New Yorkers Got Broken Promises. Developers Got 20M Sq. Ft | Hacker News Reader

New Yorkers Got Broken Promises. Developers Got 20M Sq. Ft

nytimes.com

47 pointsasnyder57 comments

> The standard penalty for a violation is $5,000, which is a fraction of the value of the bonus space developers receive from the agreements. For example, the owners of 325 Fifth Avenue have been assessed a total of $54,000 in penalties since 2015. By contrast, the bonus floor area that the developers gained could be worth approximately $80 million if used for residential space, based on 2022 sales prices provided by Jonathan J. Miller, a New York City real estate appraiser.

When the penalty is this much lower than the benefit, it's just the cost of doing business. I wonder if this same problem would happen if the fine was scaled to better reflect the increase in value.

I just noted the same. Incentives, or in this case disincentives are powerful. I think it will at least make some change.

I think the reasoning for the low fines was the expectation that compliance would be pretty good, because honestly building owners and residents don’t want a gated eyesore next to their luxury construction and keeping them nice and open is in their own interest.

I have worked in at least 2 of the buildings on that list (both of which had 0 violations) and honestly the plazas were lovely, well maintained and a great place to eat lunch on a nice day. I think it was the desire to attract and keep tenants which kept it nice, not the fear of fines.

Or at least scaled in repeat offenses.

First time 5k as a warning.

Second time, you knew what you were doing 50k

Third time, fuck you, if we can do third strike laws for citizens we can do it for businesses. 50m fine.

Bet there'd be a lot fewer repeat offenses

"What do you mean second strike? This Limited Liability Company was never fined before!"

There was a comment a few years ago from the parking violations commissioner, when people were complaining that parking tickets were exorbitant, that they had to keep raising the fines to keep above the price of parking n a lot.

This is exactly why fines ought to scale with the offender’s income, e.g. the €120k speeding ticket given to a millionaire in Finland [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-busine...

For individuals, maybe that works.

For a building company getting ready to add on several million dollars worth of floor space, you can bet that they will engineer their books so if they have little to no income.

They do that already for income taxes....

For property I might mildly suggest basing fines off the property tax.

Don't fine them, just take ownership of the illegal portion of the construction.

The city can sublet it, the developer derives zero revenue.

On the other hand, there is an "equality before the law" point worth making.

Precedent being an odd mother, the capacity to morph violations into stealth taxation might not be a power one wants to grant to a government.

What's not equal about applying the same percentage? No matter your means, the fines are the same percentage, which to me is pretty danged equal when the point is to punish certain behaviours.

Same problem as a national VAT: turning the tax base into an ATM empowers myopic polixy.

Wouldn't it be more like a VAT where you pay based on your means, not what the product costs?

That and I don't really have a problem with making the rich the country's piggybank.

You'll not have a problem until the rich eject, take their wealth with them, and crash the tax base.

See: NY, CA, &c.

Make it federal, and have a steep 'exit penalty' for renouncing citizenship if you're over a certain wealth threshold. Make it so that if you try to renounce your citizenship to avoid the taxes, you're left to start from zero again, and if you don't renounce your citizenship, you owe the taxes no matter where in the world you are (and in most of the world, Uncle Sam can absolutely get to you if he wants.)

As a personal example, I left the military reserve because, inter alia, the joy of serving my country mattered less than the tax beating I was taking for being bumped into a higher bracket.

That is: (dis)incentives matter.

Maybe we can agree that our tax system is a Byzantine train wreck in need of reform.

Well then if applying the same percentage is a principle, how about we apply it to taxes?

If taxes were applied based on total wealth and not income, the two would be comparable. But the taxes you're talking about, income taxes, aren't taxing wealth but the rate of change of wealth, and I can accept that we need to apply slightly different principles in that case.

and prison terms should be in proportion to life expectancy. 15 years for arson if committed by a 20 yr old, and 2.5 if committed by a 70 year old. makes sense to me. oh wait ...

Something I've noticed is America is extremely lax with taxing and penalties vs Europe. America would rather incentive via tax breaks to encourage than fine things to enforce an outcome like a lot of European countries.

I've noticed the same. Someone once explained it to me that many European countries have a cultural acceptance/expectation of a strong centralized state (France, Germany, etc.), which implies strong norms where strong punishment is therefore legitimate/expected.

