One sunny winter day, various L+M Development Partners executives met with ENR at GrandLo, a coffee shop that’s part of a youth jobs training program run by Grand St. Settlement, housed at the 100% affordable housing project Francis Goldin Senior Apartments. It’s the first building L+M did, along with its fellow members of the Delancey Street Associates joint venture, at the massive Essex Crossing cluster of developments on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Talk turns to mixed-income housing—L+M’s specialty—versus public housing and other affordable residential projects. But when it’s noted that market-rate tenants might raise a bigger stink about disrepair than would low-income residents, guaranteeing mixed-income buildings’ quality compared with negative public housing scenarios often reported by local news, the firm’s CEO looks aghast.