In New York, Many Apartments In The Affordable Housing Policy "were slated for middle-income occupants"

See At $3,700 a Month, ‘Affordable’ Apartments Go Begging by GINIA BELLAFANTE of The NY Times. Excerpt:

"Ten percent of the apartments are meant for those with “extremely low” incomes (a family of three earning about $26,000 a year or less, for instance) and about 15 percent are for those in the second category (a family of the same size with an annual income in the range of $26,000 to $43,000). This leaves a vast majority of “affordable” apartments in the hands of those who earn anywhere from 51 to 165 percent of the median income for the metropolitan area, or from $43,000 to upward of $141,000 for a family of three. Advocates maintain that the balance ought to be shifted to those further down the income chain and that the greatest need exists among those families making about $35,000.

The fate of a building at 535 Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn, would suggest that they are right. The building was developed with all 300 of its units designated as affordable and available to prospective tenants through a city housing lottery. Half the apartments, though, were slated for middle-income occupants, and although the lottery received more than 93,000 applications, an inadequate number of qualified tenants in the highest income brackets has left 80 apartments empty. The developer, Greenland Forest City Partners, is now advertising them via StreetEasy, social media and so on.

As it happens, 535 Carlton delivers a lot in terms of Instagram friendliness. Designed by CookFox Architects, whose work includes luxury condominiums in the West Village, it looks like the kind of place where everyone is supposed to arrive by Dutch cargo bike and ascend to well-stocked kitchens to make momentous decisions about whether or not tonight’s grain salad ought to be topped with a poached farm egg or something more adventurous. There is a gym, a playroom and a lounge, but using those spaces requires additional fees, which is likely to leave most residents getting their cardio by running up and down the stairs from the lobby. To qualify for a currently available three-bedroom apartment — the rent for which is $3,716 a month — a family of five would have to have a household income of between $129,000 and $170,000.

Logic, or perhaps a pleasant knowledge deficit about the mechanics of New York real estate, would tell us that to fill the vacant spaces, the remaining apartments should simply be offered to people making a lot less money. (The city faced a similar predicament with Gotham West, an affordable development in Hell’s Kitchen that did not attract enough qualified high earners through a lottery; in that case, 224 of 432 middle-income apartments were leased through conventional means.) The way that these public-private partnerships are structured and underwritten, however, the revenue from more expensive units helps offset the rents of those apartments intended for lower-income tenants (some one-bedroom apartments at 535 Carlton, for example, cost as little as $589 a month). Developers can’t just lower the rents to accommodate demand and keep the projects financially viable."