Brooklyn – Center of the world: The most sought after place to live is experiencing growing pains - Daniel Bollinger

Daniel Bollinger, Azad Property Group

As I stated in my last report, “Brooklyn is the most popular borough in the entire world.” In my last report I stated it, this month I have some numbers to prove it.

First and foremost, Brooklyn is leading not only New York but the rest of the United States in the construction of new apartments. From a Forbes report Brooklyn is slated to gain six thousand plus apartments in 2016. To measure this increase only 979 apartments came to market this year in Brooklyn; that is a 620% increase. The second statistic that reinforces that Brooklyn is the most desirable of boroughs to live in now is the fact that the median sale price of a Brooklyn home hit an all-time high in the third quarter of this year. That median price being $676,250 or 15% higher than the same time last year. And thirdly, Brooklyn is the only borough whose median sale price surpassed the previous high set before the financial collapse of 2008. To put this in perspective, Brooklyn has exceeded the median sale prices by 25% while Manhattan and Queens are still percentage points below their highs set in 2007.

These figures show just how popular Brooklyn has become. And as Brooklyn has become the most sought after place to live and be, so is Brooklyn experiencing some growing pains. Some of these growing pains can be named with terms such as: gentrification, displacement, affordable housing, rezoning, and up-zoning. We do not want to lose the cultural panache that has made Brooklyn the place to be. We are living in times where we can solve these growing pains in ways that benefit all who live in and call Brooklyn their home. But we have to work together and come up with solutions with “outside of the box,” idea -based thinking.

I want to point out a mistake that is currently taking place. Mayor DeBlasio has recently implemented an experimental building model for some affordable housing sites throughout the city. One of these experimental sites involves the Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene (which I spoke of in my last article). The plan is to “infill” the Ingersoll Houses with more housing, 100% affordable housing infill. This is a huge mistake. If you read the police blotter for the 88^th precinct in the past few months you will see there have been multiple murders at the Ingersoll Houses including a 76 year old man. A resident of Ingersoll houses was arrested for a shooting death of a 16-year-old boy that occurred at the Applebee’s on Flatbush Ave. Two more Ingersoll Houses residents were arrested for shooting at police officers under the BQE. The list goes on and on. And we’re going to make these housing complexes denser with “infilling” construction? This is a mistake. We may provide more housing with this construction but it is not the quality housing that Brooklyn is capable of.

Infilling an area like this is going to increase crime and decrease the quality of life for all the residences in and around Fort Greene. We can build a zillion affordable housing units and even put them on Madison and Park Aves. in Manhattan, but if there is no opportunity for improvement in the quality of lives for the residents of those housing units the problems of homelessness, affordable housing, and crime are only going to increase in the future. I am not the only one who realizes this. You can see this clearly in the fact that 13 out of the 17 Brooklyn Community Boards voted down mayor DeBlasio’s proposals for rezoning communities all across Brooklyn. And for good reason. These community boards want to retain the quality of life of their residents. I agree with these community boards. We want ideas that improve the quality of life of all residents.

I will give mayor DeBlasio some credit for his recent three billion investment in his new initiative entitled, “Supportive Housing,” where more than just new units are in line for construction but will also include services like medical care and substance abuse counseling. Though it is a good idea it still just barely skims the surface of some of the problems that we have to right for Brooklyn to not only be the most popular borough in the world, but the best borough in the world.

I can’t say that I can solve all of Brooklyn’s problems in relation to affordable housing, crime, gentrification, and so forth...but I do have a much better solution for improving the lives of Brooklynites in and around Fort Green. NYREJ doesn’t give me enough of a word count to put it all in this article Mr. DeBlasio, so I am going to have to ask you to contact me so that we can discuss my ideas over lunch sometime. Please halt any more infilling projects and don’t allocate any of this $3 billion until we have a chance to speak.

Daniel Bollinger is an associate at Azad Property Group, New York, N.Y.