The Community Service Society is very concerned that Mayor Bloomberg has quietly retreated from his vision of a rebuilt Lower Manhattan as a robust, inclusive, mixed-income, mixed-use community, and from his stated promise that 20 percent of the new housing units there would be affordable. The NYC Housing Development Corporation has put forward 8 high-end rental developments that will absorb all of the City’s $800 million in publicly subsidized Liberty Bonds, without a single apartment that is affordable to low, moderate, or middle income New Yorkers.

This is unconscionable. Are we saying that rescue workers can die here, be memorialized here, but they cannot live in a Lower Manhattan to be rebuilt exclusively for the affluent?

The City tells us LMDC is the problem. It has requested CDBG funds—we commend the Mayor for that—but the Commission will not commit to housing. Frankly, we do not know where the fault lies. But we know there is a profound failure of leadership here—on the part of the Mayor, the Governor, and the Commission. It is time they worked together to put scarce, publicly subsidized Liberty Bonds to use, along with CDBG funds, to help provide urgently needed affordable housing to New Yorkers at all income levels in Lower Manhattan.