Only In New York Does $145,000 Qualify As “Middle-Income”

As some decry the plan to bring poor people into the neighborhood, a study notes that most Queens residents would not be able to afford it in the first place:

Praised as a major advance for affordable housing in Queens, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to build 5,000 middle-income rental units on the Long Island City waterfront would actually exclude more than 60 percent of Queens residents, notes a report that will be released today by the Pratt Center for Community Development.

The median income in Queens was $45,000 last year, but the income required to qualify for the new apartments would fall between $60,000 and $145,000 a year for a family of four. Rents would run from $1,200 to $2,500 a month.

Bloomberg announced his proposal for a mixed-income housing complex on 24 acres in Queens West just two days after the private sale of the 110 apartment buildings that make up the middle-class haven of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The new Queens development was hailed as the city’s largest middle-income housing development since 1974, when the 5,888-unit Starrett City was built in Brooklyn. Bloomberg promised the new project would “provide needed housing for the real backbone of our city — our teachers, nurses, police officers.”

“But the majority of teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses in Queens earn less than the $60,000 cutoff for Queens West,” pointed out Marnie McGregor, a senior policy analyst at the Pratt Center and the author of the report.