LIC community leaders question Mamdani-backed housing development

Some local leaders in Long Island City would have liked to see more affordability included in a Mamdani-backed housing plan announced this week.   Photo via HPD

By Ryan Schwach

The Mamdani administration announced a plan to build 1,000 homes on a vacant city-owned lot in Long Island City earlier this week – but some community leaders say the project won’t go far enough to make Queens' most expensive neighborhood more affordable.

While supporters say the project will help address the city’s housing crisis, Councilmember Julie Won, a regular critic of the city’s development plans in her district, and several other community members said they would have liked more affordability built into the plan.

Called The Orion, the mixed-use development will bring 1,000 new homes to Hunters Point South on a long-vacant plot of land known as “Parcel E.”

It will include a daycare, development center and community pool operated by local nonprofit Commonpoint Queens.

“As we face a citywide housing shortage, this long-vacant lot will be transformed into nearly 1,000 new homes, two-thirds of which will be affordable for extremely low to moderate income households," said city Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy. “This project, which includes more than 145 supportive housing units, underscores our commitment to creating safe, affordable housing for all New Yorkers.”

Two-thirds of the development – just shy of 70 percent – will be labeled as affordable housing.

Won and local advocates don’t think that is enough.

“The community advocated for 80-100 percent affordability like the neighboring public sites in Long Island City which have 75-100 percent,” Won said in a statement. “Our community advocated at workshops and petitioned for deeper affordability, higher unit count of affordable, as well as outdoor active sport space.”

Still, she said that the rate of affordable housing included at The Orion is “promising.”

Jenny Dubnau, a housing advocate at the Western Queens Community Land Trust, told the Eagle she also would have liked to see more affordable housing included.

“If we are going to put housing on public land, shouldn’t that be where Zohran Mamdani builds the social housing he campaigned on?” she said. “When are we going to stop doing this?”

Affordability rates in new housing projects have long been the biggest point of contention for new buildings in LIC, a neighborhood that has been inundated in the last decade with luxury development that locals say has priced them out.

“The new Orion building on Hunter's Point Parcel E seems very promising in addressing the critical housing shortage in LIC,” chair of local Community Board 2, Anatole Ashraf, said in a text message. “It seems like we're finally doing things different and really trying to address affordability issues. Two-thirds of the units permanently income-restricted and affordable, that's the reverse of how it usually goes! That's rare and to be celebrated!”

“It's all in the execution now, and I'm looking forward to when shovels hit the ground for this project,” he added.

City Hall said that The Orion has the most affordable housing of any proposal to build on the site.

“HPD conducted a competitive RFP process for this site, and selected this proposal based on a comprehensive review of all proposals,” said a department spokesperson. “The Orion includes the deepest affordability of any proposal, supportive housing for formerly homeless New Yorkers, and delivers key community amenities that the Long Island City community advocated for in the RFP engagement process.”