Wait-a-second, $250k gets you a luxury apartment in NYC? In my medium-sized town $250k buys you... ...a luxury loft.

Those prices have to be wrong or else people saying that NYC is expensive to live in are nuts!

It must be nice to have political connections

I have a platitude for Mr. Desmond John:

"Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. SOMETIMES, it rains...."
--Bull Durham

"When I first saw it, I was like, 'Damn, everything is brand new,'" said Raymond, who wouldn't give his last name. "It has marble counters and marble floors in the bathrooms, too."

This quote is seriously conjuring images of Eddie Murphy in Trading Places. And no, that doesn't mean I'm assuming that the homeless guy is black.

I hope the city is getting the homeless some work in exchange for the free rooming. Perhaps cleaning the streets or something like that?

Something doesn't sound quite right here. $250k will barely get you marble bathrooms and granite countertops in Minneapolis and MLPS aint New York City when it comes to housing.

This pisses ME off and I don't even live in the city! People are too quick to yell "SOCIALISM!" and "COMMIES!" at every turn but this particular move is too left-leaning for me not to point out the redness inherent in this poorly-planned decision.

@shepd: Dang $250K would buy you a BIG ASS HOUSE here.

@wgrune: That's what I was thinking.

This is a case of innovation and outside-the-box thinking that benefits all those involved

Yeah, well wait until the new neighbors start barbecuing in the bathtub and burning the place down.

I feel really happy for them. They just better actually get a job now though.

"I'm a hardworking taxpayer, and I don't think homeless people should be living better than me," fumed Desmond John.

That's a pretty callous statement. It sounds so similar to the morons who hate welfare because one time down at the grocery store I saw someone with food stamps and they were talking on a cell phone and their car look nicer than mine and how dare poor people try to have nice things.

Although I always love it when people pull the "I'm a taxpayer card". I used to intern with a state rep and one thing I had to do was file the constituent letters. You would not believe how many of those letter contained some variation on the phrase "I'm a taxpayer", not to mention the phrase "I'm an American citizen".

Because if you pay your taxes, that means laws don't apply to you, or that you can make people change the laws you don't like overnight.

this made me smile. :] i live in brooklyn when i'm at school and tutor at what could be described as an "inner-city" school [98% of the kids get free lunches]; i know that any sort of luxury would be welcome for their families, and they are lucky enough to have apartments of their own. i can't begin to imagine how great it must feel for the homeless.

sometimes, you just need a break for your crappy life. i wonder how their residents will do when they leave.

@rpm773: Oops. *burn the place down. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it won't happen until the fires start.

@RonDiaz: I was absolutely shocked when I came from Chicago to visit a friend in Houston. Their houses are so cheap!

@winstonthorne: Is it left-leaning because they're helping poor people, or because it offends you that a poor person might be touching something of value?

@Dafrety: Inexpensive, not cheap. They have way more space for less than you'd pay here.

@shepd: Near Bushwick != Manhattan.

@rpm773:

Yeah, I don't know how I would feel if the building next to me turned into a homeless shelter all of a sudden. Good luck trying to sell.

This is a great idea, I wonder if it will spread to all the other empty/near empty condos across the nation that popped up during the housing build-o-rama

@rpm773: Those crazy stereotypical homeless people. Always cooking in bathrooms and setting fires. Make sure to check any soup they serve you; it might have a shoe in it!

@squinko: Not to mention that these people were tax paying citizens before they were homeless. This is part of the reason we pay taxes, for community programs

@youbastid:

I had a friend spend a summer in NYC. She said the price differences between there and Oklahoma are crazy. Here main example was groceries...for what she spend in NYC to get a weeks worth of food she could get a months worth of food back home. She was glad she wasn't paying for the flat she was staying in, lol.

@squinko: I'd wager that for a lot of people crying foul, it's the latter.

I don't begrudge the homeless their new housing, but it does make me wish my local and national government weren't so feckless when it comes to promoting housing affordability for middle-class renters like me.

Promoting housing affordability doesn't mean "give me money", it means: tearing down zoning and building-code barriers to building affordable housing in the first place, and letting homes with overdue mortgages go into foreclosure already so we can reach the real market-clearing price level more quickly.

Thats 2700 a month per apartment, what are they valuing the social services, housing help and job counseling at? Seems like either NYC is getting screwed or the builder knows someone in the government...

Or it could have sat there empty and eventually become a blight in the neighborhood housing the homeless anyways and be constantly vandalized which in turn bring the surround home values down and helping no one. Gee, those local residents should be grateful they aren't homeless because it can just as easily be them tomorrow if they lose their jobs. pricks.

@wgrune: It's really transitional housing, to help people get back on their feet. When I hear "homeless shelter" I think of a place people stay for a night or two.

the use of a failed luxury condo development

Local residents, some of them interested in renting an apartment in the building, are pretty ticked off.

