N.Y.C. ‘Segregated’ Condo Gets Green Light For Separate Entrance For Poor Residents

POOR DOOR

Extell, a Manhattan high-rise luxury condo developer, has reportedly been given the green light to proceed with their plans to add a separate entrance to the building for the poor, and the controversial and segregationist proposal was approved by New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, according to the New York Post.

The Upper West Side  33-story building, which is still in throes of construction, will consist of 219 luxury units that face the Hudson River, but Floors 2 through 6 have been allotted for those families whose annual income falls below $51,540, which makes up about 60 percent of the area’s median income.

The city’s Inclusionary Housing Program is a boon for developers because, in addition to generous tax breaks, they are allotted more square footage for their properties if they allow a certain number of  lower-income families to reside within their properties.

Since news of the “poor door” plans leaked out last year, there have been those who are campaigning against the move, demanding equality and not separatism. “A mandatory affordable housing plan is not a license to segregate lower-income tenants from those who are well-off,” New York Assembly member Linda B. Rosenthal told the West Side Rag last August. “The developer must follow the spirit as well the letter of the law when building affordable housing, and this plan is clearly not what was intended by the community.”

The West Side Rag compared the “poor door” arrangement to servants and nobles quarters in “Downtown Abbey,” which is a TV drama that follows the fortunes of a wildly dysfunctional aristocratic English family at the beginning of the twentieth century.

James 2:6

But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

 Wisdom of Solomon 2:10

Let us oppress the poor righteous man let us not spare the widow nor reverence the ancient gray hairs of the aged

 Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 13:3

The rich man hath done wrong and yet he threateneth withal the poor is wronged and he must intreat also