FAQ

Low-income to extremely low-income seniors, including 30% formerly homeless seniors, with services available for LGBTQ seniors.

Applications for the apartments at Haven Green will be open to individuals aged 62 and over and their families who meet the low-income requirements. Starting about a year into construction, applications will be available on NY Housing Connect to enter the lottery for the building. You will also be able to submit a paper application, and the development team will provide multi-lingual services to assist interested parties in filling out and submitting the application.

All units are affordable to individuals or families with incomes at or below 60% AMI and are 100% affordable. AMI, or Area Median Income, is a statistic generated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for purposes of determining the eligibility of applicants for certain federal housing programs. HUD determines AMI on an annual basis for each metropolitan area and non-metropolitan county, making adjustments for household size and other factors. (Example: In 2017, the New York City 60% AMI for a family of four was $57,240.)

Yes. NYC Habitat and local partner organizations will offer community services out of the ground floor of the building and in the accessible green space. The tenants will also enjoy access to other senior services provided by RiseBoro and partners.

HPD and the development team, which has a 50% non-profit ownership partnership, are committed to long-term affordability in this project. The term of the regulatory agreement is 60 years, as is standard for HPD’s public sites. The loan that HPD will provide to the development team to support this project is structured to require a large balloon payment at the end of the term, and the project’s tax exemption will expire at the end of the regulatory agreement, structurally incentivizing and ensuring extension of affordability far beyond the initial regulatory term.

First, there is a participatory garden design process including an anonymous survey that welcomes community residents and garden users. Here you can share your stories from the old garden and your hopes for the future garden. Your feedback will be incorporated into the eventual design of the new garden. After the garden is designed and reopened, there will be a host of programs and events that will be available to the public and your involvement is encouraged! There will also be an opportunity for community members to contribute to the stewardship of this publicly accessible space.

HPD received and embraced community response to plans for the site. In understanding its significance to the neighborhood, HPD issued a competitive request for proposals that would balance the dire need for affordable housing with the legitimate desire for open space. There are very few City sites in Community Board 2, and even fewer that are feasible for housing development because of their size or their current use. More importantly, over the past decade, less than 120 affordable units have been developed in the neighborhood.

After evaluating numerous submissions, the City selected Haven Green. Our team felt that submitting a proposal would be the best way to ensure that the site was developed in line with the community’s needs and desires. The majority of new developments in lower Manhattan have been market rate and there has been a city-wide loss of rent-stabilized units. We share the city’s mission to meet the growing need for affordable housing for seniors and services for the LGBTQ community.

The current site design preserves nearly 16,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space. Though the site will be closed during the course of construction, the new green space will be reopened when construction is complete. The development team is committed to including the garden community in the landscape design and the programming of the new garden space. We hope that the new space will welcome the same variety of activities as the current space, plus more.

The garden will be stewarded by Habitat NYC and RiseBoro. Habitat’s A Brush with Kindness and RiseBoro’s Bushwick Cooks will welcome and cultivate community participation in the planting, gardening, stewardship, and decoration of the garden. Habitat and RiseBoro will work with Community Stakeholders to develop a group to support community stewardship of this space and register it with Green Thumb. RiseBoro will manage the property and will handle any other general maintenance tasks that are needed on the grounds, such as trash and snow removal.

Yes. Though this programming has not yet been decided upon, the development team is committed to a garden space that can fill this role. If you currently operate or attend public events or programs at the garden, we want to hear from you! The ideal outcome is that current programs and amenities can be preserved or replicated, and enhanced.

Currently the public access to the space is very limited. The Haven Green Team has committed to public hours of operation: 7am-7pm from April 15-October 31, and sun to dusk from November 1 to April 14. Exceptions include: closures necessary for maintenance and/or emergency conditions; and accommodations for special events.

Yes. On the ground floor there will be a few commercial spaces, as well as community facility space. Part of the community facility space will be accessible for public meetings and for the collaboration of non-profits in the neighborhood.

We have not determined the sizes of the commercial spaces or the tenants yet but we recognize the importance of selecting tenants who contribute to the fabric and stabilization of the neighborhood.

Public review including multiple public meetings and participatory design sessions took place throughout 2018-2019. The City Council, City Planning Commission, Borough President, and Mayor approved the project in the Summer of 2019. Community Engagement is open, ongoing, and welcome as is the previously mentioned participatory design survey.

Construction and remaining predevelopment processes will commence upon resolution of existing litigation.

For a complete timeline, click here.