CHPC New York

State Enacts “One Big Ugly” Tax-Break Law

The bill also renewed the J-51 program of property-tax abatements and tax exemptions, which had expired at the end of 2011. This program is intended to encourage owners of rent-regulated buildings to improve them, but according to a June 2012 analysis by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, more than half the J-51 benefits in the last ten years went to market-rate housing, not affordable housing. The program costs the city of New York $257 million annually in lost tax revenue.

‘Making Room’ for Another Million

Video: Future Cities visits the Making Room exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York to talk to Deputy Director Sarah Watson on micro-units, outdated zoning laws, and the future of NYC.

If Mayors Ruled the World

Video: Brian Lehrer interviews Sarah Watson, Deputy Director at CHPC and Mimi Hoang Partner at nARCHITECTS. They discuss the demands of New York’s housing market and winning designs of the city’s adAPT NY competition.

You Can’t Build What People Want: Building Codes vs Affordability

Co-sponsored by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council (CHPC) of New York the exhibit takes up the question of why we have the housing we have and offers compelling glimpses of possible alternative futures…

The exhibit builds on the painstaking work of CHPC over several years to create a public conversation on our moribund housing regulations and enable innovative solutions to the city’s housing needs.  Full disclosure: I am a CHPC board member and chaired the committee supporting the outstanding work done by the executive director, Jerilyn Perine, and deputy director, Sarah Watson.

Micro Apartments Are the Future of Urban Living

In response to these changing demographics, The Museum of the City of New York launched the exhibition Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers to explore how design can reshape the city’s housing stock and reshape the way New Yorkers live.

Making Room was inspired by Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC, a study created the strengthen the city’s economy, combat climate change, and enhance the quality of life in anticipation of a projected population increase of more than one million people by the year 2030.

Miniature apartment: simple design, full-featured

Sarah (Deputy Director of Citizens Housing & Planning Council): There’s been really positive feedback. It’s something that I think it’s really interesting to a lot of people. This housing type can be a good option in all sorts of different locations in the city for different population.

Making Room in The Big Apple

The impetus for the exhibit was a set of figures uncovered by the Citizen’s Housing Planning Council (CHPC) that showed a disparity between the types of available housing in New York, which are primarily designed for traditional nuclear households, and the increasing demand for single and other non-traditional housing. Currently, only about 18 percent of the city’s population is part of a nuclear family household. Yet over half of New York is single, and the city lacks enough single bedroom and studio spaces to house them.

DURAVIT IN “MAKING ROOM: NEW MODELS OF HOUSING FOR NEW YORKERS”

Through the combined efforts of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, the Architectural League of New York, the Bloomberg administration and many talented designers and architects, there are now models, drawing and templates on display that will help to meet the upcoming needs of the citizenry of New York.

Micro Digs’ Sliding TV, Murphy Bed Tempt Singles: Review

I fear micro-apartments could become grim, overpriced boxes crammed into dim blocks — as today’s studios often are. Thankfully, “Making Room,” working with the think tank Citizens Housing and Planning Council, displays alternatives to the city’s worst housing abuses. We have all read too many stories about illegally subdivided family houses that end up turning into fire traps for their poor inhabitants.

Touring the ‘Making Room’ Exhibit at MCNY

That announcement conveniently coincided with MCNY’s brand new exhibition, Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers. Presented in conjunction with the Citizens Housing & Planning Council (CHPC), MCNY opened its new exhibit to the public on January 23.

Winning micro-housing design on display in NYC

An exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York is showcasing the recently-announced winning entry from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s adAPT micro-apartment design competition launched last July. “Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers” – organized by the Citizens Housing & Planning Council and the Museum of the City of New York – opened on January 23rd and gives New Yorkers the opportunity to test drive some of the features destined for the winning “My Micro NY” development on East 27th Street scheduled for completion in September 2015.

‘Making Room’ in the City

“Making Room,” an exhibition that opened at the Museum of the City of New York on Wednesday, offers a look at how architects, enabled partly by a new initiative from the mayor’s office, are proposing to tackle these problems. The exhibition includes a full-size model of a micro-apartment, a 325-square-foot studio with “transformable” furniture.