 |
 |
|
|
|
Room
for Rent: Here's a real space deal for you: The cheapest rent in town is yours for just $200 a month. That's a tidy $50 per week, according to M&M Realty, a small South American real-estate agency in Jackson Heights, Queens. A sweet deal, huh? Not so fast. You might want to hold off on ringing the moving trucks. Two hundred bucks will get you a tiny room, dozens of housemates, a shared bathroom but, most probably, no access to a kitchen. Welcome to one of the cheapest rental spots in town: East 92th Street and 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights. Its residents are begging for space. And the neighborhood is scattered with pockets of illegally converted houses.
The crisis of affordable housing has recently made its way on the list of requests for the 2002 budget of Community Board 3. "Typically when you add an item it comes at the bottom of the list," said Tom Lowenhaupt, the vice chairman of CB 3. He acknowledged that the top ten issues tend to have a higher chance of being solved. So if the community shows enough support for this problem, maybe next year the request will move toward the top of the budget priority list, said Lowenhaupt. However, it looks like the housing crisis will not be solved in the next few years because the City Council, which decides the amount of financial support that goes to each neighborhood, doesn’t consider Jackson Heights to be a low-income community, said Lowenhaupt. Consequently the requests of CB 3 might not receive the same attention as those coming from needier neighborhoods. The lack of available space for building new units is a major obstacle. "Low rent city housing developments do not appear to be a viable solution. There is no land available. The only way to go is up," said Carl Christensen, president of the Jackson Heights Neighborhood Association. But because of Queens’s close proximity to the airport - the only way to go is up... and that is not an option." Fire hazards add to the dangers of living in illegally converted houses.
|
| ||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
