We will pursue partnerships with City and State agencies throughout the city
Although the City's supply of vacant or underused land is nearly gone, the City owns 43,000 acres for municipal purposes. Much of this land is fully developed for government operations, but significant opportunities exist for housing to co-exist with the current use-from libraries to schools to parking lots.

We will work with government agencies located in the city to maximize these "co-location" opportunities by assembling an inventory of sites and evaluating their potential as viable sites. Already, we are moving ahead with a partnership between the City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the City's Department of Transportation to generate up to 1,100 new residential units on municipal parking lots, while replacing all or most of the current parking.

In Astoria, Queens, fenced-off pavement on 29th Street served as a municipal parking lot-despite the neighborhood's increasing urgency for senior housing. By 2009, the surface-level parking lot will be replaced by a new 15-story building, with an adjacent two-level subterranean parking garage for the public. The facility will be designed to reflect the needs of an aging Astoria population, offering 184 units of housing for seniors, commercial space for on-site medical offices, and open space. A senior center will be open to the community in addition to residents. Topping off the multi-use building will be a green roof -sustaining not just the community's seniors, but the environment in which they live.

This partnership recognized the potential for achieving simultaneous goals on City-owned land: building affordable housing while preserving the supply of affordable parking spaces. The City will seek to form equally productive alliances with other government agencies and departments in its search for additional land for housing.

We will continue our partnership with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to build 6,000 new affordable units
When NYCHA first began building housing projects across New York in the 1930s, the design of public housing and its integration into the urban landscape differed from our understanding today. The buildings rose as tall towers surrounded by open space, set back from the street and without access to stores or retail. Built into the project were dozens, sometimes hundreds of parking spaces for residents, reflecting the automobile-centered focus of the mid-twentieth century.

These spaces are now lightly used-leaving stretches of the developments sitting as vacant concrete. That's why in 2004, NYCHA signed an agreement with HPD to begin targeting some of these empty areas for new housing. On the west side of Manhattan, 98 underutilized parking spaces were scattered across three separate sites. As part of the Hudson Yards rezoning, these areas will now be redeveloped to provide 438 units of affordable housing.

By 2013, we will develop 6,000 new affordable units through this partnership, including sites in East New York and East Harlem.

Additional opportunities exist to co-locate housing with other functions on government-owned sites. Near Surf Avenue in Coney Island, the Economic Development Corporation is partnering with HPD to create 152 units of housing integrated with a 40,000 square foot community center. Other examples of possible co-locations include schools, libraries, and supermarkets.

Progess (as of 4/22/08):
On December 7, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) received responses to the Affordable Housing for the Bronx RFP. This RFP includes three new construction development sites located on underutilized parcels at Forest Houses, Highbridge Gardens and Soundview, which will result in over 550 units of rental and homeownership units. The RFP also includes a fourth site along the University Avenue corridor for the rehabilitation of 463 units in several buildings. NYCHA and HPD intend to issue more collaborative RFPs later this year. Another active collaboration is between HPD and the Department of Transportation (DOT). Construction will soon begin on the site of the former Cook Street DOT parking lot in Brooklyn and future HPD/DOT collaborations are planned.