Affordable Housing Developers Want to Ditch Mandatory Parking Spots
(DNAINFO) Amy Zimmer and Danielle Tcholakian — At King Garden Seniors, a 66-unit affordable housing complex for the 62-and-over set in Brownsville, the building’s 15-spot parking lot is nearly empty.
Only two households have cars and pay the $10 monthly fee to keep them in the lot at the building, which is one block from the No. 3 train at Rockaway Avenue.
Yet under a city zoning regulation, Dunn Development, which opened the building last year, was forced to build the lot, according to the firm’s principal Martin Dunn.
Dunn is hopeful he’ll be able to change that as part of the de Blasio administration’s “Zoning for Quality and Affordability” plan, which would eliminate the requirement for off-street parking in newly-developed affordable and new and existing senior housing in “transit rich” areas that are generally located half a mile from a subway station.
“The elimination of the parking requirement is absolutely critical,” said Dunn, whose firm specializes in affordable housing.
“It will enable us to do more units and more open space,” he said, noting that the cost savings could be big for both the developers as well as the government since “the same subsidy that’s used to build the housing is used to build the parking.”