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Like 2 people like this. Sign Up to see what your friends like. Shirley Patterson and Diana Richardson — both candidates in the four-person special election race for the vacant 43rd Assembly seat — today, crossed campaign paths when both showed up at a rally against the 23-story high rise now going up at 626 Flatbush Avenue getting a large tax abatement through the state 421-a program. Joining Democratic Party District Leader Patterson and Working Families Party candidate Richardson were about a half dozen grassroots activist organizations. The 421-a program was enacted in the 1970s to spur development in the at-the-time cash-strapped New York City. It now is set to sunset in June, and many affordable housing advocates, including Patterson and Richardson believe it has outlived its usefulness and should be allowed to expire. They note that developers saved over $1 billion in subsides from the program already without significantly adding to the affordable housing stock. The 626 Flatbush Avenue building has an 80/20 component meaning 254 of the apartment on the site are market rate and 51 or 20 percent of the units will go towards affordable units. "I love this neighborhood, but I could never afford a unit in this new luxury development at 626 Flatbush. Skyrocketing rents and gentrification are pushing people like you and me out," said Richardson. "Yet there are still greedy developers who want to build more and more like it. I'm fighting against 421a as an activist and a member of this community, and I'll keep fighting as my neighborhood's representative in Albany. I am also committed to never taking money from the billionaire developers who are destroying our neighborhoods and driving working families from their homes." Patterson said if elected she would either vote to get rid of the 421-a program [...]
