Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced the opening of the Frances Goldin Senior Apartments, a 100 percent affordable project with 99 homes on Manhattan’s Lower East Side – while also marking the emotional homecoming of six New Yorkers displaced from their homes 50 years ago.
With a medical center, senior center, and job training services for young adults also planned for the building, 175 Delancey Street is the first of nine buildings that will open in the 1.9 million-square-foot Essex Crossing development. Previously known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal area, it is one of the largest renewal projects in New York’s history.
“I am delighted that long-displaced tenants who want to come home are finally coming home and that we are making good on a decades-old promise to revitalize this important corner of the Lower East Side – which epitomizes New York City’s immigrant roots. Welcome home, it’s about time!” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
After tenement housing in the area was demolished in 1965, re-development plans were sidelined for decades. Planning work, which started under the Bloomberg Administration, was taken over the finish line by the de Blasio Administration.
“As we push forward under our accelerated and expanded housing plan, we must put our seniors first. It is fitting that the first long-awaited housing development to rise on the Seward Park Urban Renewal site is for our city’s seniors, and named after Francis Goldin, a fierce champion for the community and for social justice. Today represents a homecoming for six residents who were displaced half a century ago, and a more secure, affordable future for more than 100 New Yorkers who will call Francis Goldin Senior Apartments home,” said Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer. “I want to thank the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, and all my colleagues across government for their partnership to provide critically needed affordable housing for those who helped build our great city.”
“Essex Crossing has been decades in the making, and today we celebrate the opening of the first of hundreds of affordable homes for people on the Lower East Side,” said New York City Economic Development Corporation President James Patchett. “This project is a key part of our efforts to build strong neighborhoods and good jobs for New Yorkers. We’re proud to have worked with HPD and Delancey Street Associates to deliver truly affordable homes for seniors.”
“The opening of Frances Goldin Apartments and the role it will play in providing affordable, safe housing for our seniors is a momentous first step in realizing the dream of Essex Crossing and the revival it is bringing to its Lower East Side neighborhood,” said New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas. “This project is exemplary of how Governor Cuomo is partnering with local governments and the private sector to combine housing with health services and commercial spaces to create a foundation for economic success, and make our communities a better place to live, work, and raise a family.”
So far six tenants, each of who were promised they would return, have moved into the Frances Goldin apartments. Eight other returning tenants will move into the Rollins, at 145 Clinton Street, when it opens later this year.
The building was financed in 2015 under the mayor’s Housing New York plan. The larger Essex Crossing development – with a total of 561 affordable homes – is part of the City’s Housing New York 2.0 plan to finance 300,000 affordable homes by 2026. The City has financed 87,557 affordable apartments since 2014.
“Major developments should deliver major community facilities, benefits, and investments in affordable housing,” said Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer. “I’m thrilled that this piece of the Essex Crossing project is bringing nearly a hundred new affordable units for seniors, medical facilities, and a new home for Grand Street Settlement to the neighborhood.”
About Frances Goldin Senior Apartments:
- 99 Affordable homes for seniors and named for housing advocate Frances Goldin.
- The homes are reserved for seniors with household incomes of $65,000 or less, with rents ranging from $396 to $1,254 a month.
- NYU Langone’s Joan H. and Preston Robert Tisch Center at Essex Crossing will open this summer.
- Grand Street Settlement, a not for profit focused on community services, will operate:
- A senior center.
- The GrandLo Café, a coffee shop that also provides job-training services for youth.
- Additional community facility space for nonprofits focused on job training
- The facilities will all open this year.
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