Six apartments – four designated for physically disabled or impaired residents – remain available in the West Side’s newest and perhaps trendiest affordable housing building, as a local housing agency struggles to find qualified tenants to fill them.
More than half of the 14 apartments at the new White’s Livery Apartments on Jersey Street are already spoken for. However, officials are having a hard time filling three units reserved for hearing or visually impaired tenants and one for a physically disabled tenant, said Linda Chiarenza, executive director of West Side Neighborhood Housing Services. Potential residents must be screened to ensure they qualify for the subsidized apartments.
The nonprofit housing agency led the redevelopment of the historic former stables into a new residential building, which opened last week, six years after a structural collapse nearly prompted an emergency city demolition.
Instead, at the urging of local residents, the city spent over $574,000 to stabilize the building, while the city, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and NeighborWorks America partnered with West Side NHS to fund a rescue and restoration.
Only those portions of the structure that could not be saved were demolished. But the project was complicated because the building is “landlocked between other viable structures,” with no room for error, Mayor Byron W. Brown said.
The adaptive reuse project by designer Stieglitz-Snyder Architecture and general contractor Savarino Companies took the former White Brothers Livery and converted the 122-year-old, three-story building into 14 affordable housing units.
Six units have already been rented, with two others in the process of being rented. Two other one-bedroom units are available.
email: jepstein@buffnews.com
More than half of the 14 apartments at the new White’s Livery Apartments on Jersey Street are already spoken for. However, officials are having a hard time filling three units reserved for hearing or visually impaired tenants and one for a physically disabled tenant, said Linda Chiarenza, executive director of West Side Neighborhood Housing Services. Potential residents must be screened to ensure they qualify for the subsidized apartments.
The nonprofit housing agency led the redevelopment of the historic former stables into a new residential building, which opened last week, six years after a structural collapse nearly prompted an emergency city demolition.
Instead, at the urging of local residents, the city spent over $574,000 to stabilize the building, while the city, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and NeighborWorks America partnered with West Side NHS to fund a rescue and restoration.
Only those portions of the structure that could not be saved were demolished. But the project was complicated because the building is “landlocked between other viable structures,” with no room for error, Mayor Byron W. Brown said.
The adaptive reuse project by designer Stieglitz-Snyder Architecture and general contractor Savarino Companies took the former White Brothers Livery and converted the 122-year-old, three-story building into 14 affordable housing units.
Six units have already been rented, with two others in the process of being rented. Two other one-bedroom units are available.
email: jepstein@buffnews.com