BY SAM SPOKONY | If Mayor de Blasio decides to rehash an infill plan to raise funds for the New York City Housing Authority, he may have to leave the Lower East Side’s Smith Houses off the list.
A week after de Blasio said he had abandoned former Mayor Bloomberg’s scheme to lease public housing land — including some at Smith Houses — to market-rate developers, but added that he would revisit such a plan if there is support from NYCHA residents, a tenant leader at the complex declared she and her residents would never back a new infill.
“Our reasons against it haven’t changed,” said Aixa Torres, the Smith Houses Tenants Association president, in a Feb. 15 phone interview. “The fact is that we would never support a land-lease project here.”
Aside from Bloomberg’s idea allowing 50-plus-story mostly luxury towers on the sites, which she called a “slap in the face,” Torres explained she’s still worried about the disastrous effects any large-scale construction could have on the structural integrity of her development’s aging buildings.
She stressed that 20 Catherine Slip and 180 South St. are still very vulnerable after being flooded by Hurricane Sandy, as well as suffering infrastructure damage from the city’s minor earthquake in 2011. Digging new foundations next to those sites could potentially aggravate those problems — especially because the cash-strapped Housing Authority has been notoriously slow in making many building repairs across the city.
“So, it’s not just about me saying no,” Torres added. “It’s about the safety and well-being of my residents — because we have a right to decent housing.”
The Smith Houses leader also said that, while she hasn’t yet actually met with the new Mayor’s Office to discuss the specific issue of any infill plan, she has “made these feelings very clear to members of his staff.”
Other East Village and L.E.S. developments included in the Bloomberg-era infill plan included Campos Plaza, Baruch Houses, LaGuardia Houses and Meltzer Tower. Bloomberg and former NYCHA boss John Rhea had hoped that the scheme would bring in around $50 million annually to close the authority’s budget gap and speed up overdue building repairs.