In contrast, the US was founded in rebellion, and has a cultural acceptance/expectation of a weak state, preferably de-centralized (federal). Rural independence and freedom is more highly valued, so governmental norms/regulations are always seen as slightly suspect/illegitimate. People prefer fines/punishments for "breaking government rules" to be more of a slap on the wrist, because it's more accepted to see what you can get away with, without the government catching you.

(But keep in mind this is really only in the realm of "regulation", like in this case, or in speed limits, etc. Violent crime is a whole other story, where the culture is far more punitive.)

I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure Germany has a federal model, similar to the US.

There are numerous problems with this thesis, not the least of which being that all of America's ideas about a weak state and personal liberty originated in Europe (particularly Revolutionary France,) and the current Federal model of government under the Constitution was an attempt to centralize authority after the failure of government under the Articles of Confederation.

Fines should be a ratio to total profit and there should be mandatory jail time. We need to stop letting these rich crooks take advantage of us.

Have you earnestly looked into anarchism as a practical solution to this? Because a tendency to say “this rule ought to exist” and then waiting on delegates to enact that speaks nothing to the material power incentives at play

I just noticed they want to siphon as much as they could from the majority - The ones with less richer thank them

Or actual, physical, personal consequences. In some places this kind of self enriching dishonesty means sleeping on a concrete bed.

SF landlords will try to limit access to their POPOS as well. For example, the Hampton Inn on Mission St has a rooftop deck that is supposed to be open to the public. I tried to go in on my lunch break but, surprise, it's "for guests only". Then they allowed me to go up but not before making me sign some BS liability waiver. Reported them to the city government and got an immediate reply. If you see something, say something!

There are two major gaps in this analysis:

- Extra tall buildings generate significant extra tax revenue to the city that could easily be used for acquisition and maintenance of public spaces.

- Zoning laws that limit square footage result in artificially inflated property values. How much lower would housing cost if developers could build as tall as safety and market demand supports?

>“Developers received something that was disproportionately valuable,”

[Edit: This is what happened.] It was not an equal exchange. Developers gained from extra floor space amounting to millions, while fines levied amounted to just thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Up the fines to millions for starters.

[Edit: On another note, the private real estate market is bonkers. There needs to be tighter regulations, and more supply in the form of public market housing, etc. Many in New York getting priced out in the last 20 years.]

that's what disproportionately means

Yes I was only highlighting the point, not arguing against it.

But the article spells it out? You could have just pasted the quote where they spell it out, like the other poster did?

I liked the other poster quote, that is the key explanation in article, hence I commented there. We literally commented at the same second. But I just liked the summarization of it as being "disproportionately valuable".

NYC is really missing out on extra revenue by not enforcing this. $5000 per violation (per day?) Could easily pay one person's annual salary across all the areas affected by this. Could even make this enforceable through a citizen app like NYC already does with idling vehicles. One month of regular enforcement would probably stop violations for good. Could also post signs right at the plaza stating that public access is a right and to report if inaccessible.

Nobody does corruption at the scale of the US where the worst scams are completely legal.

I know many of those locations highlighted, I feel like these are crucial but subtle changes in NYC post-pandemic that change the experience for the worse.

Really sad about the periodic closures of the plaza at 835 Sixth Avenue.

In any case, I think these are bad deals to begin with. Its a good idea to convince developers to create the public spaces if the city cannot, but it needs more thought put into it.

This is the standard issue with fines. When they are less than the reward for non-compliance it is not worth complying. My town has many fines that are issued per day with increases at certain milestones.

Seriously: if the deal developers reneged on was to allow them to create extra housing, who cares?

I get why everyone is pissed about private park space, and I'm not saying they're wrong to be pissed, but this is an article about a deal that only provided half its expected benefits, not one that cost anybody anything.

The idea that we need rules limiting how tall buildings can be, and anything taller is a blight on the public that we only begrudgingly trade away, and that this is axiomatic, is absolutely one of the core causes of the housing crisis.

Especially in MANHATTAN, of all places!

Right? The article opens with image of a skyscraper, in a field of skyscrapers, dwarfed by a neighboring skyscraper, and then highlights a couple extra floors at the top. Who cares? As-of-right construction already gave them an immense building; all they did was let it house more people, by building an imperceptibly larger building.

Huh. I think skyscrapers are terrible (for the people outside the skyscraper, in their effect on people's state of mind) and if I lived in Manhattan, I expect I'd be angry about this skyscraper, too.

