There is a row of nice looking townhouses on Lexington between Bedford and Franklin. I’ve seen another set of townhomes that looks just like this one in another part of the neighborhood. I wonder if these are “affordable units” or just moderately priced housing.
I support housing programs like Habitat for Humanity, but I’m not a huge fan of the city’s affordable housing programs. Not enough seem to focus on ownership and the ones that do have restrictive income caps that leave a huge amount of middle class people excluded from the opportunity become homowners (the maximum income cutoffs are often, in my humble opinion, too low).  Furthermore, I believe that the affordable housing programs are biased against young, single professionals, a group that often needs assistance in purchasing a home.Â
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not really a fan of having a thousand steps in front of a residence, but the design here seems reasonable. Whether these are in the affordable housing program or not, I think that these are a nice addition to the neighborhood. I just hope that they don’t place those ugly meters in front of the buildings.
get ready for ugly meters! it’s hard enough to keep them off the front of existing buildings, so i doubt these houses will remain free of gas and electric meters. ConEd wants electric meters to be placed some 50″ off the ground now, i guess so the meter-readers don’t have to strain their back or something.
Based on the pipes in front it looks like the meters are soon to follow.
Here are a few questions to consider.
Why are HUMANS reading meters in this day and age? They can put robots on Mars, and you’re telling me that they still have to send a human over to eyeball my meters? They can beam 12 million sports channels into my home, but they can’t beam my usage data back to Con Ed and Keyspan and whoever else? What year are we living in?
Humans read meters so that their union can keep claiming a reason to exist.
I do not get why they build these places with the entrances on the second floor. Just build it like townhouses in every other part of the damn country: enter on first floor, interior stairs take you to the rest of the units. That way they don’t look like hell, in my opinion.
Are these low income houses? As someone with a architectural background I am not feeling these homes at all. Yes it is better that the other stuff that I have seen in the area but everything about looks cheap. This kind of non-creative design is becoming very irritating. Bedford Stuyvesant a neighborhood with some of the best historic architecture in Brooklyn and should have a committee of designers and architects that really review what is coming into the neighborhood. I think if we look at projects in other cities such as Boston and Baltimore they seem to get it when it comes to architecture, you can see affordable houses that look great and fit the context of its surroundings. Take a look at these sites: http://www.bostonhousing.org/ and http://reno2.redclaycms.com/Our_Work/Real_Estate_Development/Homeownership_Developments.htm . If the UES or even PS had affordable housing this kind of design just would not fly. I just don’t think this acceptable in our neighborhood. How about if we first start fixing the empty brownstones that no one seems to want or care about. Then lets put and end to buildings like this that looks out of place anywhere in NYC.
They like to put the stairs on the outside here in Brooklyn so that they can maximize the space on the inside and maximize the ugly on the outside. When you think about it a staircase takes up valuable living space.
I love the homes on that Reno & Cavenaugh link! They don’t even look like they are “affordable” even though they were not made to be sold as market rate. I think those Capitol Hill homes would look nice as infill housing in Bed-Stuy.
I think the Capital Hill type homes would be nicer also here in Bed-Stuy. It seems like you see alot of this type of stuff on the edge of Bed-Stuy. I wish that there was a nicer way to go from Clinton Hill to Bed-Stuy without seeing this type of architecture. Ft Greene is connected with Clinton Hill and Propsect Heights/Park Slope (for now) rather nicely. But to get to Bed-Stuy you have the twilight zone as I call before you enter Bed-Stuy.
Morgan, I had to laugh when you called the Clinton Hill-Bed-Stuy transition “the twilight zone”. I think I live in that real estate twilight zone! Oh well, whaddaya gonna do?
They could maximize the interioir space by, duh, putting the houses up further on the lot! Of course, I’m sure the reason they can’t is because of some dickhead city planner. For every problem city planning claims to have solved, I can point out like 10 others it has created.
Hey, you’re right. Why don’t they just move them closer to the street? I don’t understand urban planning at all. I hope the setback is not to accommodate some parking spaces. The last thing Brooklyn needs is more places for cars.