Um, if people were really interested in living there, then why did the development fail? If they wanted a unit so bad maybe they should have said something before the owner had to turn it into a shelter to avoid foreclosure.

@mcs328: then people would be complaining about squatters and homeless people on the streets

the only problem is, how does a city with no money and a big budget deficit afford $90/night for the homeless? another byproduct is that certain citizens (maybe Desmond John for example) are going to lose their incentive to work hard if they see the homeless being given more than they have, which could definately hurt in the long run.

@squinko: Probably the same as the comment from the actual interviewed person:

"I'm a hardworking taxpayer, and I don't think homeless people should be living better than me,"

That poor window salesman. Those homeless people get all the breaks. Its too bad all of us can't quit our jobs and be homeless. Oh, wait, we can. Nevermind then.

While this seems like a nice idea on the surface, I wonder just how incented some of the new residents are going to be to get back on their feet and move into a dwelling of their own, especially when they know that any apartment they will be able to afford with a low paying entry-level type job will likely not be nearly as nice as the condo in the article.

That said, I'm not advocating that people live in squalor either, just that in order for people to be encouraged to get jobs, etc., there needs to be a rational balance between what not having a job will get you, and what having one will.

@wgrune: That would be because it's in Crown Heights. Being sandwiched in between delightful East New York (the most dangerous neighborhood in the city hands down) and BedStuy doesn't exactly make it a desirable place to live. I wouldn't move there if someone paid me to.

@squinko: Boot Stew?! That sounds great. With a side of cigarette butt fries. I just hope it's served by a guy with in a top hat with the top barely hanging on like an opened tin can lid. And his name is Franklin Alabaster Pepperpots III.

@csdiego: When I lived in Denver they had a rule that a certain amount of units in the gentrified lofts (which displaced a lot of poor folks) had to be "affordable housing" Which set rent based on income limits. Is this a program that happens elsewhere?

First off, I know the neighborhood... There are no "luxury condo's" there yet. Crown Heights is slowly being transitioned as one of the next "it" nabes of NYC. Second, I know this buiilding in detail, it's not luxury at all. The units feature new appliances but they are just typical Sears branded entry level stuff. These people that live there now and that are reporting this are equating condo/new/steel brushed cheap appliances as luxury. This should not be the case. Just because you have a metal brushed fridge does not mean it's quality. The building is ugly, the appliances are cheap and the neighborhood is not yet the up-and-comer it should be, not ghetto, but not really that nice either. People need to get their facts straight but I guess people that have never had anything consider new = to luxury. Also, the condo units cost that much because the builder was trying to ride the pre-recession wave of selling overpriced condos to fools in New York. Not luxury and not a great nabe.

@shepd: its not in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill or Park Slope, its Brownsville. You see these places popping up all over the place and soon the neighborhood will change where $250k wont even get you a studio (thank you gentrification).

how dare poor people try to have nice things

@squinko: Yep. G-d forbid that you ever have something good happen to you if you end up poor. The city should have spent a bunch of money building a crappy building instead of just renting out an existing one.

@wgrune: I'd guess marble countertops and 2 bedrooms in a new building in Brooklyn should be at least $500K, more if in one of the better neighborhoods.

@edwardso:

That's better if that's the case. Here, a homeless shelter is where people live for long periods of time.

@JRules: Lets see you find an apartment in NYC for less than $2700 a month, especially with the upgrades described. No wonder NYC is broke, $2700 per month per person, I hope there is people sharing one of those apartments.

Personally I'm happy to see homeless people housed although I do agree with neighbors ...

Can't we turn all the empty Circuit Cities & Linens N' things into some sort of temporary housing ?

@squinko:

To be fair:
Unintentionally living next to a homeless shelter is not the same thing as seeing a guy use welfare at the grocery store. Regardless of whether the guy come off as a dick in his quote, he does have a point in there somewhere. Somebody up above had a nice insight: good luck trying to sell that place! (economy not withstanding.)

@squinko: I think you've just hit on the solution! City workers can go through each and every unit and put laminate over the granite countertops, linoleum over the marble flooring, and disconnect the plumbing to the tub faucet and force residents to use the shower. That way we don't have to suffer with the knowledge that these unfortunate families (oops, I mean lazy filthy bums) might be living in something other than squalor while they try to get themselves back on their feet.

@Rectilinear Propagation: They were probably hoping that the developer would get desperate and rent/sell it to them very cheap. So they're angry that they didn't get their clearance sale.

@Collie: the two residents quoted in the story lived there with their families

@Rectilinear Propagation: Very good point, one I didnt notice on the first read. Perhaps there wasnt enough interest in it.