What We Know about the City’s Affordable Housing Proposed for E. 5th St in East Village

The East Village may soon get an affordable housing project Ok’d, replacing what is now a parking lot on E. 5th St. between First and Second Avenues. The lot is currently being used by employees and officers of the Ninth Precinct, at 321 E. 5th Street. The lot itself is just across the street, at 324 E. 5th Street.

The lot was proposed as a suitable site for affordable housing by the Housing and Preservation Department late in 2024. HPD Commissioner Adolfo Carrión Jr., pledged the housing would be “100 percent affordable” and that “common-sense strategies” such as utilizing parking lots for housing were effective in solving the continuing housing crisis in the city.

“The reuse of public land currently used for parking of city vehicles for affordable housing is exactly the right thing to do,” Carrión Jr. said in a statement last December.

”It’s just starting,” said Susan Stetzer, District Manager of Community Board 3. According to Stetzer, HPD approached the board with the prospect of affordable housing at the 5th street location. Stetzer said that under the proposal being floated, cops won’t be forced to take spaces from areas residents, since the proposal calls for two floors of the new building to be used for parking for city vehicles and police employees at the 9th Pxt.

Stetzer confirmed Carrión Jr.’s statement, saying of the new housing that “it is going to be one hundred percent affordable.”

“For twenty years, the community board’s highest priority has always been affordable housing,” Stetzer told Our Town Downtown.

On February 27, a public workshop was hosted by the city in which the public could comment and discuss the upcoming housing project. Stetzer, who was present at the meeting, said “one hundred percent of the people that spoke” at the event were in favor of affordable housing options coming to the East Village, and all agreed that the E. 5th St. location was the place to have it.

The differing viewpoints came in when it came to the specifics. Some members of the public disagreed as to how high the building should be, what usages the building could have besides housing, and what to do about continuing needs for parking. As it stands, the building is slated to be 11,540 square feet when completed.

Of all the difficulties that come with building new housing, Stetzer said that “differing opinions” on the specifics of the site are like to be the biggest challenge this time.

The EV Grieve reported in February that the 5th Street Park Coalition took issue with how space at the site was being used. The coalition called for “a comprehensive rezoning plan which accounts for affordable housing, greenspace, public community space and a new public school play area.” Still, the Coalition has said that they do not wish for “reduction” of the affordable housing project. As Stetzer says, all parties support the affordable housing, while differing on the method execution.

The 5th St. proposal is part of the larger plan by the Adams Administration called “24 in 24.” The plan, started in 2024, calls for “advancing 24 affordable housing projects on public sites in 2024 to create or preserve over 12,000 units of housing.”

One of the projects, the Elizabeth Street Garden in the northern end of Little Italy is stirring considerable controversy since the city is moving to legally take back what is now a garden administered by a private ownership group but open for public use.

City council member Chris Marte has been urging the city to save the treasured park and find another venue for a senior affordable housing project. So far, the Adams Administration has been unmoved. The city, which owns the land, still wants to build an affordable housing complex for senior citizens with a set aside for some public park space that would be smaller than the current Essex Street Garden. Many residents, including high profile residents including actor Robert DeNiro, object to the city reclaiming what has become a neighborhood treasure filled with statues and greenery.

Virtually all of the public gardens in downtown Manhattan that community activists took over decades earlier, are now owned by the city.

The E. 5th St. project so far appears to be one of the least controversial projects as the Adams administration tries to balance the housing crisis against the need for open space.

The next community board 3 meeting to discuss the affordable housing project was confirmed by Stetzer to be next Tuesday, April 15 at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will take place at Civic Hall, 124 East 14th St., Floor 3.

City Council member Carlina Rivera had not responded to a request for comment by press time.