February 2010

  • Housing, Transportation, and Workforce Development: A Coordinated Attack

    The Center for Housing Policy and the Metropolitan Planning Council released a pair of policy briefs this week that promote improved coordination as related to housing, transportation, and workforce policies. The briefs represent the work done in a series of…

  • Rivlin, SEIU’s Stern, Picked for Debt Commission

    President Obama announced today that it had chosen SEIU’s Stern to serve on his deficit commission, formally dubbed the “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” Stern, will serve on the 18-member commission that also includes Alice Rivlin, the former…

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    Greening Indy’s Redevelopment District

    About two miles from downtown Indianapolis is the city’s designated smart growth revitalization district, a distressed area with many vacant properties, including a largely abandoned industrial corridor along a rail line, but also good bones for renewal including a resilient population, a good street grid, some stable residential blocks, and prospects for a new, state-of-the-art transit line in the old rail corridor. I spent a few days there last fall as part of an AIA advisory team. I’ve been running a series on the neighborhood in my NRDC blog, summarizing what we saw and heard while there. In my most recent post, I offer some thoughts on what strategies might give redevelopment there the best chance of success as a smart, green model project. Achieving a path of sustainability in the district will be a challenge, and not just because of issues within the neighborhood. For example, Indianapolis as a whole is extraordinarily automobile-dependent: Of the nation’s 60 largest cities, it ranks 6th in the portion of its commuters who drive alone to work. In addition, disinvestment is a well-established pattern in Indiana: the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that an astonishing 94 percent of development in the state has been taking place on greenfields, outside of existing areas. (By comparison, in Oregon the portion is 52 percent; in Colorado, 62 percent.) more

  • Cooper Village & Stuyvesant Town: Can’t Quite Walk Away

    When Tishman Speyer Properities and Blackrock announced a few weeks back that they would default on their $3 billion mortgage loan, it looked as though the principal owners of New York City’s sprawling, 11,000-unit Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town would follow the national trend of simply walking away from their mortgage, ceding their loan to creditors. But walking away is apparently harder than they had anticipated. Reports surfaced yesterday that the owners had to pay roughly $90 million in back taxes before giving control over to lenders. According to Bloomberg News: Even in foreclosure, any property transfer in Manhattan requires payment of city and state taxes, and Tishman is negotiating with CWCapital, the special servicer for the senior debt, over who must pay them. Bloomberg quoted Rafael Cestero, New York City’s commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development: “The reality is they can’t just turn back the keys.” Tishman and Blackrock purchased the complexes, spread out over 80 acres of Manhattan’s East side and originally built in the 1940s as affordable housing for returning veterans, in 2005 for $5.4 billion — the largest residential real estate transaction in history. The sale sparked an immediate reaction from tenants and advocates, amid owners’ plans to raise rents, “evict illegal occupants and upgrade with amenities including a gym, concierge service and new gardens,” according to Bloomberg, in what was viewed as a threat to some of the last affordable, market-rate housing in Manhattan. Those efforts, however, were put to rest after tenants won a court challenge claiming that Tishmanhad wrongfully raised rents and deregulated apartments after receiving special tax breaks. more

  • Despite Missing Out On NSP2, There’s Still Much Work To Do in Chicago Suburbs

    Civic leaders and planners in the south and west Chicago suburbs were disappointed to learn that the regional collaborative proposals submitted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) supporting their work and featured in the current issue of Shelterforce…

  • Modifying the Modification Program (HAMP)

    The administration last week announced changes to its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) after falling short of its goals of staving off foreclosures by way of mortgage modifications, with some saying the program has actually hurt the economic recovery because…