I'm not opposed to high density, but high density is not incompatible with having a height limit. DC has had a height limit since 1910: "federal law imposes maximum heights on buildings within Washington, DC based upon the width of the street, to a maximum height of 130 feet (commercial streets) and 90 feet (residential streets), and 160 feet for parts of Pennsylvania Avenue, NW."

Because of the steepness of the price of land in Manhattan, a higher limit than DC's makes sense, but the building under discussion, 325 Fifth Avenue, has 42 floors, which is too high in my book.

A large expanse of 20-story or even 30-story buildings all the same height and spaced approximately equidistantly results in much more pleasant light at street level than the situation you have in something like Midtown Manhattan.

None of the effects of the urban landscape are particularly strong: how recently you've eaten (or exercised) for example will tend to have a much stronger effect, but the effect of the urban landscape is constantly present whenever the person is outside or looking outside.

I've never lived in NYC, but I did live in Atlanta, and I still remember the slight feeling of oppression ("menace"?) every time I drove west towards downtown Atlanta with Coca-Cola's North Tower growing slowly in size in my field of view for about 12 minutes in a row. (When I lived there circa 1985, it was much taller than anything around it; again I much prefer it when a building is about the same height as its neighbors.)

Their as-of-right zoning limits exceed your comfort level already, which makes it difficult to see why it matters if they get an additional 6 floors worth of housing.

I worry that the urban landscape affects the mental state of many or most of the people who choose to live in Manhattan--not merely of people sufficiently like me--but I admit I have no reason to believe that beyond the fact that many cities have height restrictions on buildings.

Do you think the additional 6 floors that got added to this as-of-right 36-floor building pose a meaningful additional risk?

I wouldn't use the predicate "pose risk", but yes, the difference between 36 floors and 42 floors seems meaningful.

This North Tower in Atlanta I found slightly-but-consistently oppressive was and is only 29 stories (403 feet): https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/9208476088/in/photostre...

More importantly, even at 36 floors, the building under discussion would already have been much taller than most of the buildings around it: https://cdn.chime.me/elegran-image/52cfa1bca73e6f084f007545-...

There are thousands of tall buildings in Manhattan, so in the grand scheme of things, one tall building doesn't matter much to any non-hysterical person, but you already know that, so maybe I am missing something about your question.

In general, I'm for removing many kinds of restrictions on housing construction, including in Manhattan, just not restrictions on building height although I'm not a fan of the way Manhattan's restrictions work, where the excess height of one building can be "offset" (by the owner of the one paying money to the owner of the other) by another landowner's choosing to build shorter than it is allowed to build, which allowed blights on the landscape like 432 Park Avenue, the very tall building in the left half of this photo: https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/6143755d91beee6...

Contrast those photos of Manhattan with these 2 of K Street in DC (which has height restrictions that cannot be offset like Manhattan's can): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Washingt... https://jamesposey.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/1401-K-St-...

Are you saying you think existing height restrictions in cities are driven by concern for the mental health of people in/around them?

I would have guessed so, yes, (being in a skyscraper is fine, my concern is having to be outside it) though I prefer to say aesthetic concerns. There are studies showing that murders are more likely in locations where no trees are visible, to give an example of the effect of landscape on state of mind.

I'm guessing you believe that height restrictions are driven largely by owners of existing buildings conspiring to keep rents high.

I’m not sure why we’d be relying on what either of us believe, when we can look up details about legal height restrictions. I did some hunting and can’t find any arguments from the people who proposed or passed any such legislation that it was for mental health benefits.

Can you?

I would be interested to read here what arguments you did find.

Huh. I think skyscrapers are terrible (for the people outside the skyscraper, in their effect on people's state of mind) and if I lived in Manhattan, I expect I'd be angry about this skyscraper, too.

I still remember the slight feeling of oppression ("menace"?)

Do you think this might be your own issue and not about skyscrapers or other people?

>>I still remember the slight feeling of oppression ("menace"?) every time I drove west towards downtown Atlanta with Coca-Cola's North Tower growing slowly in size in my field of view for about 12 minutes in a row.

>Do you think this might be your own issue and not about skyscrapers or other people?

I was traumatized and never got my life back on track after that experience :)

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me again and agin, every single time, as predictably as clockwork, for over a century...

Related HN Thread "If You Double-Park and You’re Rich, Should You Pay a Higher Fine?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813265

Developers! Developers! Developers!

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