Reduce, reuse, recycle?

Approximately one in five properties in this city is vacant, or about eighteen thousand homes going to waste and often to ruin. Walk through the city and you will pass through a sobering number of neighbourhoods strewn with trash, neglect and apathy.

It is with some curiosity, then, that I regard the news that the non-profit organization Heart of the City Neighborhoods has won a $1.5 million development grant from New York’s Housing Trust Fund Corporation for the construction of eight new rental units in the heart of a city. That comes to $187,500 per unit.

Consider that the median sale price of a home in the region is less than a hundred thousand and that prices in the city are lower still. Homes with no fundamental problems can be found for as little as twenty or thirty thousand at city auctions and in distress sales from mortgage holders.

Construction costs only reflect a portion of the ultimate costs. Project development will be done in conjunction with several government agencies including the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the New York State Housing Trust Fund Corporation, the Urban Renewal Agency. Securing the grant was a five year process, which doubtless represents countless hours of time spend by the organization, the housing trust and district assemblyman Sam Hoyt, who is said to have championed the project.

In the end who really profits from a housing project the city doesn’t need and the residents don’t want? Politicians, bureaucrats and builders.