 2019, at which point it is estimated that an additional 8,000 students will be in need of classroom seats. [2] The ratio of students to available seats is already far larger than it should be – take P.S. 176, which is attempting to seat around 175% of the students it was built for – and will continue to grow at an alarming rate if additional solutions aren’t explored.

One common solution to overcrowding in schools is to introduce a staggered schedule which keeps the school open for longer hours with multiple sets of students entering and exiting the building at different times of day. Lockport Township High School in Chicago has implemented this system of staggered schedules on an exaggerated level, offering classes which start as early as 6:45 AM. Although this extreme approach has been met with some controversy, school principal Brett Gould believes that many students “like it and are having great success with it”. [3] Schools in Brunswick County, North Carolina, have also taken to using a staggered schedule system, although with start times closer to the more traditional 8:00 AM. They have also introduced before and after-school activity programs which help working parents who might otherwise have difficulty scheduling pick-ups and drop-offs on a staggered schedule. [4]

Possible Issues and Solutions: Schools

As mentioned above, there are plans in the works for new schools. The problem is space: Sunset Park doesn’t have much more of it. The proposed school in Sunset Park will be in an empty lot right next to one of the most dangerous avenues in the neighborhood. Traffic on 3rd Ave is incredibly hazardous, as much of it is large trucks barreling through at high speeds. Special dispensations, like pedestrian over- or underpasses or traffic guards, would have to be made to protect the young students crossing the street to get to school. Naturally, this costs money, meaning the entire project will be more expensive than the initial plan.

On funding, our proposal redistributes the budget. Inevitably, programs will have slashed budgets – programs that are still integral to properly maintaining the community. There will undoubtedly be issues with this measure. We must take the stance, however, that education is a necessary and worthy aspect of society, and the severe lack of the service in Sunset Park needs to be addressed.

The staggered schedules could also be problematic. As many families in Sunset Park have working parents, trying to get younger children to school at later hours is inconvenient at best. Parents cannot let their kids go to school on their own, either. In other districts who have implemented the staggered scheduling, before- and after-school programs at the school were created to complement the program. The same solution would work for Sunset Park. Such a program might increase the burden on staff and staff budgets, but it would ensure that children were given a safe space to play and work until their parents were able to retrieve them from school.

Funding Our Plan

As with all urban planning proposals, there is a lot to be said about how this project will be funded. We plan to use three main avenues of funding: government subsidies, grants and loans, and other areas of the community board budget. Fortunately the government provides a substantial amount of funding for upzoning and Mayor DeBlasio’s policies are very supportive. The city gives bonuses to developers for making a percentage of their developments affordable; however this percentage stands at an unimpressive minimum of 20%. We plan to petition the state government to give increased bonuses if our developers make the new building additions have a minimum of 35% affordable housing units. Currently, this practice is voluntary; however, Mayor DeBlasio is planning to make the program mandatory in certain areas of the city. We plan to support the mayor’s policy in any way possible and to request that Sunset Park be a “mandatory designated area.” Developers can also utilize city and state loan programs, tax-exempt bonds, low-income housing tax credits, or property tax exemptions to finance these units. We would like to lobby the state government to require greater than 20% affordable housing for the tax exemption. Lastly, we plan to utilize cross-subsidizing.” This is a method in which the market rate units are priced so that they earn enough income to make the entire development financially attractive. [1]

We also plan to apply for a government-housing grant during each fiscal year. The MacArthur foundation, an independent foundation that fights for human rights, global conservation, and to build greater cities, is also a great source for housing grants and loans. [2] The New york State Affordable Housing Corporation: Affordable Home Ownership Development Program and the Supportive Housing Loan program provide grants and loans for certain housing projects. [3] [4] As for our last source of funding we plan to rearrange the community board’s budget to allocate funds for our project. Anything that does not fall under the category of sanitation, safety/security, disabled accessibility, schools/learning centers, and housing will have its funds decreased. [5] This might seem unjust; however it is only temporary and does not take funds away from important areas of the budget.

There are many government subsidies for schools. Grants are administered by the New York State Education Department and by the U.S. Department of Education. [6] The community board could also request that the state government increase the budget or allocate funds for building expansion and extending hours of operation. We also plan to get in contact with the Charles Hayden Foundation, which is a great source of grants and organizational connections. [7] Community board budget funds will also be allocated to the education portion of our plan.

Shaping the Future of NYC

Owen Toews (instructor) – Spring 2015 – Macaulay Honors College, Brooklyn College.

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