(4) PARTIAL TAX EXEMPTION-Tax exemption, similar to that granted to redevelopment company projects such ស Stuyvesant Town and Riverton, is granted to Authority pro- jects built under the City program. Payments by the Authority to the City in lieu of taxes are about equal to the taxes assessed on the property before acquisition, but improvements are exempt for the period the bonds are outstanding.
Two advantages result from the housing-without-cash- subsidy program:
First, it gives much greater coverage to the otherwise barren rental area between the upper limits of fully-subsidized public housing and the lower limits of new private housing.
Secondly, it provides the most productive use of the City's housing powers. While the project cost is initially charged against the 2% housing debt limit, the Public Housing Law provides that it may be later excluded if the project operates for a year on a self-liquidating basis. The amount thus freed could be made available for additional housing.
Under the program authorized in March, fifteen projects providing almost 16,000 new apartments were made possible. But a fine new program on paper could not help the City's doubled-up and inadequately-housed families. Blueprints are useful only as they guide the erection of new housing, and in March not even blueprints were available. Getting con- struction started was the important thing, but how long would this take?
The planning and starting of a large-scale housing project is not a simple job. First, a site of the proper size must be carefully selected. It must ft the City's Master Plan; it must be serviced by the necessary utilities; it must be con- venient to schools, transportation, shopping, churches, and movies,
If the site is approved by the Board of Estimate and the City Planning Commission, it must be acquired, and architects engaged to draw up detailed plans and specifications. Arrange- ments may have to be made to close some streets, to widen others, to rearrange utility lines buried below ground, to do the thousand-and-one things required when four, or five, or ten City blocks are taken over for a housing development. Contract documents, which for a single project may run into 30 volumes totaling more than 2,000 pages, have to be prepared.
Jobs must be advertised, and prospective bidders pre- qualified as to technical ability and financial responsibility. Bids must be approved, the contractor given his contract, and only then can construction start-provided the site has been cleared of any persons who may have been living on it, and of the buildings in which they were living.
Normally, from a year to eighteen months is required to move a project from first approval to start of construction, and it is a pretty busy period at that. But with many thou- sands of families lacking apartments, 1948 was not a year in which to do things normally. This program had to go not just as fast as possible, but faster. That it did is attested by the record: by the end of 1948, of the fifteen projects in the program, six were under construction, eight were fully approved and scheduled to start in the first months of 1949, and the fifteenth was ready for approval by the Board of Estimate. Before the end of the new year the first apartments would be occupied.
The State-Aided Program
The State-aided program accounted for the remaining five projects started during the year. Three of these, Gowanus Houses, Governor Alfred E. Smith Houses, and Lester W. Patterson Houses, were slum clearance projects whose con- struction had been held up until their congested sites could be cleared. Special measures were needed to prepare the Governor Smith and Patterson sites for construction.
To speed progress on Governor Smith Houses, the 1,940- apartment project was divided into two sections, and vacant apartments in the second section were used to help complete the clearance of the first. In this way, construction of the project started in October, instead of being held up until the entire site had been cleared. At the same time, plans were drawn for rehabilitating 228 apartments in 11 boarded-up tenements to complete the clearance of the second section. Bids to rehabilitate the first of these tenements were taken in December.
A similar rehabilitation program made possible the final clearance of the Patterson site. Altogether, 20 buildings providing 208 apartments were remodeled for the last remaining tenants of the Patterson site. Because rehabilitation of old buildings is costly and a drain on permanent housing funds, its use is limited to the relocation of those tenants who are not eligible for public housing and for whom no other quarters can be found.
The other State-aided projects started during 1948, Albany Houses and Bronx River Houses, were made possible by the increase in State housing funds authorized by the legislature and approved by the voters in 1947. Probably six or seven additional projects will be made possible by the increase of housing funds. These projects have been held up because the Public Housing Law does not permit more than $1,500,000 in
new subsidies to be contracted for annually. Until this restriction is lifted, the progress of the State program will be slowed.
Vacant Land Sites
The 1948 construction record could not have been made without far greater use of vacant and substantially vacant sites than ever before. Twelve of the fifteen projects started are being built on substantially vacant land. Had the choice of sites been limited to congested slums, it is doubtful that any of these twelve new jobs would yet be started.
Clearance of slums remains an important job of public housing, but during a severe housing shortage has to give way temporarily to the primary job of providing decent homes for those who lack them. During the shortage, the pre- liminary clearance of a congested slum site is likely to be a more difficult and lengthy process than the actual construction of the project. The most vigorous relocation program cannot succeed if there are no vacancies into which the slum residents can be moved. Expedients such as the rehabilitation of boarded-up tenements are costly and can be used only to a limited extent, not for the wholesale clearance of a site. Even their limited use is justified only by the urgent demand for new homes. New housing can be provided rapidly only by extensive use of vacant land sites,
New Apartments Opened
The year 1948 was not given solely to planting the seeds for a future crop of apartments; it was a year of harvest as well. More than 7,000 families moved into newly opened apartments.
These families were selected from over 150,000 applicants. Preference was given to families displaced from their homes by public housing construction, and to the families of World War II veterans. All the new tenants had one thing in common: they had been living in the poorest sort of housing. For most of the veterans, it was the first decent housing of their own since they were married.
Five projects, James Weldon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Riis Federal, Amsterdam, and Marcy Houses, reached virtual full occupancy by the end of the year, with the few apartments not yet ready for occupancy already assigned to tenants. Three new projects were opened during the year. One of these, Gowanus Houses, had also been started in 1948; the other two, Jacob Riis City Houses and Astoria Houses, were started in 1946 and 1947 respectively.
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